Far from Moot
The rise of Michigan’s first and only undergraduate moot court club
—By Daniel Murphy
“So what we did was—you can’t do this by the way—we stood on the sidewalk and we had signs that we had got from Walmart,” says Raaj Govil, sophomore at the University of Michigan and founder of the Michigan Undergraduate Moot Court Club. Of their unorthodox efforts to advertise, he says, “We got I think about a hundred emails.”
Since its inception this fall, Govil has sought to grow Michigan’s first and only undergraduate moot court club to rival long established organizations at the Ivy Leagues, all while providing an opportunity for students on campus to gain valuable pre-law experience.
An ancient tradition
Moot court is an activity in which the participants, playing the role of attorneys and judges, act out the proceedings of an appellate case. As such, witnesses, cross-examination, and the presentation of evidence are all absent. Here, contestants argue in front of a judge armed with prepared knowledge of the law and the facts of the case. One’s understanding of the law and its proper application is paramount.
Moot court is by no means a new development in legal education. An article written for the Federal Bar Association titled “The Value of Moot Court Competitions Explained” notes that moot court originated in medieval England as a way for future attorneys to gain experience with oral argument before entering the profession. Since then it has been adopted worldwide, with most law schools containing a model courtroom for this purpose.
Asked to define moot court, Govil stated that it is the Supreme Court version of mock trial. He provided the example of one recent case argued, in which a man was accused of convincing his girlfriend to commit suicide. He had been found guilty in courts before this and it was now time for the team to debate, using two Constitutional issues. The First Amendment concerned his right to say the things he said, and the Fifth Amendment concerned a search of his phone by law enforcement.
Something for everyone
Before deciding to found his club, Govil considered joining the Michigan Mock Trial Team. But, ultimately he concluded that “mock trial is a really small part of what you’re actually going to experience in the legal world.” He says that outside of criminal and civil law there isn’t much to be gained.
Unlike moot court, mock trial simulates lower-court activities. This means that evidence is presented, a jury is present and witnesses may provide testimony and endure cross examination.
So, he set his eyes on moot court for its versatility and relevance in legal education and practice. “It is a lot of what you will do in law school and a lot of what you will do in law, regardless of what field of law you go into,” he says.
The first step in founding a student organization on campus is to author a constitution with ten initial members. The undergraduate admissions website boasts that there are over 1,600 clubs on campus. To make founding a club easy, a simple template is provided online. But Govil found a way to make it even easier.
“I have a couple connections in CSG and LSA government,” he says, “and I was like, hey, what do we actually need for a constitution?” Govil ultimately took an existing pre-law constitution and altered the specific parts to apply to moot court.
As for the ten members, Govil says that initially, they were just ten friends, “I was like hey, sign up, you’re not going to have to show up to anything because we’re going to get more people anyways.” This placeholder approach was a way of ensuring that ultimately, the organization had the best people, regardless of whether or not they knew Govil.
Getting the word out
According to Michigan Student Life, the “Festifall” festival each fall semester hosts nearly 600 student organizations. For the new Michigan Undergraduate Moot Court Club, this was a prime opportunity to seek applicants.
Unfortunately, the group was unable to clinch a coveted spot before the deadline. So Govil, equally creative as he is ambitious, devised a solution. “We spent forty bucks, got some crafts, wrote “pre-law,” join moot court, and we would stand up and spin the signs.”
Despite the dubious nature of their efforts, it was a great success in terms of recruitment. Ultimately they hosted a full forty-five auditions, from which they chose just twelve members. “It was fairly competitive, but I mean we didn’t expect it to be,” Govil says.
Besides crashing Festifall, the club also founded an Instagram account to reach students on social media. Today they have over 80 followers.
Going national
From the beginning, before even drafting a constitution, the group registered with the American Moot Court Association (AMCA), the national non-profit responsible for organizing undergraduate moot court competitions. Their website touts a membership of over one hundred colleges and universities. Without them, the organization couldn’t go head to head with Ivy League schools like UPenn and Dartmouth.
The big perk to membership is the regional competitions, hosted at a member university. Last semester’s regional was in Ohio, and the University of Michigan sent five teams of two. Unfortunately, it was not cheap and there was a short turnaround.
“To register for a regional is two hundred dollars per team, which is a hundred dollars per person.” Govil says, “and we’re trying to get them tournament ready in essentially a month and a half, two months.”
However daunting participation in a regional can be, it pales in comparison to being host of a competition. At the end of last semester they took that risk by sponsoring an invitational here on campus. The biggest issues were logistics, and once again, cost.
“The invitational was just hard to plan. Logistically it was so bad.” Govil says. Despite booking the entire MLB on central campus, “The day of [the invitational] they didn’t unlock the doors of the MLB so we were waiting in the cold for like thirty minutes.” Govil says, “I was so angry.”
Once inside, they faced yet another existential crisis. Despite receiving the promise of many judges’ participation, “half the judges didn’t show up. And they didn’t tell us they wouldn’t,” says Govil.
Despite these setbacks, the invitational was a massive success. They hosted more than forty teams from seven universities.
Ongoing challenges and opportunities
For the future, Govil is optimistic. He and the club’s vice president, Jerry Yang, are already laying out ground rules for the new administration. Soon they will graduate and leadership will be in different hands.
One of his biggest priorities is to keep the group small. “The reason why we want to keep the same numbers of the team is because we want to see growth within the members,” Govil says, citing his experience on a high school mock trial team. He had joined freshman year and by sophomore year he was better than everyone auditioning. To train students as skillful advocates requires focusing on a limited number of members, much in the same way that a small class size has advantages over a large lecture hall.
Another goal is to gain a sponsor through Michigan LSA. Govil suggests that a connection with political science or a similar department would be great for funding. Revenue, he says, affects everything.
Finally, Govil hopes to see a more streamlined invitational in the future, now that the club has a finance director and communications director to handle logistics and cost issues. If they can do that, they can build a name for themselves, “I want to expand the invitational to increase our reputation,” he says.
