Mooting and Trial Skills

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6
• Convenors: Dr Kojo Koram, Professor Bill Bowring
• Tutors: Philip King, Clare Dowse
• Prerequisites: Criminal Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Assessment: a 3000-word drafting exercise (30%) and 30-minute mooting court performance (70%)

In this module we provide you with training for competitive mooting, which has become a key skill for students seeking to enter the legal professions. You will gain important legal practice experience, drawing from core areas of the law degree, namely criminal, constitutional and administrative law, and evidence. You will also get the opportunity to develop legal reasoning through preparation, oral argument, presentation and acquisition of the skills for internal moots, mock trials, and external and national mooting competitions.

During the module, you will work on a moot problem and trial in the following steps:

• Key skills in oral advocacy, including presentation, public speaking
• Taking the brief and understanding the case
• Care theory and preparation
• The use and value of evidence in criminal trials
• How to utilise citations and the legal framework to support legal reasoning in a civil case/moot
• How to make submissions effectively
• Examination and cross-examination in criminal trials
• Professional ethics and the morals of legal representation
• Drafting skeleton arguments, written submissions and draft orders
• Drafting advice on evidence and prospects of success
• The moot and mock trial competition

You will be taught by practising barristers as well as Birkbeck Law School academics.

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• use advocacy skills to present legal arguments
• understand and have had the opportunity to practise advocacy skills
• test and utilise 'best evidence'
• draft in a legal context
• understand the processes for a moot or mock trial, including preparation, use of source materials, utilising the factual matrix against the legal, and anticipate and effectively deal with judicial intervention
• present the supporting written materials necessary for effective advocacy, namely skeleton arguments, advice on evidence, appeals, written submissions and memoranda
• relate the experience of mock trials and moots to other core subjects studied within other modules.