Moot Court Competitions

The Vis Moot is held every year in Vienna at the Association that has organized and promoted the competition since 1994. More than 300 Law Schools from all over the world participate: teams face off annually on a case of international trade law to be addressed and resolved according to the techniques of arbitration of disputes. The competition takes place entirely in English.

The first part of the competition starts in October and focuses both on the analysis of the assigned case and the initial statements of claim and defense sent by the organization, and on the preparation of a first memorandum for the claimant and a second memorandum for the respondent to submit in December and February respectively.

The second phase of the competition takes place in Vienna and is dedicated to oral arguments that develop in a first round of hearings. The top 64 teams are selected that go on to participate in the elimination rounds.
The winning team is announced after the final argument.

The Bocconi team has participated in the Vis Moot for more than 15 years. It is one of the most popular and feared teams in the competition and generally manages to successfully qualify for oral arguments.

Gallery:
Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot

The European Law Moot Court is one of the most prestigious team competitions in the field of European Union law. Around 100 Law Schools from all over the world participate annually in the moot. The competition takes place entirely in English on a case of EU law.

The case is assigned in September each year and teams are asked to present their respective pleadings by the end of November, while the competition judges communicate the results of each pleading by January.

The top 48 teams qualify for oral arguments, then the top two teams are selected through a series of elimination rounds. They are called to face off before the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union for the proclamation of the winning team.

The Bocconi team has participated successfully and with excellent results for the past several years.

The Competizione Italiana di Mediazione has been held for the past 8 years at the Milan Chamber of Arbitration with Italian university teams. The competition, which is held in Italian, mainly deals with issues related to the resolution of civil law cases through the use of mediation and conciliation techniques between opposing individual interests. The goal is to apply negotiation techniques and obtain a satisfactory result for the claimant and the mediation party.

The teams participating in the competition face off in a series of mediation sessions lasting 70 minutes. They focus on a case described by the organizing body through general information communicated to both teams and confidential information known only to the individual teams.

The competition ends with the proclamation of the team that received the highest score at the end of all the sessions.

The Bocconi team has been participating in the Italian Mediation Competition for several years with impressive results and excellent placings in the ranking.

Gallery:
Competizione Italiana di Mediazione

The Hugo Sinzhemeir Moot Court Competition was inaugurated in 2016 when the first edition took place at the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute in Amsterdam. It is a competition held in English between university teams on labor law issues in a European context.

The competition starts with the preparation of written statements on a very complex case, assigned by the organizing body, to be submitted by the end of May. Oral arguments take place in June in front of a panel of judges consisting of labor law and European Union law experts.

The oral arguments allow the winning team of the competition to be selected based on knowledge in the field of labor law and the European Union, as well as in the field of legal argumentation and awareness of social and employment protection issues.

The Bocconi team began participating in this competition in the 2018 edition, which was held in Italy at the University of Cassino, then participated in the 2019 edition in Hasselt, Belgium, achieving excellent results in both events.

Gallery:
Hugo Sinzhemeir Moot Court Competition

The Moot Competition in Public Comparative Law was recently inaugurated at Bocconi, with a recent experience at the Moot Court Competition in Law and Religion, held in March 2019 at the European Academy of Religion in Bologna.

Each team first presented their written arguments on the case assigned by the organizing body. That was followed by the oral arguments phase with ten university teams, including the Bocconi team, facing a judging panel composed of judges from the European Court of Human Rights and justices from the US Supreme Court.

The Bocconi team participated very successfully, not only because it was admitted to the oral arguments phase, but also because it was awarded Best Oralist during the competition. 

The Milano Moot Court Competition di Diritto Penale, organized by the ELSA and Keiron-Bocconi student associations, was held for the first time in 2019. Participating teams were from four universities in Milan offering degrees in Law (Bocconi University, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Università degli Studi di Milano and Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca).

Divided into teams, participants faced off in the role of prosecution and defense for a case developed by the professors of the universities involved. In the first phase (eliminatory) the teams presented a written brief, assessed for the purposes of accessing the semifinal (the judging panel was made up of university faculty in the subjects of criminal law and criminal proceedings). The top two teams then faced each other in the final, with a panel made up of judges with judicial functions in criminal matters serving in the Milan district.

The winner of the first edition of the Milano Moot Court Competition di Diritto Penale was a team from Università degli Studi di Milano, while the best orator went to Bocconi student Elisabetta Grasso.

Gallery:
Milano Moot Court Competition di Diritto penale

The International Competition in Comparative Law and Technology is a Moot Competition founded in 2020 and organized by IE University in Madrid and Segovia (Spain). The Bocconi University team participated in the competition’s first edition.

It is an innovative Moot that offers students from various universities around the world the opportunity to deal with issues related to comparative law and new technologies. It highlights how law adapts to the new challenges created by technology and, at the same time, how technology can be used to solve problems globally.

During the first phase (from January to March), participating teams are asked to follow webinars, tutorials and field projects. In the next phase, there is an active experience lasting 3 days in Madrid (which took place entirely online for the first edition), during which teams have the opportunity to follow specific workshops on the subject of legal design, technology trends, global comparative law and, finally, to discuss a case in front of panel made up of representatives from the public and private sectors.

All activities (writing briefs and oral presentations) are held in English. 

Founded in 1960, each year the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition welcomes participants from hundreds of Law Schools from all over the world. This year, a team of Bocconi students participated for the first time in this prestigious initiative.

The competition has two phases. In the first phase, each participating team is required to submit two memorials relating to a case of public international law communicated at the beginning of each edition. In each memorial the team supports the two parties of the hypothetical dispute, generally nations.

The second phase consists of several rounds, during which the various teams debate in cross-examination in front of a panel made up of judges, professors or attorneys.

All activities (writing briefs and oral presentations) are held in English.