Recruitment for the Junior Moot Squad

As soon as the semester resumes, the moot team will looking to add to the current junior team. Your first moot will be the Maritime Moot 2011. We are looking for mooters currently in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of BLS so that you will still be young enough to be around for Jessup 2012. Best Mooter in the general rounds and winner of the Special Mention award at the Inter-Part Moots 2010, you have automatic entry into the junior squad. All other participants in the Inter-Parts, please get prepared for an audition based on the Inter-Part moot question. Prepare a submission on just one ground that is no longer than 10 minutes and get prepared for loads of Q and A. The date, time and venue will be announced soon. I look forward to seeing all of you at the auditions. :-)

Invitation to Participate in Maritime Moots 2011, Singapore

The following is an invitation to take part in the Maritime Moots 2011 which will be held in Singapore, hosted jointly by NUS and Murdoch University, to which I have of course replied that UiTM will be sending a team. Here is the invitation:

September 2010

School of Law

South Street, Murdoch

Western Australia 6150

Telephone: +61 8 9360 6050

Facsimilie: +61 8 9310 6671

http://wwwlaw.murdoch.edu.au/

THE TWELVTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL MARITIME LAW ARBITRATION

MOOT COMPETITION, 1 - 5 July 2011, SINGAPORE

The Murdoch University School of Law is pleased to invite your law school to compete in the

12th International Maritime Law Arbitration Moot Competition. The Competition will be

hosted by our colleagues at the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore

(NUS), Asia’s Global Law School. Singapore is an amazing and vibrant city, of great

significance for regional and global trade with the port in Singapore being the busiest in the

world .The student teams are bound to have an incredible experience in this city.

In 2010 the competition was organised by the Murdoch University School of Law and hosted

by the University of Technology, Sydney. Our largest field ever, 19 teams from 7 nations

competed in the event. The competitors were:

University of Technology, Sydney

Queensland University of Technology

University of Queensland

University of Malaya

University of Hong Kong

The University of Notre Dame Australia

University of Melbourne

National University of Singapore

Gujarat National Law University

University of Western Sydney

City University of Hong Kong

Universitas Gadjah Mada

Universitas Indonesia

Murdoch University

National Law University Jodhpur

MARA University of Technology (UiTM)

University of Sydney

University of Southampton

Universitas Padjadjaran

In 2010, the grand final of the competition was won by the National University Singapore.

The key elements of the competition are:

• The problem will be released in early December 2010

• The teams prepare a 25 page memoranda in support of both the claimant and

the respondent, due in April. These memoranda are judged by an international

panel who determine the best written memoranda prizes.

• The teams attend the oral competition at the host university. Each team argues

four times in the general rounds, twice for the claimant and twice for the

respondent. Distinguished members of the legal profession, judiciary and

shipping industry participate as arbitrators.

Awards are presented in the following categories:

• Best written memoranda, and runners up

• Highest Ranked team in the General Rounds

• Best speaker in the General Rounds

• Encouragement Award( team and/or individual) and the Sarah Derrington Award

• Best speaker in the Finals and the Ron Salter Award

• Runner Up - Best speaker in the Finals

• Runner up Team - Orals

• Winning Team – Orals

• Spirit of the Moot award

• Achievement awards (individual and/or team)

The moot is a competition open to any law students (either undergraduate or postgraduate)

who have not been admitted to practice. The moot problem will involve a dispute relating to

commercial maritime law and the controversy will be determined before an arbitral tribunal

pursuant to the L.M.A.A. terms (2006) or other recognised terms. Students need not have

previously studied maritime law and in fact several past winning teams had no prior

knowledge of maritime law before undertaking the moot.

An enjoyable social program accompanies the competition to enable students to meet with

senior members of the profession and the maritime industry and to forge contacts with

students from other law schools. We pride ourselves on running a friendly but intellectually

rigorous competition which gives a real insight into this fascinating area of law.

Details of the competition, together with the registration form for 2011, can be found at:

http://www.law.murdoch.edu.au/maritimemoot/index.html The website also contains the

problem from previous years and the winning memoranda.

Enquiries about registration should be forwarded to the moot’s co-ordinator, Miriam Everall:

m.everall@murdoch.edu.au .

I hope your Law School will consider participating in this competition. I look forward to

welcoming your team to Singapore in 2011!

Yours sincerely

Dr Kate Lewins

Moot Director

K.Lewins@murdoch.edu.au

Inter-Part Moots: Dean's Challenge Trophy 2010

Thanks to Ellie Suraya (Moots Club President) for the list of the winners. Congratulations to every participant and the prize winners. You are all winners for boldly going where no ordinary student has dared to.

For the record, this is the roll of honours:

Champions (from Part III BLS)
1. Nur Amalina Ghazali
2. Mohd. Zulfikri Bin Ibrahim

Runner Up (from Part III BLS)
1. Nur Atiqah Razif
2. Atiqah Anas

Note: Only one mark separated the Champion and runner-up teams! Well done to both teams. A truly fantastic moot in the finals although you were thoroughly grilled by a very proactive bench.

Best Mooter General Rounds
Darren N Punnai

Best Mooter - Finals

Mohd. Zulfikri Bin Ibrahim

Special Mention Award (for most promising young mooter)
Nur Atiqah Razif

Spirit Of Interpart Award
1. Kedah Team 1 (Ellena's team) (for being crazy enough to take part even though you only had a week's preparation and were prepared to travel all the way down to Shah Alam)
2. Asasi Team 1 (Lyyana's team) (for daring to take the challenge even though you have not even made it into the BLS programme yet)

Moot Club Inter-Part Moots 2010 Workshop at Kedah

Once again, thanks to Shairil Farhana Ruslan for writing the following report on the workshop at Kedah:

MOOT WORKSHOP, KEDAH

After the roaring success of the moot workshop in Kuantan, the whole team was pretty hyped-up to go to Kedah and (hopefully) create a similar historical event. As the Sungai Petani campus is located about 300kms from Shah Alam, we had to leave a day earlier as the trip would take approximately 5 to 6 hours. However we forget to take into account that, as it was the fasting season so certain special circumstances would arise. The compulsory stop to break fast plus a few extremely long breaks to “recuperate” turned the 6 hours journey into 8 hours. Needless to say, by the time we saw the signboard for Sungai Petani, nobody wanted to see the sight of a bus ever again.

Our accommodation in Sungai Petani was a place called Northern Lodge, located just behind Park Avenue. Other than the memorable first night of trauma for Elli and Cik Pah as they were attacked by a colony of ants, the place is relatively acceptable. Initially we wanted to label it as an average but the fact that its only 5 minutes walk away from Nasi Kandar Pelita gives it a slightly higher rating.

The next morning the moot lemmings woke up bright and early and headed straight for Merbok campus that is located about 15 minutes drive from the hotel. For those of us who did their foundation in Kedah, we were bombarded by memories of studying here the moment the smell of rubber trees permeated the bus. Plus the sight of paddy fields all bright yellow and heavy with grain does strike a chord of melancholy in all of us. Memorable, but I digress. The campus itself had gone through a substantial upgrade since the last time I was here. It now boasts a new mosque, a new academic block plus a well-needed hostel. Kudos to Prof Dr Zaliha Binti Haji Hussin for her ever vigilant effort to upgrade the standard of this campus.

On to the event of the day!

The number of attendees for the moot workshop seemed smaller as compared to the one in Kuantan however it may have been because the venue was bigger. We had to conduct the workshop in the mosque as apparently all the other halls were already booked for other programmes. This made the presentation rather difficult as the sound was bouncing out of the mosque (the mosque had no walls). There was even a moment where we thought we had completely lost the audience’s focus. However the team gritted their teeth and put in an extra effort to be as interactive and approachable as possible and fortunately we managed to pull the audience’s attention again.

The mooting demonstration was held in another venue, Dewan Sarjana as we decided that it was not feasible for it to be held in the mosque. Again, the question and format of LawAsia was used. This time around the mooting demonstration was done by :

1) Claimant : Arina Lum and Izzat Asyraf

2) Respondent : Danial Nizam and Azad Akbar

3) Arbitrators : Afif Ahmayuddin and Shairil Farhana

Eventhough this particular workshop was a bit challenging for us due to the logistical issues, however all our efforts paid off when we found out that Sungai Petani campus would be sending 3 teams for the inter-part mooting competition. Again, congratulations are due to the moot team for pulling this off.

All of us can’t wait to see all the participants battling it out this coming weekend, hopefully we will get to see appearances of future moot gods or goddesses that will continue the great standards achieved by the Jessup 2010 team.

Moot Club Inter-Part Moots 2010 Workshop at Kuantan

Thanks to Shairil Farhana Ruslan, team captain of the senior moot squad, for writing the following report:

MOOT WORKSHOP, UiTM KUANTAN

In lieu with the upcoming Inter-part Mooting Competition which will be held soon, the president of the Mooting Club, Madame Elli had a dream that this competition would not only comprise of participants from the Bachelor of legal Studies (BLS. Hons) programme in Shah Alam but also the Asasi students studying in the branch campuses. To those of you who have had the privilege of knowing Elli will be aware of one of her unique attributes that is once she wraps her mind around an idea, she will never it go. Period.

Thus, because of this idea, on the morning of the 14^th August 2010, about 20 committee members and mooters got on board a bus and headed to UiTM Kuantan for the first ever Moot Workshop for Asasi-ans. Prior to this, the club only conducted moot workshops for the participants in the main campus but as we hope to induct more fresh blood into the mooting family, so we decided to expand and hold mini workshops for the asasi students studying in Kuantan and Kedah.

Honestly speaking, we was not expecting much of a response as most of us could still distinctly remember how uninterested we were with mooting when we were doing our foundation in law. Or maybe that was because we were uninformed, hmm. Anyhow, so imagine our surprise at the overwhelming response we received during the workshop in Kuantan. There was of course the initial awkward beginning but once the workshop got in full swing, the interaction between the speakers and the audience was awesome. The mooters put up a great presentation; in fact they even managed to make the boring part of preparing bundles of authorities sound interesting, that’s a feat in itself!

We also conducted a moot demonstration, using the LawAsia mooting competition question and format. I would think that this was the main attraction of the day as from this the participants finally got a clear idea as to what is mooting. The mooting demonstration was done by :

1) Claimant : Khairil Khalid and Izzat Asyraf

2) Respondent : Danial Nizam and Siti Khadijah

3) Arbitrators : Afif Ahmayuddin and Shairil Farhana

All in all, the workshop lasted for about 4 hours, and in those 4 hours we managed to persuade 2 teams to enter the Inter-part competition. Congratulations people! Not bad for a first time event.

Next up, UiTM Sungai Petani!

We hope to be able to create another miraculous event next weekend in Kedah. Hopefully we can fulfill Elli’s dream of getting 20 teams to participate in the inter-part mooting competition.