Law School activities for students

Students at all levels of legal study are encouraged to take part in the school's extracurricular activities.

MOOTING

The Birkbeck Law School runs a highly successful mooting programme, open to all law students.

Mooting is a centuries-old form of advocacy training. It should be of interest to anyone wishing to practise advocacy of any kind, whether as a solicitor, barrister or for any other reason. The Law School's mooting programme is conducted by two experienced practising barristers and Birkbeck alumni, Philip King and Clare Dowse.

PROGRAMME FORMAT

• The programme is split between mooting (civil jurisdiction) and mock trials (criminal) with internal competitions for both. It also prepares teams to compete against other institutions in external competitions. 
• A team from Birkbeck’s School of Law won the Oxford University Press and Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA) National Mooting Competition 2017-18 and in 2019, another Birkbeck team triumphed in the finals of the Landmark Chambers’ Property Law Moot competition, held at the Royal Courts of Justice.

FIND OUT MORE

• Current students can find out more about the Mooting programme on Moodle. 
• For more information on mooting activities, including internal training events, please submit an ASK.
• Students on the LLB Law programme are able to choose 'Mooting and Trial Skills' as an option module in their final year.

WRITER IN RESIDENCE

The Writer in Residence programme was established in 2010, with the appointment of its first writer, Professor Timothy Campbell, and was designed to assist research students with the process and craft of writing.

The programme enables a three-week period of residence for a scholar who has achieved distinction in the field of critical theory, to support the development of the whole or part of a major scholarly work.

Through a series of seminars with PhD students and staff, recipients of the fund will work through the theoretical, empirical and methodological questions that arise in the writing process.

The success of this programme led to the establishment in 2013 of a further programme, the Artist in Residence.

PREVIOUS WRITERS IN RESIDENCE

• 2022 Samera Esmeir (University of California, Berkeley)
• 2019 Anthony Alessandrini (Kingsborough Community College-CUNY) 
• 2017 Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
• 2016 Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut)
• 2015 James Martel (San Francisco State University)
• 2014 Phillipe Van Heute (Radbound University, Nijmegen)
• 2013 Professor Avery Gordon (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• 2012 Professor Catherine Malabou (Kingston University)
• 2010 Professor Timothy Campbell (Romance Studies, Cornell)