Can mooting be staged throughout a course?

I personally believe that mooting is not being used particularly effectively. The 2006 survey for the Mooting for learning project showed that a majority of intra-curricular mooting takes place in the first year, but concerns must be raised as to whether this is necessarily the best place for mooting or whether indeed what is being described as mooting actually is a moot rather than, for example, a joined series of presentations with each person ‘pretending’ to be speaking as counsel. A moot is more than just allocating each student a role as junior or leading counsel for a party – it involves the full range of advocacy and the discrimination of sources etc.

One approach could be to use mooting incrementally throughout the years of study. It may be that staff think an advantage of mooting is the development of higher level skills (see What are the advantages and disadvantages?) – if this is so, then why abandon mooting after one year? Could it, indeed it should it, not be used when these higher level skills have been introduced?

One pattern that could be used is to gradually build up the use of mooting. In the first year this could be an introduction to mooting through, for example, mini-moots (see What forms of moot can be used?) or extra-curricular mooting, or through students being assigned as ‘researchers’ to a team. The second step (which could be later in the year or indeed in the second year) would be to progress to a moot, including potentially its use as a teaching, assessment or teaching and assessment tool. This would involve the students becoming an advocate, perhaps starting off as junior ‘counsel’ and then progressing to lead ‘counsel’. The final progression could be to judge. This may be within extra-curricular moots (in order to allow others to gain experience as advocates by allowing more moots to take place without it infringing on staff time) or even within the curriculum, asking the student judges to reflect on their experiences and what they have learned. This progression can instil confidence in students whilst allowing them to develop their skills and knowledge.

An alternative way of bringing structure to mooting is to use the other forms of interactive presentations discussed earlier (see Why mooting?) – during the first year any initial verbal teaching or assessment could be a presentation in its ordinary meaning. In the second year, or later on in the first year, these presentations could move onto debates, including mini or group debates before finally moving towards mooting, perhaps in the later years. This carries with it the advantage of exposing students to different types of presentations, and also allows students to develop the various verbal reasoning skills required before using them extensively within a formal moot.

Last Modified: 26 July 2010