Skills competitions

Develop your legal skills and boost your employability with our Law skills competitions.

Develop your legal skills

Through studying Law at Sussex you’ll have the chance to be actively involved in regional, national and international skills competitions at all stages of your studies.

We normally aim to run a range of internal competitions including:

  • negotiation
  • client interviewing
  • two mooting competitions
  • criminal advocacy

By taking part in the competitions, you can gain valuable experience and enhance your skills before competing in highly prestigious national and international competitions.

You can also get involved in various mooting competitions in London and the UK, where our students have a strong history of success.

Find out more about the different opportunities and related competitions:

Mooting 

You will present legal arguments before superior courts in a fictional, contentious case. Each moot has lead and junior counsel arguing each side of the dispute.

The exercise will develop your presentation and advocacy skills, both of which are essential in legal practice.

We run two internal mooting competitions, one for first year undergraduates and one for all Law students. These are designed to help you build your confidence, improve your presentation skills and potentially win legal work experience placements. You can get valuable feedback and peer support, and there are even cash prizes for the winners. 

To further develop your legal skills, you can represent Sussex in national and international mooting competitions.

For more information about mooting at Sussex, contact mooting@sussex.ac.uk.

Advocacy 

You can benefit from early training and practice for trial advocacy by taking part in criminal advocacy competitions and advocacy workshops.

You will get the opportunity to participate in both Sussex advocacy competitions (supported by local criminal defence barristers and the Crown Prosecution Service) and the national Blackstone’s Criminal Advocacy Competition. The competition involves running a trial, where you’ll examine witnesses and make special trial applications to judges.

Client interviewing 

You will be able to gain experience of client interviewing, helping you to develop your fact-finding and interviewing skills.

You can get involved in workshops which prepare you for a client interviewing competition.

The final is judged by a panel which includes experienced solicitors from DMH Stallard. Winners receive work placements, cash prizes and go onto represent Sussex in the National Client Interviewing Competition.

Negotiation 

You will have the opportunity to practise negotiating, where you role-play the negotiation situations you can expect to be in as a qualified solicitor.

To prepare you for negotiating competitions, you will take part in a series of negotiation workshops, run by legal professionals and faculty members. You can then participate in a negotiating competition sponsored by law firm DMH Stallard.

Winners of in this competitions receive work placements and cash prizes and go on to represent Sussex at the National Competition in negotiating.

Mediation

These workshops will introduce you to the theory and practice of mediation and its application to a variety of scenarios. You will explore key issues around mediation, including:

  • the role and nature of mediatory intervention
  • different mediation styles and models
  • the impact of emotions on mediation
  • power imbalances.

You will then be involved in role-plays about the resolution of disputes through mediation from a range of different scenarios.

You could then go on to be selected for the National Mediation Competition.

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