How to Moot: A Student Guide to Mooting [Paperback]

The structure of the text is logical. The authors ask 101 questions about mooting, providing the answers to each question in a clear and understandable prose. The novice mooter can, therefore, become very knowledgeable about this game we call a moot by reading the book from cover to cover. The more experienced mooter (or tutor) can use the book as a valuable reference guide, and the very detailed contents and index pages should facilitate swift and efficient discovery of the issue to be resolved. Praise must go to whoever indexed the book; try as I might, I could not find an omission. The cross-referencing is also superb. It is clear and avoids unnecessary repetition of information.

There are four chapters in the book, across which the 101 questions are pretty evenly spread. Chapter One asks and answers the preliminary questions on mooting, from its history to its participants and their roles. Chapter Two focuses on the preparation, Chapter Three on performance and Four on the principles and practice. Thereafter are found ten appendices. The first comprises a moot problem and full transcript of the presentations of four mooters and the judge's questions.
Here lies this reviewer's only criticism of the book. The example moot is based on the duties of trustees. Accepting that Trusts is a foundation subject, and recognising that the topic is not especially obscure or complex, and further that the example neatly illustrates issues raised elsewhere in the 101 questions, the reviewer feels that a worked example of a contract law moot would have served the same purpose but been more accessible to the first year mooter. Lack of familiarity with the subject matter might put off a first or even second year undergraduate from reading the transcript. This would be a shame as such a student would miss a respectful and intelligent deflection of a judge's searching question to leading counsel on her junior's ground of appeal, and other such gems.

Appendices Two to Ten include a series of example moot problems, which the authors and contributors have generously made available without the usual copyright restrictions, samples of judges' score sheets and a detailed Latin and French-Law glossary. The reproduction of the 1966 Practice Statement indicates the importance of stare decisis in the moot process; a vital message for all mooters to grasp.

The core theme of the book is that mooting is a game. It is a serious game, with strict rules, unique to it, but the enjoyment of the experience including responding to the fifth 'player's' questions (the judge) is consistently emphasised.

Students on the English Legal System (or Method, or Process) could certainly do worse than read the answers to questions 85 ("When is an authority binding on a moot court?"), 86 ("How can one escape from an inconvenient authority?"), 87 ("In what circumstances can a case be overruled?") and 88 and 89 (distinguishing cases in law and law) to grasp the doctrine of precedent. The authors make a valuable and practical contribution to this foundation of legal knowledge. That said, there is no dumbing down. Question 6 makes the student aware how preparation for a moot differs from preparation for a tutorial. Questions 74 and 101 will benefit experienced mooters particularly, drawing their attention to issues such as when and how matters of policy and a human rights dimension can be incorporated into argument. Tutors of law may also find Question 100 ("How do I judge a Moot?") to contain useful pearls of wisdom.

Other than the brief, albeit very useful, introduction to mooting in Glanville Williams' Learning the Law (12th ed by Smith, 2002, London, Sweet and Maxwell) and an even more succinct précis in Unlocking Legal Learning (Huxley-Binns, Riley and Turner, due 2005, London, Hodder and Stoughton) there is no competitor for this text. And possibly, nor should there be. There is a finite number of students for whom mooting will be such an important activity that purchase of a text is compulsory. And any rival book is likely to mirror the content, if not necessarily the style, of this superb text.

However, one might have supposed that a student guide to mooting, where Question 1 asks "What is mooting?" might have a photograph of a moot on the cover. Instead, the cover is a dashing pink graphical explosion. An odd choice by the publishers and of no assistance at all to the novice mooter, but common usage of the phrase does not devalue the truth of it: "Do not judge a book by its cover."