At Swansea, our aim is not only to help our LLM students develop their legal research and critical thinking skills, but also to build confidence in public speaking. To this end, we offer a non-credit bearing module, Commercial and Maritime Mooting, which is optional but often taken by a majority of our students.
This year, despite the difficulties posed by the global pandemic, we ran this module with both online and in person training. Following an intense internal competition, six of our students successfully reached the final and enjoyed the privilege of arguing their case on a complex multimodal issue before a panel composed of some great commercial lawyers; Mr Simon Croall QC (Head of Quadrant Chambers) and Mr Paul Dean (Global Head of Shipping, HFW).
Following a fascinating final, the respondents, Mr Feidi Zeng and Ms Nicole Dele-Alufe, along with their researcher, Berk Bayraktar, narrowly secured victory against Mr Haofeng Jin, Ms Angela Nicholas and their researcher, Ms Oluwadamilola Adeleke.
Speaking after the final, Dr Kurtz-Shefford, Director of Commercial and Maritime Mooting, said:
“We are truly grateful for the time Messrs Croall and Dean put into this event, their expertise and consideration offered the students an incredibly rewarding and valuable learning experience, so particular thanks are in order (and of course, to HFW and Quadrant Chambers).
We’re very proud of our students’ performances, as they should be themselves. The hours of study while also managing a full-time course during a pandemic isn’t easy but they rose brilliantly to the occasion.
Finally, it must be said that organising the event was very much a team effort, with Professors Baughen and Tettenborn, and especially Dr Leloudas, deserving sincere appreciation for their efforts.”
We would like to offer our sincere congratulations to the winners, their dedication, creative legal arguments and fantastic teamwork impressed us all.