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 plead on a fictional legal problem. In the Willem C. Vis Moot Court, the problem 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.

Each year at the beginning of October, the Problem is released. We will kick-off with the MOOT CAMP, during this weekend we will discuss the case, you will be prepared for the coming months and will have a chance to meet your team, your coaches and some of the UvA's old team members. After the MOOT CAMP your team (and all the other teams) will start preparing a memorandum for 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, all submitted memoranda are shuffled and re-distributed to the participating teams. This means that each team receives a memorandum supporting the Claimant's position from another 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 moot hearings. The oral preparations involve participating in (international) pre-moots in for example Shanghai and official competitions of Hong Kong and Vienna (usually in the weeks directly prior to Easter). It has been announced that due to COVID-19 the official competition in Vienna will be virtual this year. We will still be travelling to the pre-moot of Shanghai, the official competition in Hong Kong and potentially other places to the extent possible. However, it is uncertain if this will be feasible. If not, these competitions may be virtual as well. We are working on other replacement activities that will make your participation in the UvA Moot Court team as exciting and educational as it would have been normally.

The tribunals are made up of judges, solicitors, barristers, arbitrators, coaches and professors. Here you actually get to (virtually) meet the people who write all the big fat books about the Vienna Convention and arbitration that you have used for six months.

Awards are given for the best memoranda, the best individual pleaders and the best pleading teams, who manage to make it until (after) the elimination rounds...