Chicago-Kent makes history; wins NMC

Chicago-Kent College of Law was crowned champion at the National Moot Court competition tonight, defeating University of Pennsylvania Law School in an outstanding final round. Daniel Schwei of Penn was named Outstanding Oralist of the round, with Betsy Gates of Chicago-Kent finishing second in the balloting. Brooklyn Law School won the Best Brief award.

There were some problems (at least that I experienced) with the webcast cutting in and out, but that's not terribly surprising. Regardless, webcasting the round is a tremendous service, and I'm thrilled the New York City Bar Young Lawyers Association has continued the webcast since launching it two years ago. Hopefully, other competitions (ABA, I'm looking at you) will follow suit. It allows students, parents, professors, and alums back home to tune in and watch an event that is incredibly important to those involved. If history holds, the New York City Bar Young Lawyers Association should post a clean copy of the video on its website at some point.

Speaking of history, Chicago-Kent may have achieved what no moot court program ever has: Back-to-back championships at the NMC. As I wrote in an earlier post, the only records I could find go back to 1977, and from that, it appears no one has ever pulled off the repeat in consecutive years. Some old-timers I talked today said that to their knowledge, it hadn't happened before 1977 either. Regardless, Chicago-Kent and Professor Kent Streseman, Director of the school's Ilana Diamond Rovner Program in Appellate Advocacy, deserve hearty congratulations for their tremendous accomplishment.