By Irina Karic
As part of the capacity-building project that seeks to help elevate higher legal education in Palestine, CILC and An-Najah National University completed a three-day moot court training in Jericho, Palestine in the period 18 to 20 February 2017. The training was held in partnership with An-Najah National University, Al-Quds University, Birzeit University and Hebron University, as well as the Palestinian Judicial Institute.
Designed to equip moot court coaches with skills they would be able to utilise in their classrooms and moot courtrooms, the program sessions, led by Dr. Hanne Cuyckens and Dr. Otto Spijkers, trainers from Utrecht University in Netherlands, featured presentations on memorials, oral pleadings and pleading structure, public speaking, working phases, and group dynamics and team selection.
Drawing upon their own real-life training experiences from both Telders International Law Moot Court Competition and Jessup International Law Competition, facilitators of the training were able to incite practice-oriented exchanges between the participants in the promotion of learning and facilitation of their mentoring roles. Also, participation in this event provided an introduction to the wider legal community through contact with the practicing attorneys, lecturers and jurists of varying levels of experience who train and adjudicate competitions, making it a great way for participants to discuss their experiences.
Members from the Palestinian Judicial Institute, an institution that provides judicial training, skills and knowledge to judges and others working in the legal sector in Palestine, for instance, eagerly shared their rich expertise and their abilities to deal with legal practice, and also welcomed new skills which helps the students of the institute become capable professionals who are adapted not only to the development of the rule of law but also to the requirements of work.
Lecturers who attended the training had a more diverse range of skills, experience and exposure to the moot courtroom training, so their interaction with other attendants helped them co-create new knowledge and enhance a practical platform in which to exercise their students’ legal thinking as well as develop their own training abilities.
Since the competition and training of Moot Court are important components of legal education, the project aims to further develop an important connection between legal education and practice of legal profession, while ensuring that students are ready to face significant milestones in their legal training in both written and oral advocacy skills in the moot court system.