A moot is a simulated court hearing.

Mooting will:

develop your legal research skills
develop your legal writing skills; and
develop your oral advocacy skills.

The process:

You will receive the facts of a fictitious legal dispute - generally an appellate hearing. In teams of two, you will be assigned a side to argue, representing the "appellant" (who will argue for the decision on appeal to be overturned), or the "respondent" (who will argue for it to be upheld).

Within each team, one member will be “senior counsel” and the other will be “junior counsel”. Both team members are equals: these titles simply determine which issue each mooter will take on, and accordingly what their speaking order will be. The senior counsel takes on the first issue in the facts and speaks first, while junior counsel takes the second and speaks second. For junior moots, the two issues will usually be made very clear at the bottom of the problem.

Having identified the issues and split them between you, mooters then research the relevant case law to formulate their arguments. Research is often the most time-consuming part of the moot. Most junior-level moots are “closed authority”, which means you will be given a list of cases along with the problem question. In crafting your arguments, you are not allowed to refer to any material outside of these cases. This is helpful as it limits your research and levels the playing field between your team and the opposing team - you do not have to worry about the opposing team raising obscure material that you have not come across.

Mooters then present arguments before judges - first in written form (written submissions), and then orally in the moot itelf (oral submissions).

The goal is to persuade the appellate court (judge/bench) to find for your side.

The first step is to read the problem question and identfy the fact, legal issues and policies.

Next up: Reading the problem question