And then there were four: NMC update

Chicago-Kent College of Law, Brooklyn Law School, University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the College of Law at Loyola University New Orleans have advanced to the semi-finals of the national rounds of the National Moot Court Competition. Brooklyn has won the national best brief award, while Penn's brief is ranked second.

Reminder: The final round will take place tonight at 8 p.m. EST, and will be webcast. Click here for the link.

Thanks to Professor Kent Streseman at Chicago-Kent for the e-mail update, who also added:

Procedurally, things are as smooth as I've ever seen here; the organizers continue to improve transparency and quality control regarding scoring. But my sense early on was that too many judges had too much difficulty grasping the issues, which (as always) creates an air of arbitrariness. From where I sit, though, things have improved significantly on that front as we get deeper into the tournament.

The judging issue doesn't surprise me; that's typically the story at every competition, the National being no exception. And for those of you familiar with this year's problem, it's a Beast (yes, the capital "B" is warranted). So again, no surprise that early round judges struggled a bit.

By the way, as most of you know, Professor Streseman's team is the defending champion. I've only seen records as far back as 1977, but it's worth noting that at least since then, no team has repeated in consecutive years. Regardless of whether he and his students make history tonight, I think it's fair to say that just getting back to the semis is an incredible feat.