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Vegas Baby: Don't Stop Believing On a Prayer

What a great way to go out. For my last moot court competition as a law student, I competed in only one round, I stunk, yet I still had a great time. We competed in two rounds and we won two of the three oral arguments, but because of our REALLY bad brief score we did not advance.

We learned our brief score was one of the two lowest in the region, and since the brief score is a huge factor in advancing, we were dead from the get go. We were staying at Planet Hollywood (formerly the Aladdin)right on the strip, and since Journey was playing there, our moot court theme song immediately became ?Don?t Stop Believing.?

But we did stop believing. In the first round, (all of which were at the US District Court building on Las Vegas Blvd) we went against the second best team in the competition and beat them in the oral rounds but lost because of our brief score. We kept with the signature song of big hair 80s bands and subsequently changed our song to ?Livin? on a Prayer.? That prayer was not answered because in the second round I had the worst moot court performance of my life. I don?t want to dwell on that painful memory. I mean it wasn?t embarrassing, thankfully, but I was outclassed by the guy on the other team who had my issue. First, he was the best oral advocate I?ve ever seen in these competitions. Second, this was the least prepared I?ve ever been; I don?t have any background in immigration law or administrative law (the subject of the tourney?s legal problem). I know that last semester I didn?t have any background in international criminal law either, but I took two international criminal law classes in conjunction with the competition and my teammates were well versed in the topic, neither of which was the case this time around. So, it suffices to say that this was not a recipe for success. That being said, it was still close, but yet, as I predicted, by moot court personal winning streak ended. Much like when Jordan stripped Malone and hit the winning shot to win his sixth championship, I too, like Malone, despite many personal accolades, collapsed in crunch time (skip to around 3:45 of this great clip if you don?t want to watch the whole thing). I started off well enough, but man, when I saw that I had 10 minutes left and I had said everything I wanted to say, it was not pretty. Thankfully, in the not unlikely event I practice appellate law in the JAG, I?ll have more than a Christmas break to acquaint myself with the facts and law of my client?s case.

On a lighter note, we did beat, overall, the last team we went against, which was nice.

As for the overall experience, despite being competitive and mad we didn?t do better, I had a great time. I had really cool team mates, Las Vegas in the spring is quite pleasant, and I ate a lot of great food (I especially enjoyed the Fremont Street Experience, which apparently is the old Vegas strip and very close to the courthouse). And all on the school?s dime, which is probably the best thing about it.

So what?s next? I feel like today (Monday) is the first day of the semester. I am no longer consumed by trial team and moot court. I still have to pay for BarBri, the actual bar and other little details like that. But for the most part it feels like since my first semester, I can now actually spend most of my time on just studying. And since it is for the last time (hallelujah!), that?s actually not such a bad place to be right now.

Full post as published by SoapBox Law on March 10, 2008 (boomark / email).