Matters will be open to debate as Swansea University hosts national mooting competition

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Swansea University’s Law School will be hosting this year’s Welsh National Mooting Competition, the legal advocacy competition for Welsh Law Schools.

The competition, now in its fourth year, will see the Swansea team who were last year’s winners, competing against teams from Cardiff University, Bangor University, The University of Glamorgan, the Open University and Aberystwyth University.  

The event is being held on Saturday 23rd March at the Richard Price Building (Law School) starting at 11.30am, with the final taking place at 5pm, with a reception afterwards.

Swansea’s victory last year was all the more impressive given that the winning team comprised of two first year law students, neither of whom had previous experience of mooting competitively. Caralyn Duignan of Lexis-Nexis, the competition’s sponsors, described the competition as ‘a fierce one … and highly entertaining on a spectator level’.

The School of Law has become recognised globally for its excellence in legal education and research. It achieved a top 151-200 ranking of the very best law schools in the world in the 2012 QS World University Rankings for Law.

Professor John Linarelli, the Head of School, said, “This is a significant achievement. Swansea Law is very fortunate to have a number of highly talented legal scholars on its staff who are also great teachers.”

Students also regard the School of Law at Swansea University with high esteem. In the 2012 National Student Survey, Swansea came 17th out of 96 law schools in the UK, and achieved the highest student satisfaction levels in Wales overall. 94 per cent of students were satisfied with the quality of the LLB course with students awarding particularly high marks for teaching.

The Centre for Criminology & Criminal Justice in the School of Law also won the British Society of Criminology’s 2012 National Award for Teaching Excellence for its undergraduate programme. The Centre acts as a focus for criminological research and teaching in the School of Law and for collaboration with other departments and universities.

  • Swansea Law School offers a complete legal education in its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and courses leading to professional recognition, including the Legal Practice Course and Graduate Diploma in Law. In particular, its LLM programmes in commercial, maritime and business law are in high demand by overseas applicants. They are globally leading and highly regarded in the shipping, banking and insurance sectors and taught by internationally recognised experts at the cutting edge of their disciplines. For more information go to  www.swansea.ac.uk/law

  • Mooting is the oral presentation of a legal issue or problem against an opposing counsel and before a judge. Mooting now forms a compulsory part of certain law courses, but is still a totally voluntary student-organised activity in other law schools. Gaining mooting experience can have a positive impact on future careers. Application forms for legal professional courses, solicitors’ firms and barristers’ chambers often demand that a candidate can provide evidence of their advocacy or mooting experience whilst at university (over and above any of the more traditional areas of advocacy such as debating).  Mooting may also help build confidence in public speaking, general research, and presentation skills. In other words mooting experience can benefit every student whether or not they plan to follow a traditional legal career path upon graduation.