ADDRESS BY THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MOOT COURT BENCH

Friday, 20 October 2006

Good evening and welcome back to Murdoch.

When Professor Moens was appointed as the Dean of our law school, he introduced a vision that has become Murdoch’s Moot Court Bench. Tonight I will be presenting a brief overview on what the Moot Court Bench is; what we have been doing and what we have planned for the future.

Moot Court Bench is an elective unit, with members of the bench accruing four points towards their law degree. Unlike other four point units however, Moot Court Bench runs across two semesters and does not have set lectures or readings. In lieu of set lectures, the bench has weekly meetings focussed on organising and preparing for upcoming events. To become a bench member, interested students must firstly write a letter of application. From these applicants, members are hand-picked by the Dean in collaboration with the academic staff mentoring the program. Among other things, students are selected based on their academic merit, their past competition experience and the contribution each applicant could make to the bench. The bench is comprised of up to 12 students at any one time, with intakes of students in first and in second semester. This creates an environment where half of the bench is always in a position to guide the incoming members, due to the experience gained during the previous semester. Internally, the structure of the bench consists of a Chief Justice, an Executive Justice and ten Associate Justices, and is currently mentored by Dr. Vernon Nase, Ms Kate Lewins and Professor Moens.

The Moot Court Bench was established at the beginning of this year to promote a culture of excellence within the law school. To achieve this aim, members of the bench undertake a variety of tasks aimed at improving fellow students’ research, writing and oral advocacy skills. An extremely good example of how we have gone about achieving this is the 2006 Murdoch Student Law Society junior mooting competition.

When sign up for the 2005 competition closed, there were 32 people intending to compete. By the time the first round actually took place, only 24 people competed: ¼ of the competitors had dropped out, with more threatening to do so. This was largely put down to the lack of support first time mooters were receiving. The competition rules prevented the co-ordinators from helping the competitors in any way. As such, none of the junior mooters had any real idea of what to expect other than to open with “If it pleases the Court”, or to refer to the presiding judge as “Your Honour”.

This year things changed. Scott Fitzpatrick, the Murdoch Student Law Society Competitions Vice-President, kindly agreed to allow the Moot Court Bench to work alongside the student law society’s competition coordinators. This allowed members of the bench to do a number of things. Firstly, in the build up to the competition, the Moot Court Bench ran a demonstration moot in one of the torts lectures. This gave first year students an idea of what a moot was, and showed them what to expect from a Judge. Next, the Bench ran two seminars; one on submission writing, and the other on court room etiquette. Both of these seminars involved presentations by bench members and by guest speakers such as Justice Mckechnie and past mooting champions. After this, Moot Court Bench members made themselves freely available to all of the competitors, urging them to visit the Moot Court Bench office for advice on most mooting matters. By the time the 2006 competition sign up closed, there were nearly 70 competitors signed up for the competition, with the vast majority of these signatories ultimately competing.

Our involvement with Junior Mooting did not stop there however. Members of the Bench were permitted to write the questions and judge’s notes for each of the rounds. Given this opportunity, the Moot Court Bench specifically tailored the questions to complement the topics that the students would be learning in the weeks leading up to each round. And finally, in a desire to see the competition through from beginning to end, Bench members acted as judges in every round of the competition. As a result of this partnership between the Murdoch Student Law Society and the Moot Court Bench, the 2006 junior mooting competition officially holds the record as the biggest competition in the history of the Murdoch Student Law Society.

Junior mooting is but one example of what the MCB has been doing to promote excellence within the law school. Members sit on practice benches for internal and external moots; they have organised and hosted the International Maritime Law Arbitration Moot (once again the biggest to date), and two of our members are currently in the process of writing the 2007 question for this competition. In addition to all of this, MCB members have written a raft of mooting resources that are freely available on our website

Next year is already shaping up to be an impressive year for the MCB. Mid year, we are planning to release a mooting manual. The aim of this is to complement a training DVD that is being filmed by us over the summer break. On top of this, the Moot Court Bench has made contact with former Federal Court Justice Mr Malcolm Lee, and is proud to announce that he will be acting as a Judge in Residence on our campus next year. The MCB has also initiated discussions between all four of the West Australian universities offering law, and is in the process of organising a four way intervarsity mooting competition that is open to all of the student law societies. Considering that we won both the Law Schools Championship Cup and the Corrs Chambers Westgarth Deans List Forum this year, we are expecting excellent results in this competition.

In the interests of brevity, I have only scratched the surface of what we have done, or are planning to do; and I am happy to leave it that way as I know that the other MCB members will be telling you more about our activities as the night goes on. In due time, Murdoch will be recognised on the international stage as the leader in the law.

So now that you know a little bit about the MCB, on behalf of the Moot Court Bench, I would like to thank you for coming tonight, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening.