Are you in for a challenge? Join the UvA Vis Moot Team!

In short, a moot court is a competition in which teams write legal arguments and bring oral arguments on a fictional legal problem. In the Willem C Vis Moot Court, the problem always concerns an international commercial dispute between business parties that needs to be solved by an arbitral tribunal under the Vienna Convention for the sale of goods.

At the beginning of October the problem is published. Each team then prepares a memorandum for the Claimant, making use of all the facts in the material that support the Claimant's position. After submitting the memorandum for the Claimant at the beginning of December, these are then shuffled and re-distributed. This means that each team receives a memorandum supporting the Claimant's position from some other team. Now the paper for the Respondent has to be drawn up in answer to that.

After the Respondent's memo is submitted, the oral preparations begin as each team has to defend its position in a hearing. The oral rounds take place in Vienna the week before Easter, and usually two weeks before in Hong Kong; by now the teams have been working on the case for half a year. The tribunals are made up of judges, solicitors, barristers, arbitrators, coaches and professors. Here you actually get to meet the people who write all the big fat books about the Vienna Convention and arbitration that you have used for six months.

An award is given to each of the best memoranda supporting the position of Claimant and Respondent. Another award goes to the best individual advocate in the general rounds, and the most prestigious award goes to the team that prevails in the elimination rounds.