Mooting USA

Last week I mentioned that I was finally going to see the back of my mooting competition and 'get on with the rest of the year'. I was wrong. Yesterday I found myself wearing a suit, sitting on a train while the sun was rising and again when it was setting. In between I mooted. Twice. And amazingly, despite everything I'd predicted, we won! We're going to Washington DC in March to represent the Netherlands in the world finals!

The moot was held in The Hague's District Court building, and it was the first time that I've mooted in a proper court room which was a little intimidating to say the least. The Judges themselves weren't afraid to butt in with awkward questions, but thankfully they were never obstructive and instead asked questions that allowed us to get on with our arguments. Fajar and I first mooted again Maastricht University and I thought we'd done OK, but I flunked the rebuttal. Yu and Emma then took on Rotterdam and both did a good job, with Yu deservedly winning the award for being the Best Orallist for his performance. Then came the final. I wasn't sure whether we were going to make it in, but we did and found ourselves up against Amsterdam. Amsterdam won the coin toss and chose to present the case for the applicants. This equalled the worst case scenario for it meant that I had to represent Utrecht in the final. As Emma's mum kindly reminded me before I got up 'It's up to you to get them to Washington'! Amsterdam's main orallist was scary, and even made me jump when she started talking! Still it allowed for quite a difference in styles and I felt like I'd done a reasonable job, and made a much better effort in the rebuttal second time around.

But still, none of us could believe it when they said we'd be going to Washington, and to tell the truth, I still can't believe it. But it's fantastic and I'm still on Cloud 9. We've a meeting tomorrow to discuss logistics, but at the moment I'm just quite hapy with having been presented with one of the biggest trophies I've seen, as shown in this rather self-congratulatory (and bad!) photo of us all:


Unfortunately we no longer possess said trophy as our Coach appropriated it after we went out for dinner, but not before he'd had it filled with wine:


Now it's all a blur and I can't remember what I said at the podium, but hopefully I'll have remembered by the 26th March when it starts all over again. A few weeks or months ago I'd have been crying at the prospect of the moot dragging on for another two months, but now that's it's all over, I almost can't wait to get there and do it all over again. In fact, I think I might even be looking forward to it!