Moot Court: 1st place for HSG team

4 May 2011. The St.Gallen students under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Markus Müller-Chen came top among numerous teams from all over the world and won the Werner Melis Award for the best memorandum for respondent in late April. In the 18-year history of the Moot Court, a victory in this category has only been achieved by one Swiss university before (Basel, 1999).

The five postgraduates Samuel Horner, Georg Lorenz (exchange student, therefore not on the picture), Nadia Walker, Florian Wegmann and Luzius Zumstein were thus able to attain a first major success for the University of St.Gallen.

255 universities from 63 countries
The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court is the biggest international competition for law students. According to the organisers, 255 universities from 63 countries participated this year. It is not without good reason that the Vis Moot Court has therefore also been termed the “Olympic Games of Commercial Law”.

Six months on a fictitious case

The competition pivots on a fictitious case, in which students take on the role of attorneys and work on the case for six months. The teams first prepare a memorandum for claimant and then reply to another university’s memorandum for claimant with a memorandum for respondent. To conclude, this is followed by the oral proceedings at the University of Vienna, where the teams plead before experienced professors and attorneys from all over the world. In addition, prizes are awarded in Vienna for the best legal documents.