How does a person whose only real legal skill is oral argumentation submit one of the top 16 briefs on his issue in a moot court competition and not advance to the octofinals? Who knows, but that’s exactly what I did.
It would make sense to me if I had gotten oral honors and not advanced, or even if I had gotten no honors… but the fact that I submitted one of the best briefs on my issue but my oral scores were so low that I didn’t advance perplexes me.
Granted, Amanda won oral honors, and she was my partner, so that means that in each of the three rounds I was competing against one of the top oralists. Given the normalization process the MCB uses, that certainly didn’t help. Add to that our second argument was against even more outstanding competition than usual… and the judges of the first round were all over the board, so who knows what happened in those two.
I guess the bottom line is that I’m not quite as good at oral advocacy as I thought I was. That ought to amuse some people.
Congrats, though, to those who did make it — please demonstrate a little more competence than this year’s board did in the execution of the initial phases of this year’s contest.
November 17th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
My guess (based on having listened to you speak) is that your argumentation style shows entirely too much personality. I think that’s a good thing, but my experiences with the people who judge these things is that they are looking for a very detatched, intellectual discussion of legal issues. If your style is anything like I remember it, we’re both better suited for trial level advocacy than we are appellate advocacy. Just my opinion.
Hope everything is going well, by the way.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:33 am
I’m your flipside. I thought I was good at briefwriting, but that I sucked at presentation…yet I got oral advocacy honors and did not advance…. nothing for the brief. Go figure. It’s fucking weird.
But look at the bright side, we get credit without having to do another round!
November 29th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
So basically… you are better at running your mouth on paper than you are at running your mouth in sound!
I’m sure you are disappointed but the fact that you did really well in one area is very good!