Interview with winner of 8th ULC-Ranka Moot Court Competition-2019 Minakshi Yadav Legal Article Fri, Apr 19, 2019, at ,12:53 PM This is an interview of Abhishek Paliwal, Ajaiy Bhaskar(Mooters) and Anmol Sharma (Researcher), of Manipal University, Jaipur. They won the 8th ULC-Ranka State Moot Court Competition-2019 held at University Law College, Jaipur. The questions have been answered by Anmol Sharma on behalf of his team. Interview has been taken by Minakshi Yadav. 1. What do you think a team would need to nail the moot? Firstly, like every other moot , the team needs to be careful with every aspect of the fact and the law related with it. One must interlink both and come up with legitimate grounds to support the petition from either side. one has to read the problem multiple times, like nothing less than 20-25 times. Usually, a single word or a single phrase in the problem gave rise to an entire ground to support an argument. while pleading, confidence is the key factor. Judges will continuously attempt to blend you up and throw you off track, but you've got to come back to the mainstream after handling their questions, to which confidence becomes indispensible. 2. It seems that the competition was fierce. How was your overall experience? There were a total of 22 participating teams so competition was in fact furious. Qualifying for the quarter-finals was the hardest and trickiest bit , based on aggregate speaker scores and memorial marks. Subsequently in both Prelim rounds, we had to ensure that our pleadings were not just great but remarkable. Thereafter in the subsequent rounds, qualification was subject only to total Speaker scores, and we had to ensure that both our arguments as well as our way of presentation was better and more persuading than the other team. 3. Court etiquettes, the manner in which the judges and the issues are addressed and your pattern- all matters a lot. What in the speech of your team’s mooter you think was different to cling on the judge’s mind? One might not always have the back of law to back an argument; then again certain questions are inquired by the judges out of the proposition, to reply which you've got to necessarily deal with the intricacies of the facts. Apart from our sound backing of law, I think it is the analogies drawn by us from the facts to form our contentions complete and persuading, that really clicked and gave us an extra edge over the others. 4. Did you have some kind of strategists or mentor guiding your preparation in the moot or some guidance from seniors who had been to the moot before? All of us had not mooted and we were new to the circuit. We were assigned a mentor like every other team, to aid us in the preparation of this moot. Our mentor helped us in multiple ways, right from structuring our arguments to taking our pleadings. Apart from this, there were other seniors too who helped us to a great extent, starting from drafting to taking pleadings and even when it came to providing motivation. 5. What was your team plan when it comes to preparing for the competition? The initial thought was to sit down together and research on each of the issues thoroughly so that we’d be clear on all the considerable grounds included within the problem. We had also sub-divided issues among ourselves and worked out upon by the particular individual. Though in the beginning month of our preparation we couldn’t meticulously give time to sit down and work together, towards the final stage, we worked really hard, relinquishing on everything else starting from internal exams to normal course work. 80% of our work may be attributed to those last 3 weeks preceding memo submission. Once memo submission was done, we practiced pleadings each single day, leading right upto the verbal rounds. It was then we encountered substantial flaws and corrected them. 6. A lot depends on the memorial when it comes to speaking. How well do you think this statement is justified in case your team’s perspective? Our memorials were praised by numerous judges due to the articulate manner in which we had framed our arguments, additionally due to the formatting. If the memorial is well structured, it definitely gives you a fundamental flow in which you need to proceed while contending. However, to persuade the judge, one should structure arguments out of the memorials and explain every intricacy of it. The memorial is simply a outline of the arguments. Then again ideally, one ought to be so well versed with the flow that he or she need not even refer to the memorial. In such a case, the memorial does not serve much purpose except for referring to the authorities cited. It was the same with our team. 7. Some advice that you would give to the budding mooters? Hard work is the key to success. Hard work means working sincerely and meticulously. It would mean if you're citing a judgment, taking the endeavors of reading at least the crux of the judgment, before relying upon it, and not just since it has been mentioned within the commentary. It is that willingness to go the extra mile that sets you apart from the others. Before you go forth to do a moot, you have to ask yourself what your desires are. If the answer is winning it, there ought to be no turning back from that point and you should do every single thing that is necessary to achieve the end. It is only when you want to win it as gravely as you want to breathe air.