University of New Hampshire

School of Law

UNH Law Teams Gear Up For Moot Court Season

UNH Law’s 2012-13 appellate moot court teams will compete in six national competitions this season, including two that will take place this weekend.

Last year, the school took top honors at one of these, The Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition. Students Anjie Vichayanonda and Jeffrey Larson made history by winning all of the top awards: Best Brief in the Nation, Best Oralists in the Nation, and Best Overall Team in the Nation.

This year, Vichayanonda and Larson are among seven former moot court competitors on the UNH Law Moot Court Board. They’ve spent the past several months coaching this year’s competitors. 

Second-year students Christopher Hoolehan and Matthew Stanford, coached by Larson, will head to New York City to compete in the Lefkowitz regionals this weekend. The event, sponsored by the International Trademark Association, typically involves a problem posing multiple issues of trademark and unfair competition law.

Also this weekend is the national BMI/Cardozo Entertainment and Communications Competition, held in New York City. Second-year students Erica Larocque and Andrew Jabaji, coached by Vichayanonda, will compete. Last year’s team, Aaron Keller and Andrea Christensen, submitted one of the Top 10 briefs in the competition.

The weekend of March 16, UNH Law teams will travel to four competitions around the country:

Second-year students Adam Kehres and Alexandra Lakshmanan, coached by third-year student Bradley Krul, will compete in the IP-focused Giles Sutherland Rich Memorial Moot Court Competition regionals, held in Boston.

Alexandra Cote and Scott Whitaker, both second-year students, coached by third-year student Phillip Rice, will compete in the August A. Rendigs, Jr. National Products Liability Moot Court Competition, held in Cincinnati, OH.

Second-year student Jessica Canter and third-year student Geoff Gallagher, coached by third-year student Matthew Cessna, will compete in the Evan A. Evans Constitutional Law Competition, held in Madison, WI.

And the team of third-year student Gordon Landrigan and second-year student Tinh Nguyen, coached by third-year student Peter Park, will head to Wilmington, DE, to compete in the Ruby R. Vale Interschool Corporate Competition.

Nathan Warecki, a third-year student and chief justice of the UNH Law Moot Court Board, credits what he calls the “triad” of moot court programs at the school with giving students practical, hands-on experience.

In addition to the appellate moot court program, which Warecki is helping to run this year, UNH Law offers an Advanced Trial Advocacy course that sends teams to compete in the National Trial Competition and the Student Trial Advocacy Competition, and the school also sends students to the Client Counseling Competition. In April, students Peter Park and Matthew Cessna will compete in the National Trial Competition finals in Texas – they took first place in the regional contest, hosted by UNH Law in January. And on March 7, third-year students Anne Shannon, Patrice Casian, Chase Hagaman, Caroline Lyons, Jason Moore, Katie Reynolds, Mary Weber, and Adam Woods will head to Boston for the Student Trial Advocacy regionals.

“The biggest takeaway students have from these competitions is the sense of confidence,” Warecki says. “It’s not how big your school is, it’s the skills you learn and how you use them.”








 

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