BCL-ers emerge victorious from field of 46 uni teams
Four masters students from Oxford University have brushed aside the nation’s top wannabe lawyer talent to be crowned winners of a prestigious national mooting competition that took place in London over the weekend.
Alice Irving, Charlotte Kelly, Clara Ludot and Eilis O’Keeffe — who study the Bachelor of Civil Laws (BCL) course — beat a team of Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) students in the final of the ‘LSE-Featherstone Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Moot’ on Saturday.
They got there with quarter final wins over bitter rival Cambridge University and a semis triumph against a bunch of Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) students competing under the banner of their Inn of Court, Inner Temple.
Earlier rounds saw the quartet battle through a field of 46 teams whittled down after skeleton argument submissions to 32 top-performers.
The teams had to deal with a Gay Cake case-inspired problem question (embedded below) about a dispute between an LGBT+ publication and a printer which refused to produce its magazine.
Submissions were judged by a panel of hotshot lawyers, including High Court judge Ross Cranston, Matrix Chambers duo Karon Monaghan QC and Sarah Hannett, The Guardian‘s legal chief Gill Phillips, and King’s College professor Aileen McColgan.
Here is the moment that the winners were announced:
The event — which was inspired by the USA-wide Williams Institute Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Moot Court Competition — is named in honour of Baroness Lynne Featherstone, architect of the equal marriage legislation in England & Wales. The sponsors were Linklaters, Mishcon de Reya, Dentons, ULaw, Cleary Gottlieb, Clifford Chance, Ashurst, DWF, Weil Gotshal and Travers Smith. Legal Cheek and Pink News were media partners.
The problem question: