September 2,2018:
The Author, Baishali Das, is a 4th year student, BA.LLB (Hons), Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri Law College, Kolkata. She is currently interning with LatestLaws.com.
Mooting is an extra curricular activity that law students perform during their study period. It means the oral presentation of a legal issue. It is a mock court proceeding. A legal issue is taken up and is argued by opponent teams just like in a real court where two parties argue over a legal issue.
In the field of law knowing how a court proceeding goes is very important. A moot court gives the students an experience on how an actual court works, how issues are supposed to be raised and how matters are going to be defended. Moot court or mooting is the part and parcel of every law school. In a moot court the given legal problem is analyzed, the relevant law is researched, written submissions are to be prepared and oral arguments are to be made. It basically imitates the procedure of a real court.
Mooting has several benefits like it enhances the confidence of the mooters, it makes them fluent in speaking and dealing with difficult situations. It makes them aware with the real court proceedings and grooms them accordingly.
Mooting helps to develop the confidence of a person to present himself in front of the judges and to properly know the procedure of the proceedings.
A mooter needs a lot of skills to properly present his case.
A moot is basically comprised of three people. There are two speakers and one researcher. The speakers argue their case and the researcher as the name suggests researches every detail that is necessary for the case and searches every possible relevant judgements or case laws to present his own case.
A moot problem is a drafted scenario or situation in which points of law are in dispute.
The role of the judge in a moot is to weigh up the arguments presented to him or her and to question counsel where this is necessary to allow the judge to understand or accept the points being made.
There are two parties one of the petitioners and the other of the respondents. The petitioners are those who have initiated the case and the respondents are those who oppose the case.
The speakers need to present the case, present their side of arguments. The opponents will then defend the arguments and by such a process the proceeding goes on.
Case laws are obviously needed to be referred while presenting any argument. A copy of such case laws has to be provided to the judge in the form of a booklet called the ‘compendium’.
That compendium is to contain all the cases that has been referred to in the memorial. A memorial is the whole argument of the respective party. It is another booklet where the case is described, arguments are described and prayers are laid down. All such documents are necessary for a moot court.
There are a lot of skills that a mooter needs to have. That’s what makes him a successful mooter. Other than having speaking skills, a person must have understanding and estimating skills too so that he can analyze any situation in the blink of a time and pretty quickly. To become a successful mooter he has to possess speaking and understanding skills both.
Along with this a good body language is a must. A proper approach to the legal problem is needed. If the approach is wrong then the desired conclusion cannot be reached.
That person needs to have a wide scope of knowledge and the skills to analyze the steps that are going to be taken by the opponent team and counter that accordingly.
Bad body language is sign of a bad lawyer. A good speaker consciously or unconsciously has a good body language to go with the oratory skills. Mooting is a combination of public speaking and debating, yet differs from both.
The mooter does admittedly sometimes deliver a prepared speech, but only in so far as the judge is prepared to accept this.
