UM-Flint’s Moot Court program achieves national recognition from the American Moot Court Association

Over the past five years, the University of Michigan-Flint’s Moot Court program has been a platform for students to sharpen their critical analysis and oral advocacy skills. While many participants have continued on to law school, the experience has been enriching for students from various disciplines.

Moot Court, a simulation of an actual courtroom, is a co-curricular activity where participants practice writing briefs and arguing their cases with their peers. Each year, the UM-Flint team competes in regional contests for oral advocacy. Despite the challenges faced by our small and relatively new team, they have made their mark in the national arena this year.

“To create the arguments, we have to do a lot of research and analysis, so I thought that since the students were putting in so much work to understand the case already, we should submit our written briefs to the national Appellate Brief Writing competition,” said Kim Saks, assistant professor of political science. “The fact that we are now ranked is particularly spectacular since it was our first year participating in the brief writing portion of the competition. I could not be more proud of these students.”

The American Moot Court Association creates a hypothetical case each year, and teams develop written and oral arguments for competition. Appellate briefs can be up to 30 pages, requiring an extensive review and understanding of related case law to support the competitor’s position. They also must adhere to very strict formatting and style guidelines.

Each submission is assessed by a panel of three anonymous judges–who might be law school professors or practicing attorneys–which ensures a balanced perspective. Briefs are assessed on their legal argument and analysis, use of legal and case problem resources, legal writing mechanics, writing style, grammar, and legal citation formatting. Each judge can award up to 400 points to each brief.

The student teams who participated in the 2024 competition were:

• Joseph M. Bujak and Molly Edinger
• Julia Ellis and Sami Kotob
• Sa’Rah Hamilton and Yona Vingco Stratman
• Chloe Covert and Starla Clark

“Moot Court takes a lot of time and effort for these students, and this recognition is both a testament to all of their hard work and the preparation for argumentative writing all of our students receive at UM-Flint,” said Saks. “We had four teams submit briefs this year, but one of our briefs was rejected because it had some minor issues with formatting. Given that we were ranked with only three briefs out of the 214 submitted for the competition this year, it is truly impressive.”