April 2012: Moot in Vienna & Goodbye
After the very last pleadings and some beautiful days in Vienna, the Willem C. Vis Arbitration Moot 2011/2012 has come to an end.
Once again, the HSG Moot Team 2011/2012 would like to thank its generous sponsors for making this experience possible. Thank you!
March 2012: Shanghai Moot & East Moot in Hong Kong
Finally, we have made it to Asia. After an 11h flight we experienced Shanghai for the first time. The Moot Shanghai started of great when we made it to the quarter-finals and it got even better when we made it to the semi-finals and the final! In the end, we made the 2nd Place in the Shanghai Moot. Thanks to our Volunteers, who accompanied us the whole time, the Shanghai Moot has been an amazing Pre-Moot!
After the success in Shanghai, we were positive going to Hong Kong for the Willem C. Vis East Moot. And the success continued, when we made it to the Top 16, the quarter finals and the semi-finals. In the semi-finals we were worsted by the Team of University of Houston, but we were happy that we made it that far.
After a great Seafood-Dinner with all the other Teams and the Farewell-Party, we enjoyed the Gala Award Banquett, where it was announced that Team HSG got an honourable Mention for the Memorandum for Respondent and that Eva Wyler got an honourable Mention for best oral advocate!
After a very short stop in Switzerland, we will move on to the competition in Vienna.
Februar / März 2012: Practise, practise, practise
For weeks we have been practising our oral performances. Besides the pleadings against other swiss teams in swiss law firms, we have been to Prague and to Munich for a Pre Moot. Both Pre Moots have been good experiences and we got ready to enter the decisive phase in Hong Kong and Vienna.
But before the competition in Hong Kong and Vienna starts, we have one Pre Moot left: Shanghai! We are excited to fly to Asia and hope for another great experience.
February 2012: May the pleadings begin!
Finally, we finished all our exams and can focus on the oral pleadings in Vienna and Hong Kong. Besides Pre-Moots in Swiss law firms, we will also participate in Pre-Moots in Prague, Munich and Shanghai. We would like to extend our thanks to our Sponsors, who make these journeys possible!
January 2012: Submitting of the Memorandum for Respondent
After handing in the Memorandum for Claimant in December, we quickly switched sides and argued for Respondent. On 19 January 2012 we submitted our Memorandum for Respondent.
December 2011: Submitting of the Memorandum for Claimant
After weeks of hard work and a 36h session, we finally handed in our Memorandum for Claimant on 8 December 2011.
October 2011: Vis Moot School Switzerland
As a preparation for the 19th Willem C. Vis Moot Court the HSG Moot Court Team participated alongside some other swiss teams and two foreign teams in the Vis Moot School Switzerland at the University of Zurich. Besides making contact with other teams, the Vis Moot School was mainly about teaching the basic knowledge in the areas of CISG and arbitration. This week definitely gave us a first impression of what to expect in the next couple of months!
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July 2011: New Team 2011 / 2012 is ready
After an intense and instructive year, the HSG Moot Court Team 2010 / 2011 could welcome their followers. More information about the new team members will follow soon. We wish the new team all the best and good luck! We would also like to take the chance to thank all our sponsors again for their support – you made a unforgettable experience possible.
Samuel Horner, Nadia Walker, Florian Wegmann and Luzius Zumstein
April 2011: Vienna – the finals!
And then it was time for Vienna! For the past six months we had been working on the Moot case, spending hours and hours on wording in the memos, delivery in the pleadings and participating in premoots and practice rounds at law firms. Now the time had come to show what we had learned! We were confident of our abilities, despite being aware that we had a tough group (Universities of Ottawa, Wisconsin, Brooklyn and the Honorable Society of Lincolns Inn). All the pleadings went well, and so we were rather disappointed when we did not make it to the knock-out rounds. This also offered some advantages, though. While the top-64 teams were pleading in some windowless rooms, we enjoyed the beautiful weather at the imperial summer residence Schönbrunn.
However, our disappointment turned to pride when it came to the distribution of awards. In a nerve-wrecking ceremony, the University of St. Gallen was announced as the winner of the “Werner Melis Award for the Best Written Memorandum for Respondent”, jointly with Queen’s University of Canada. This is only the second time that a Swiss university has won this category (after Basel in 1999) and the first major success for the University of St. Gallen. Ranking first in the face of fierce competition from 253 other teams from all over the world was far beyond our expectations and a very rewarding end for our Moot-journey!
Furthermore, Luzius Zumstein also received an honorable mention in the category “Martin Domke Award for Best Individual Oralist in the General Rounds”.
And once again, we would like to thank all our sponsors! Without their generosity, none of this would have been possible and we would not have been able to make the truly unique and immensely rewarding experience of participating in the Willem C. Vis Moot Court.
April 2011: Swiss Day, ICC Premoot!
On the first Saturday of April, the team went to the fifth annual Swiss Day, which was hosted by the University of Bern this year. Here we got the opportunity to practice against the other local teams and see how we did.
It is with great pleasure that we can announce that we finished in a respectable third place! Furthermore, our Luzius Zumstein managed to achieve second place in the “Best Individual Oralist” category.
For our final preparations before Vienna, the team travelled to Paris for this year’s premoot at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The great weather and the view on the Eiffel Tower during the pleadings were a very tempting distraction, but we managed to stay focused. Just how focused we will never know though, as the ICC does not publish a ranking of the participating teams. We were satisfied with our performance anyway and Paris was certainly a successful “dress rehearsal” for Vienna.
March – April 2011: Oral Arguments II / Fordham, NY
After the Warsaw premoot our team started visiting law firms in Switzerland for pleadings against some local competitors. Then, on the 10th of March, we headed out to New York for the Fifth Annual Fordham Vis Practice Moot at Fordham Law School. We were excited to go up against native speakers and to see if their style of pleading was any different from ours. We had also heard a lot about the common law arbitrators and that they tend to be more active than arbitrators from civil law countries. As it turned out, there is indeed some truth to this, but this way the team really got some practice in answering questions. All in all the Fordham premoot was great experience and it helped us immensely in our preparations for Vienna.
While in New York we also had the possibility to visit the office of “Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP” for a premoot. There we crossed swords with team Hamburg on an unprecedented level: the 49th floor.
At the moment, we are in the last preparations for the ICC premoot in Paris and the finals in Vienna. We are looking forward to a great time!
February/March 2011: HSG Moot Court Team wins the Warsaw Pre-Moot
After having completed the Memorandum for Respondent, it was time for the next step: Oral arguments. Fitting the weather, we jumped into the cold water in Warsaw to plead against nine universities from Eastern Europe and Germany. The premoot was an invaluable experience and it was very impressive to see how much the performance of all teams improved in just two days.
As it turned out, it was also a nice reassurance that we had not gone completely off track argument-wise, Team HSG scored highest in the final rankings!
Last week, we started visiting law firms in Switzerland for pleadings against some Swiss teams. Soon we’ll be leaving for the premoot at Fordham Law School, New York. We are looking forward to going up against native speakers and common-law teams!
December 2010: Memorandum for Claimant
The first big hurdle has been taken! After countless hours of researching, drafting and re-drafting and a marathon session in the days before the deadline, the team handed in its Memorandum for Claimant. Just in time to undergo its quasi-schizophrenic transformation: From now on, Claimant’s claims are nothing but a desperate attempt to blame Respondent for its troubles. You got exactly what you ordered!
December 2010: Sponsoring
Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, we have been able to register for the premoots in Warsaw and New York which will provide extraordinarily valuable practise for the oral arguments in Vienna!
