There is really nothing like the thrill of doing Moot Court in person.
As detailed in
this article, Moot Court was very quickly put online after COVID-19. It stayed there, and has since that time. But as everyone knows, there's something more personal, more intimate, more
real about competing in person.
This year,
HSMCA hosted its inaugural National Championship at the prestigious Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in downtown Chicago. The location was amazing, with the beautiful, dark classrooms and the stately courtroom for the final round. But what really made this tournament fun was the interactions between students and judges.
Judges came from local law schools—UChicago, Northwestern, Loyola, and Chicago-Kent. We had a number of attorneys from the Chicagoland area come as well. We even had some local law professors join in. And the students were prepared. They answered questions with precision, using caselaw to back up their arguments. One judge wrote an email to us after the event: "The event was really impressive. The participants were functioning at an extremely high level. I was amazed."
So were we. We were thrilled that HSMCA continues to raise the bar for the competitive level of high school students who put their mind to the task of reading, writing, and arguing.
Blackstone exists to continue to foster this high level of competition. If you're interested in getting coaching so that you can compete well at the National Championship for next year, click the link below. We're excited to see what this next year brings.