With law school ranking techniques being perennially popular and Moneyball type analyses gaining ground, what might be another way of assessing the relative capabilities of a law school’s students and graduates?
It seems to me that it would be great if we had this situation in which law schools had student teams that competed against other law schools’ student teams from across the nation in tournaments which showed off their lawyering and advocacy skills. Wow! That would provide us with some valuable and statistically verifiable assessment of how well a law school’s students might perform after graduating.
Head to head law school competition – what a great source of information for law school rankings like US News & World Report or Leiter’s rankings. Too bad that this situation does not exist – oh wait, actually it does exist, they’re called “moot court competitions.”
From my own days in law school I recall witnessing a lot of “David and Goliath” type scenarios – i.e. obscure, lower tier schools performing very well in these situations. Is there a source for this information (moot court competition rankings)? Would anyone find such information useful if it was available? It seems that this has “moneyball” written all over it. See my shameless promotion of UT’s (the other UT) Evidence Moot Court Team after the jump.
I was actually a member of UT’s first Evidence Moot Court team back in the day. We did pretty well, but not nearly as well as subsequent teams. Below is some text from the UT Law moot court webpage on how the Evidence team has faired since the early 1990s (when we started). I might add that the competition typically includes a number of teams from the top 20 USNews rankings.
EVIDENCE MOOT COURT TEAM The Dean Jerome Prince Evidence Moot Court Competition is sponsored by the Brooklyn Law School where it is held each March. The competitions’ problem focuses on an issue defined by the Federal Rules of Evidence, and students wishing to apply for the team must take Evidence prior to or concurrent with their application. The team’s coach, Professor Neil Cohen, has led the team to three national championships and numerous second place finishes, as well as several first and second best brief awards.
National Champions: 1993, 2000, 2001
Second Place: 1997, 2002
Best Brief: 1997, 2000
6 responses so far ↓
toddacollins // September 28, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
As another who competed in moot court competitions, I agree. You have schools with really good moot court and trial competition reputations that don’t get much press although they appear to be training good practicing attorneys. Case Western comes to mind as a school that always did well in this competitions (although I don’t know if that is still the case). Plus, this would raise the prestige level of these competitions, which often compete with the law reviews for the best students
mentalmidget // October 3, 2007 at 3:13 am |
Being good at a game doesn’t necessarily correlate with being a good student, especially when every hour spent practicing for this extracurricular necessitates a time trade-off somewhere else in the day.
If you don’t believe me, consider that both Western Kentucky and Liberty University (the school Jerry Falwell started) are really good at college debate. Neither of these institutions are particularly good schools.
butdamnbrian // March 3, 2008 at 1:37 am |
mentalmidget-
Don’t forget that being a good law student doesn’t necessarily correlate with being a good practicing attorney.
The point of considering success in moot court and similar competitions is that these competitions are simulations of actual real-world practice. Consider that national moot court competitions endeavor to simulate appellate advocacy exactly as it would be performed by practicing appellate advocate attorneys.
I agree that success in national competitions such as moot court, mock trial, client counseling, and negotiations competitions might make for interesting evaluative material for school v. school comparisons.
Moot Court // May 20, 2008 at 7:06 am |
In Indonesia, moot court and similar competitions is the way to explore what students need…
unfortunately, some students says moot court wasn’t important for them…
we need to share about this issue…
Law School Rankings: Why not consider Moot Court performance? « Moot Court Community FH-UKSW Salatiga // May 20, 2008 at 7:19 am |
[...] sumber http://lawandcourts.wordpress.com/ [...]
Top 20 law school schools by moot court performance « Voir Dire // June 16, 2008 at 3:13 pm |
[...] A while back I forwarded the fairly novel idea that law school ranking systems might consider the performance of law schools’ students in head to head competition in lawyering skills (i.e. moo…. One obstacle to such an endeavor is that there has been little in the way of systematic measuring [...]
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