King's students are Jessup Moot semi-finalists
The team take a break from mooting.
Students from The Dickson Poon School of Law reached the semi-finals of the International Rounds of the 57th Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition earlier this month.
King’s students Raneem Asad (LLM), Kay Cheng (LLB, 2nd year), Sara Ewad (PPL, 3rd year), Cristal-Anne Low (LLB, 3rd Year) and YiKang Zhang (LLB, 2nd Year) won all four of their preliminary round moots against universities from Ukraine, Malaysia, Tanzania and India, placing 15th out of 116 teams after the initial rounds. In the advanced knock-out rounds, the team beat The Russian Foreign Trade Academy, Russia (run-off rounds), the Universidad del Rosario, Colombia (octo-finals), and Universität Wien, Austria (quarter-finals). The team lost their semi-final to the team that became the overall 2016 champion, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The Jessup is the largest and most prestigious mooting competition in the world. This year, over 550 law schools competed in the competition worldwide, and 116 of those teams advanced to the International Rounds in Washington DC, which took place from 28 March – 2 April 2016.
The result is an exceptional one; for the second time in three years, King’s has reached the top four Jessup mooting teams in the world, a testament to the hard work of the team, and the support and dedication of the law school to public international law and mooting.
The team was coached by King’s alumni Aqeel Noorali and Mubarak Waseem, who dedicated a significant portion of their time over six months to push the team to their ranking.
Sara Ewad, one of the team members, said the following about her Jessup experience: ‘A few lines are not enough to describe how big of an influence Jessup has been on my life. It has improved every aspect of my life – from my self-confidence, oral advocacy, and research skills, to giving me the opportunity to make friends with students and legal professionals from all over the world. It was both utterly exhausting and utterly fantastic, and I will always look back at my time on the team with great fondness.’
The coaches and team wish to thank all of the members of staff and the legal profession who helped to prepare them for the competition, including academic advisor Dr Holger Hestermeyer, Professor Ben Bowling, Dr Philippa Webb, Ms Natasha Simonsen, Dr Emily Hudson and barristers Andrew Carruth & Lucas Bastin (Quadrant Chambers) and Ms Sophie Weber and Mr Jonathan Worboys.