My trip to London for the Open University Law Society Mooting workshop

I arrived at Stevenage train station at 7:42 am, it was cold and calm. The train strike was running that day, trust it to be the day I am attending a mooting workshop with the Open University Law Society (OULS).

I finally arrived in Holborn around 9:10 am and it’s a quiet area, everyone keeps to themselves, a lot of coffee shops and traffic. I headed to Starbucks Coffee to have a caramel Macchiato and I saw they had drawn on a blackboard for Halloween which was very cool, whoever drew it was very talented. I had my coffee and went to meet the others for the Mooting workshop at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

When I arrived outside there were only two or three people, to begin with, we all looked very nervous asking each other if we were there for the workshop and once we said yes we all relaxed a bit more. After about another 15 minutes there were about 25 of us all in all. It was amazing to see so many people that want to take part in Mooting.

At about 10:00 am Carla (Mooting Coordinator) who was in charge of the workshop for the day came and spoke to us all, she had made name tags for us so we wouldn’t forget each other’s names (I’m bad at that), and we all stood in a circle saying our names, where we were from and two interesting facts about ourselves as an ice-breaker. It was really interesting to hear some of them, one person lived underwater for 5 years and another was in the Marines, to talk to these individuals about their experiences was a privilege.

Around 10:15 am we went upstairs to the 3rd floor via the elevators, the layout of the building was fantastic! The sculptures were amazing to look at it felt comfortable being there, I didn’t feel nervous or out of place, it was a friendly and calm vibe all in all.

We entered the room we were in with Carla as our host for the day, She is super friendly, loves to have a laugh and is always smiling. Carla had made us some participant workbooks and we also had OULS pens that were sent down by Jonathan (Chair of OULS) from Scotland. After a little chat and some laughs from everyone, Carla introduced us to the world of Mooting.

Carla had made around 181 Slides for us to go through with her throughout the day, we had a timetable and breaks which we were able to keep to (whilst having some laughs). There were constant breaks and during the breaks we all had a chat with one another to get to know each other more. Everyone seemed to come from the London area and there was only one or two beside me that were from outside of London.

Halfway through the day, we had learnt about so many different things to do with Mooting and the OULS, Carla had explained her own personal experiences within Mooting and she sounded amazing! It really put me at ease about myself doing Mooting, I wanted to do it before I attended the workshop but I had really bad nerves. After hearing Carla and being taught everything in a different light it really has given me the inspiration to go for it.

We had downloaded Casedo which is a programme used within Mooting which makes it easier to create Skeleton Arguments and Case Bundles, unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to try it for ourselves in the workshop as Carla was trying to finish by 5pm so everyone could get home.

If you’re wondering what a Skeleton Argument and a Case Bundle are, I will give a brief description (best I can).

A Skeleton Argument is a written document that is prepared in advance of the Mooting oral rounds which gives a run-through of the issues and the authorities that need to be relied upon.

A Bundle (Case Bundle I call it) is a file of materials that you use to support your argument.

The workbooks we received were full of information as well as us writing in them and it was such a relaxed environment to be learning in. I have severe anxiety and I felt so comfortable with everyone and it was amazingly great fun. Also, we were lucky enough to have the slides that Carla created and used within the workshop for our personal use, I printed them off and have them in a pocket folder for reference.

If you are thinking of doing Law or interested in Mooting, I definitely recommend joining the Open Univerity Law Society (OULS) and taking part in the workshops, it’s a great way to meet new people and learn in so much depth about different parts of Law and Law-based workshops.