2nd round of ESU Mooting Competition

Last Thursday saw BoB, his mooting partner, the Mistress of the Moots, and a friend who wanted to come along and support us, climb into a rather nice hire car (paid for by the law school) and set off to the hallowed learning establishment that is Oxford University.

Now I am a fairly confident guy and feel that I am a fairly accomplished mooter but I must admit that the thought of going to Oxford to face the two best undergraduate mooters at the university did make me feel a little anxious. Especially seeing as the preparation had been less than I would have liked due to other more pressing problems such as keeping on top of my work for the third year (where has the time gone?).

We arrived at Magdalen College after a very pleasant drive through the snowy Oxfordshire countryside and after parking the car fled to the nearest coffee house to finish preparing our bundles (I told you that the prep was a little lacking). Come five o'clock we changed into our best attire and made our way to the mock court (lovely oak panelled room in the college). The other team were already there and after a brief exchange of pleasantries and bundles we sat and waited for the Judge to arrive.

Now as you may recall from my last post (apologies for the lack of posting) I have recently revised my mooting style and now only use the briefest of notes and the selected quotations I require. In fact on my last ground of appeal I had written next to no notes at all and was, for want of a better word, winging it. As it turned out if I had written very detailed notes it would have been an absolute disaster. The Judge was very tough and the entire experience was more like a cross between the Spanish inquisition and a one on one seminar with the strictest tutor imaginable. This is not to say that it wasn't enjoyable because it was actually great fun with even a sharing of jokes over the facts of one of the cases involved (a man caught on CCTV receiving fellatio from his girlfriend).

As we were the respondents in this case we had to listen to the Oxford team go first who both sounded very professional, calm, and collected. I must admit that when it came to the Judge giving the verdict I was not sure which way it would go. He gave a very long judgment on the law (which we lost on both points) and then finally gave the result 49%...to the appellants and 51% to the respondents. We had beaten the best that Oxford had to offer. We were obviously thrilled and to top the evening off the Oxford team took us out for an all expenses paid dinner afterwards. We are now looking forward to the third round, although the question is on trusts which is a subject I hoped to never have to deal with again.

All the best and hope everyone is well

BoB

National Mooting Victory

Last night was the first round of the national mooting competition that my partner and I have entered.  We were the host institution so come 6 o'clock I was sat in the mock courtroom at the law school waiting for the moot to begin.

As lead counsel for the appellants I was the first to speak and after the brief spell of nerves that I experience at the beginning of every moot I got into the groove and put in a fine performance netting the joint highest score for all of the contestants that evening.  My partner also put in a stellar performance and I am very happy to say that we won.  We are now through to the next round so yet more work on top of that which I already have for my degree.

I am also doing a talk for the charity I do the court advocacy for at my law schools pro bono evening tonight, after which I am retiring to a local public house which was voted CAMRA's best pub in Britain a couple of years ago so plenty of good quality real ale to sup.  

All the best

BoB 

Christmas Drinks and Mooting Comp

The season of Christmas cheer is now upon us and for many people this means it's time to drink your own weight in your preferred tipple before passing out in front of the Queen's Speech. With this most British of past times in mind I was wondering if anyone from the blawging community was up for a little Christmas drink in London.

I am back for a meeting on the afternoon of Saturday the 13th so am available all morning if anyone fancies a beverage or two or that evening. Please let me know at the brand spanking new e-mail address which is on the right of the blog and we can try arrange something which is convenient for all.

Secondly I am eyeball deep in moot preparation at the moment for a national mooting competition. The problem is really interesting and I am looking forward to being on my feet again and hopefully progressing through to the next round.

All the best, will post again soon,

BoB

Two for Two

As a boy I regularly enjoyed going out at the weekend with friends, armed with only a tub of maggots and a rod, and spending the day casting out into the river and seeing what I could catch. It is crucial that you use the right bait to reel in that big fish which you are after.

Thus I come to the point of this post, and stretching the fishing metaphor to almost breaking point, I am pleased to say that I have secured two mini-pupillages for next year, one which is listed in band three of Chambers and Partners UK for crime in London, and one which is listed in band one. Although I have done quite a few minis I am now concentrating on doing criminal law minis to prove my commitment (although maybe being poor and impoverished would show my commitment better?). It is also so that I can meet the members of chambers I am intending to apply to, and more importantly they can meet me.

Perhaps the most satisfying part of this process has been that I only sent out two CV's and both came back with an offer, so I obviously 'used the right bait'.

All the best
BoB

The Barristers

To start this post I quickly want to mention what an absolute God send the BBC i-player service is.  This alone is worth the licence fee that most of the press having been bleating about following the Brand/Ross scandal.  The availability of this wondrous piece of technology allowed me to attend a poker evening last night, and watch the program this afternoon.

Right down to business.  I agree with barboy that there could have been a bigger concentration of the difficulties and bad parts of training to be a barrister.  It was, however, a fairly entertaining and informative program for those who know nothing about the bar.  For those of us who are already aspiring to be barristers and have half an ounce of sense (although this may possibly be an oxymoron), it didn't really proffer much in the way of new information.

I thought that the BVC students that they chose to follow were a little uninteresting and may have been chosen to give the impression of the Bar being a much more 'right on' and diverse profession than most people would traditionally think.  I was particularly unimpressed by the single male that was chosen, especially when he stated 'I mooted once at University, but think that it is better to do it here in front of real judges'.  If he had mooted more at University he might not have been so bad and lost on the night.

I think that it would be interesting if the next episode is mainly about pupillage to give a real insight into what to expect, with maybe a bit of a side focus on the very junior end of the profession.  We shall see soon enough.

All the best BoB

FRU Day or not as the case may be...

I am aware that in my last post I promised to write about my day at the Free Representation Unit. Unfortunately things did not work out quite as I had planned.

On Friday night BoB had been invited to attend a Lodge meeting of a good friend of his. For those that think that I went to the home of a beaver let me explain that a Lodge is where Freemasons meet. I have been a Freemason for about three years now and thoroughly enjoy it. After the meeting we had dinner at a club in London, which was followed by a few pleasant drinks at the bar. Unfortunately BoB forgot the time, and ended up missing the last train home. This meant a much longer journey on the night bus, meaning that I did not get home until half past three in the morning.

I was therefore far too tired to have been able to have actually learnt anything on Saturday so decided to leave it this time and go early next year.

The moral of this story.....

Check the train timetable to see when the last train for home leaves.

Until next time, BoB

Deepest apologies and I really am back

As I sit here in the library typing this post, I feel a huge wave of regret flood over me for neglecting my (few and far between) readers. I am now, however, well and truly back and looking forward to blogging again. In terms of my journey to the bar this is where the fun (or should that be nightmares) really start.

First on the list of things to do, which seem to be mounting up at a phenomenal rate, is filling in my BVC scholarship application form for Middle Temple. This is almost complete subject to a few final tweaks which were recommended by the careers advisor, and me filling in the financial information.

Picking up on this, I am shocked by how little awareness there is of this fact among the general student population. This is just another example of why getting to the bar is so difficult due to the lack of information passed down to students. I wonder when it will get through that not everybody wants to be a solicitor.

Following hotly on the heels of this will be many, many, many mini pupillage application forms/CV's winging their way to a multitude of Criminal Law sets. This is to:

1. Network and find out more about the different Criminal Law sets for OLPAS; and
2. Show an even bigger commitment to the Criminal Bar in general.

I am aware at this point that many will be shaking their heads, furrowing their brows, and possibly considering getting BOB committed for wanting to go to the Criminal bar. To those readers I would say worry not, I have pondered the question long and hard and come to the conclusion that I would not be happy practising any other form of law at the bar so I am willing to suffer a life of financial hardship, and give up on the dream of an Aston Martin sat in the drive.

Next, although this seems to be more of a formality than a hurdle, is to apply for the BVC. I am still torn between two providers (BPP and College of Law) at the moment so any advice from fellow bloggers will be most appreciated. I'm not going to repeat what I have said earlier about the BVC and who should be given a place but if you are interested it can be found here.

I am also this Saturday off to the FRU social security law day so that I can begin the process of becoming a ratified representative. A full report of the day will follow shortly.

Finally I have the national mooting competition which will be starting soon so that will increase my work load, on top of my final year subjects which are in case anyone is interested:

1. Law and Medical Ethics
2. Employment Law
3. Discrimination Law
4. Family Law
5. Jurisprudence

As a final note I also wish to say how sad it is that Law Minx is no longer blogging. I wish her the very best, and am sure that she will (if she hasn't already) reach the nirvana of pupillage and tenancy.

All the best, BoB