Moot Court

Moot Court competitions give you the opportunity to research, write and then present your argument in courtroom setting. More importantly, training and competing teaches important courtroom skills – how to conduct yourself in a courtroom; and learning to think on your feet, taking control of an argument while responding to a judge’s adversarial questions.

“It was fantastic, one of the most beneficial things I did in law school,” says Joseph Lazazzero, JD ’11, Principal Counsel at Edelman Financial Engines. Lazazzero, who competed in the Wechsler First Amendment Moot Court Competition in Washington, D.C., and the J. Burton Craven Competition in North Carolina, describes it as a confidence-builder. “You’re learning practical, real-world argument and presentation skills; being able to think on your feet. It gives you confidence – even if you never appear before a judge in your career, you still have to interact with law firm partners and clients.”

Our Moot Court Programs offer two distinct competition opportunities:

• Three interscholastic appellate and mock trial competitions exclusively for Suffolk Law students
• Specialized travel teams that compete in cities across the US and Europe

For our Traveling Moot Court teams, it’s not just about winning – although our teams do that, too. They regularly advance to deep in competition rounds, and past team members have received individual honors for best brief and oral advocacy. Our successes include:

• Trademark Law Moot Court Team: 6-time first-place Eastern Region Championship winners, Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition
• National Moot Court Team: 3-time National finalists, National Moot Court Regional Competition

You’ll travel to competitions against other schools across the US, and for the FDI Moot Competitions, to cities around the Globe. It’s a chance to experience different legal perspectives – a lawyer or judge in Santa Monica or Houston may be very different from one in the Northeast.

Amanda Border JD ’12, now a Partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Boston, traveled to the Wechsler First Amendment Moot Court Competition in Washington, DC, and the J. Burton Craven Competition in North Carolina. “It teaches you how to tailor your style to meet what other judges are looking for,” she says. “You learn how to mold yourself to work in different environments."

Competition can be intense, and so is the preparation. A student typically argues both sides of an issue as the petitioner and the respondent, as many as 3-4 times over the course of a day’s competition. It’s useful training for future litigators who have to understand their opponent’s side of the argument.

To help prepare, coaches regularly invite former team members, now prominent lawyers and judges in the field, back in the later stages of training to give the students a real-life perspective on their arguments. It’s another example of how the dynamic Suffolk Law community continues on well past graduation.

The Moot Court Honor Board, run entirely by students, has two responsibilities: managing and organizing the three intra-scholastic competitions, and publishing Suffolk's Journal of Trial & Appellate Advocacy.