Introduction

A Moot Court is a shining example of the power of a student organisation. The combination of preparatory work, logistical migraines, and converting legal principles into practice is one of the most demanding, but also the most rewarding challenges an organisation faces. Whilst hosting moot courts is an activity that all ELSA National and Local Groups carry out, it holds a special place in the hearts of ELSA Malta and ELSA United Kingdom. Both National Groups pride themselves on delivering top-quality moot court competitions, such as Crime 101 and Criminis respectively. This helps to solidify ELSA’s place at the forefront of student activity in universities and law schools alike.

Part 1: Malta

Challenges in organising Crime 101: From case creation to witness training

Crime 101 is ELSA Malta’s national Criminal Moot Court competition, a contest that has been running for 11 years and is comfortably the country’s most prestigious legal competition. Within the country, winning, or even simply participating in Crime 101, can solidify a student’s position and start their career path, as evidenced by the 488 participants in Crime 101’s 2024 edition, as competitors, witnesses, jurors, and participants in the ancillary activities to the Moot Court.

Effective marketing and outreach: ensuring success for Crime 101

Naturally, the organisation of a moot court is not without its challenges. ELSA Malta prides itself in delivering as much of a home-grown product as possible, and thus it is up to the ELSA Malta Competitions team to create every aspect of the competition from scratch, down to the cases used by the Competitors. This is a particularly arduous process, with complex topics such as lawful self-defence, human trafficking and drug offences being tackled. The building of the cases requires weeks of research, story creation, and a lot of reviewing and revising.

Training and mentorship while preparing participants for real-life legal challenges

Work starts well before the event is launched, with venue scouting, logistical planning and witness training reaching their peak weeks before anyone outside the National Board is aware of Crime 101 at all. In Crime 101, while the judges are Malta’s most experienced and esteemed Justices, witnesses and jurors are the students themselves and it requires a lot of practice, lecturing and grilling to ensure that the witness performances are consistent and professional when the sittings themselves are carried out.

“The building of the cases requires weeks of research, story creation,and a lot of reviewing and revising”.

Unifying efforts and the collaboration of marketing in Crime 101

Once the event is launched, ELSA Malta looks outward. Marketing such a large-scale competition requires not just hard work by the Marketing Team, but constant ground-level outreach, down to Board Members spending any free time between lectures spreading the word with students around campus grounds. This requires a lot of dedication and cohesion, not just from the Competitions officers, but the entire board, who always work together in order to make sure each event by ELSA as a whole is a success.

Beyond the Moot Court: immersive learning and mentorship in Crime 101

Some may believe that a moot court is simply sittings in court. As always, there is more than meets the eye. Being open to students of all levels, students fresh into the law course, holding varying degrees of limited experience apply, eager to make their mark. This poses another challenge, which is upholding the quality of participants, some of whom have never known litigation in their lives. This is where ELSA Malta excels at delivering real-life experience and training to Crime 101 participants.

The training program starts off with guided visits to Malta’s Corradino Correctional Facility, with over 240 attendees in last year’s edition. This visit puts students in the position of their prospective clients, underscoring the human element of criminal law. While many may feel like law is an industry of words, there is a very real side to law, and people’s lives are at stake. Following this visit, participants are given a how-to session, where the country’s top prosecutors, defence attorneys and judges come together to generously impart their know-how to students via a seminar-styled session. Finally, there is ELSA Aid, a scheme where every 1st year participating team is assigned a mentor, an ELSA Malta Board Member, many of them Crime 101 veterans, to be their guide throughout the preliminary stages of the Competition. These initiatives, along with the hard work of every Board Member are what lend Crime 101 its continuing success throughout the years.

Part 2: UK

Criminis: ELSA UK’s National Criminal Justice Mooting Competition and its impact

Criminis is ELSA United Kingdom’s National Criminal Justice Mooting Competition. Launched in 2023, it was well-received by participants and partners alike and thus became one of our flagship competitions. Its Second Edition was held at the University of Westminster, and focused on criminal law and evidential procedure.

Criminis’ marketing strategy: expanding reach across the UK and diversifying participation

The participants in a moot court determine its success. As representatives of ELSA and its values, it is important for us to diversify our events and make them accessible to students from various academic years, backgrounds and locations. This necessitates a well-planned marketing strategy. For the Second Edition of Criminis, we started to promote the event via ELSA UK's social media channels. Following this, we discussed the campaign with our 11 active Local Groups, who in turn promoted Criminis both on their social media and in person at their events. This resulted in applications not only from London, where the event was hosted, but also from Edinburgh, Birmingham, Jersey, and a plethora of cities across the UK. Our promotional strategy enabled us to both diversify the event, and to help a greater number of capable individuals to try themselves in the rewarding experience of mooting.

Securing esteemed judges: Enhancing the Criminis experience with legal experts

Alongside gathering participants, an essential component of the organisational process is to procure judges. For Criminis, we invited professors and barristers to judge the competition, as well as an actual judge from Gray’s Inn who presided over the bench for the Final Round. This exposed the students participating to perspectives from both academia and legal practice, thereby enriching the event as a whole.

“Making available unique opportunities, such as this for the Winning Team, helped create a strong incentive for participants to give their best efforts”.

Creating unique opportunities for Criminis winners

The aforementioned Honourable Society of Gray's Inn is one of four professional associations for barristers and judges, also known as the Inns of Court. In order to qualify as a barrister in England and Wales, you are required to belong to one of these. ELSA UK has worked on multiple previous occasions with Inns of Court, including with Gray’s Inn specifically. For the Second Edition of Criminis, the company not only provided us with a judge but also agreed to offer the competition winners an invaluable marshalling opportunity in London: a short-term work experience of shadowing a judge in court. Making available unique opportunities, such as this for the Winning Team, helped create a strong incentive for participants to give their best efforts.

Logistical challenges

Departing from the human resources side of the organisational process, we must recount the logistical aspects, as they are crucial for the execution of the event itself. These include compiling and printing competition materials such as guidance sheets for timekeepers and judges, as well as scoring sheets and hard copies of the moot case. Beyond these practical materials, we also purchased gifts for the judges and provided them with letters of gratitude in order to formally appreciate their contribution to the event during the closing ceremony. The work of the organisers seldom concludes with the competition itself. In the weeks following the event, we made sure to thank everybody involved for the parts they played in making Criminis a success and ensured that photos and certificates were circulated. Furthermore, we communicated with the Winning Team so that they could access their prized marshalling opportunity.

The importance of attention to detail: making Criminis an event to remember

Aristotle once said that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This phrase is brought to life once you undergo the process of organising a competition - witnessing how the smallest decision can have a significant impact on the experience of those attending. It is this attention to detail - from promotion and external relations to logistics and the aftermath - which allows for events such as Criminis to flourish and be remembered by all involved

Collaboration across borders: ELSA UK and ELSA Malta’s partnership in COMMOOT

Individual efforts by ELSA UK and ELSA Malta do not stop with their own national moot court competitions, as both National Groups consistently collaborate in COMMOOT. Launched in 2018 and hosted annually by ELSA UK, this is an international moot court competition, which focuses on Commercial Law. One of the main goals of this competition is to provide a high-quality experience to students not only from the UK but from across Europe. In order to achieve this, ELSA UK has consistently collaborated with ELSA Malta, who, along with other National Groups such as ELSA Austria, delivers delegates of the highest standard to battle it out on an international stage. This spirit of collaboration displayed by ELSA UK and ELSA Malta, amongst others, provides an excellent opportunity for students from all participating countries to engage and learn from one another, reinforcing ELSA's standing as an international student body.

Authors:

UK:

Rsaal Firoz

Yurii Tsybulskyi

Malta:

Jeremy Perez

Timothy Mifsud

Moot courts as ELSA’s core activity: a spotlight on ELSA Malta and ELSA UK