This article was written by Aditya Narayan. Want to share your law school experience? Email your write up to [email protected]
Before even becoming a law student, I had gathered information on things to do at a law school. I was told to focus on improving my resume everyday and things that would help me improve it were Internships, Paper Presentations and Moot Courts. Moot Courts are the things that give a student an exposure on how to practice at the courts of our country. And if one wants to indulge into litigation after Law School, moot courts are just like the icing on the cake. Hence it is rightly said, “Mooting is an art of argument”. Keeping all this in mind and with dreams of touching success I started my law school journey by joining Lloyd Law College.
Ever since my school days I was pretty much involved in the co-curricular activities like debate club, quiz club, maths club etc, so I did the same thing in college as well. By the time we were 3 months old in college, there was an intra college moot court and I participated in it as well. Thanks to the team I got we entered the finals of the competition defeating many seniors of our college. After the completion I became an active member of the mooting society of our college. By the time I was in my 3rd semester I was made the Convenor of the Moot Court Society. That was the best reward for me then.
On my 1st day as the Convenor I was introduced to the faculty and student members of the club formally. I had thought that it would be an easy job for me. But trust me it was tougher than one could expect it to be. Right from day one there was work, work and a lot of work in the club to do. After getting my team we were focused on our work and our motto was to make every single student to be perfectly eligible to participate in a moot court competition. We were allotted the moot court room to conduct our meetings and discussions and selection of students. The teacher who was in charge of the committee was the most important person of the club. On my first day, she guided me on my work and made me understand the meaning of patience and it’s magic. I was also told about the obstacles I had to face in my path. She gave me an insight of things do and to refrain from doing. After the meeting, I had a clear picture in my mind about how I have to perform my duties.
I thank all those who choose me as a convenor of the moot court society as it also helped me improve my managerial skills. I also had to talk to a lot of people which further enhanced my communication skills. The stage fear in me had disappeared and I became a more confident person than I was. All those meetings and information about moot court competitions were told to the rest of the college by me. All the notices were sent by me. I and my team were selecting people to take part in various competitions. I learnt on dealing people and that improved my personality.
I took a note of who were present at the meeting, see if their attendance were taken, answer their queries, help the ones weak in communicating , improve mooting skills of people, give guidance to people on mooting, encourage students to voluntarily take part in mooting.
We had successfully conducted 3 moot court competitions from where we choose the best students and sent them to various moot court competitions. We also had a dozen moot court camps where we invited students and taught them the do’s and dont’s of mooting. Later I came to know from some of my friends those camps helped many improve their skills and they also won awards in competitions. We were also successful in beginning weekly moot court classes for students’ right from 1st year. Fortunately those classes are still very much going on.
Our job didn’t end just by selecting students to take part in competitions, we also sat with them to prepare their memorial, gather the statement of facts, find the related cases and do rehearsals with them so that have enough of practice before the real match. One of my main tasks was to inform the students about the upcoming moot competitions and for that one has to be very much active. Every morning my first task was to check the email regarding any invitation for moot tournaments and then to update the members with the details. The other important task was to serve notice to the members regarding moot court society meetings from time to time. For a society to work properly, meetings must be performed on regular basis to keep the members up to date about the society’s activities.
The task was never easy but then there was fun working at that place. The college management gave their full support to us or else working would have been very painful. We were provided with wifi facility, a moot court room and another classroom, books from library, food in case we had to work till late, and a teacher to guide us on mooting skills. These things motivated us to work even harder. We never faced any problem whatsoever when it came to college management.
For things to get on track, you need a great team. I was fortunate enough to get a team comprising of dedicated and passionate workers who gave their 100% for the growth of the club. This experience taught me the value and importance of team work and how to be a good team member. Things become difficult when your team is not supportive but I feel grateful that my team was an example of an ideal team. Every member stood in support of each other at times of joy and sorrow. Even on days of holiday, every member responded to my calls and came up for quick meetings and discussions. I feel privileged to have such great people as my colleagues.
I was very much aware of the fact that in spite of all these things, the society’s success to a great extent is dependent on the efficiency of the convenor. If a convenor is efficient and putting his/her full efforts, no one can stops the team from getting success. The previous convenor of the moot court society of our college was an example of hard work and dedication in front of me. I took her as my ideal and tried my level best to maintain the standard she was maintaining and also I had a wish to set an example for future convenors like she did. That was really motivating and I started working with great efforts.
Keeping this fact in mind I gave my 100% and I was very much satisfied with my performance as our team won so many prizes during those days.
I can’t forget the help lent by other clubs for the growth of the moot court society. The debate club members helped in communication skills of students who were not so good in speaking English. Sometimes, even they helped in preparing memorials. One of the memorials prepared by the help of the debate club secretary went on to win the best prize at a moot court competition. For that I shall always remain indebted to the debate club secretary.
Our club was lauded by everyone from students to the director general of our college. So much so that during my regime, we went on to win the best club of the year award. Those memories can never fade away from my brain.
While working as the convenor of the moot court society I realised the value of this position. I found that a convenor is the main link between board and the society members. The link should be strong enough to fetch good results. That realization inspired me to do my work with more efforts and to control the society’s administrative procedure more effectively.
The convenor must be enthusiastic, an effective communicator and he/she must have the ability to make decisions. My decision making capacity has improved after this experience and I personally feel that this experience has improved my personality and made me self dependant in all aspects. The interactions with team members as well as with different people during moot court tournaments helped me learning the way to interact. I learned how to handle different situations in different circumstances.
I have developed good leadership skills throughout this experience. The convenor is the one who coordinates the work of the unit. I was the one who has to give directions and manage the activities of the society and this improved my leadership skills and made me a person who is now able to work as an effective leader.
Our society was active in intercollegiate moot court competitions and for that the responsibility to schedule and coordinate travel arrangements was on my shoulders. The management of funds and tickets for the participants was completely my area of work and one has to manage things reasonably when it comes to travel and I was handling this with the best of my knowledge.
For the management to be effective it must be organized and systematic and this thing was clear in my mind. To carry out the management in a systematic manner I put forward an idea in the meeting of the debate society. I suggested that we should make a checklist of responsibilities so that everyone knows who is responsible for what. This idea was appreciated by the society and they allowed maintaining the checklist and everyone was directed to put the signature in front of their respective tasks for better understanding and management.
To get good participants for the intercollegiate moot court competitions our team decided to organize intra college competitions and we decided to give cash prizes to motivate the children to come forward and show their talents and the main purpose of this was to set up a strong team for intercollegiate debating tournaments. Slowly and steadily we came up with a brilliant team which won many prizes and made the college proud. And this is not just the. Our college is excelling in every moot court competition it is taking part these. I feel so very proud writing these down over here.
My overall experience as the convenor of the moot court society at Lloyd Law College was a great one. I learned a lot of things as I have mentioned. This experience helped me developing my personality, improved my communication and management skills, made me a good team worker and above all it gave me a sense of responsibility. It was also fun to go to different places for different competitions with such an enthusiastic and supportive team. The opportunity to see so many places, to meet different people and to learn about different things was a golden one for me. I would never forget this experience and would appreciate it throughout my life. This experience transformed me to a great extent and improved my personality which I know would help me in things I do in future.
I think every small thing we learn add up to our personality and transform a part of us which finally leads to an ideal personality. Knowledge comes with experience and we should be active enough to try even small things which at the end would leave us with some sort of experience. All the nitty-gritties of Mooting are tough to capture right away, and luckily, this online course makes it much simpler to ace the art of Mooting.
My experience of working as the Convenor has been something like a life time opportunity to me. Some may consider this position as not so signifying one, but this position helped me improve not only mooting at my college but also my own self. The earlier shy guy in me has vanished and I have become a more confident person in real life ready to face the cruel world that awaits me when I step out of law school.
