LLM Student Travels to Belarus to Judge World's Largest Moot Court Competition

King's LLM student Fernando Rodriguez (on right) with fellow judges Aleksey Anischenko and Irina Hliabovich.

Fernando Rodriguez, LLM student in International Business Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, recently acted as Judge in Belarusian National Rounds of the Jessup Moot Court Competition.

The Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition is the world's largest moot court competition, with participants from over 550 law schools in more than 80 countries. The first contest was held in 1959 and is now held annually.

This year the competition was held in Minsk 7 - 8 February 2014 at the Belarusian State University, Faculty of International Relations.

The competition is a simulation of a fictional dispute between countries before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Law students compete with each other introducing procedural documents and preparing oral presentations on topical issues of public international law in the context of a hypothetical interstate dispute.

Fernando said: ‘I was a part of the International Rounds in 2010 and 2011 since our team won the North Mexico National rounds in both editions. I have been a coach or a judge every year after graduating from law school.

The participation in mooting competitions is the best way I know for law students to develop their litigation skills and juridical thinking. All students that participated had the opportunity to improve a foreign language, strengthen their public speaking skills and be evaluated in their legal knowledge by local and foreign judges from Hungary, Brazil, India,Latvia and Mexico, of course.  

My advice to students is that if they ever have the opportunity to get involved in a Jessup Moot they should!’

Find out more about mooting in The Dickson Poon School of Law on our website.