Chickens Come Home to Roost.

I've been "preparing" for a few weeks the arguments that I had to make over this previous weekend. By preparing, I mean that I pulled an all-nighter when completing the brief, and all-nighter putting together my oral argument materials. Instead of doing the reading, I opted to spend my school nights watching Heroes, Entourage, Sons of Anarchy, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And now that Dexter and Californication are back on, there surely was no chance that I was going to devote a reasonable amount of time on the material.

Add on top of that entertainment goodness that I've been enjoying spending weekend afternoon lying around naked with a pretty girl, and a recipe for moot court disaster was bound to happen.

"Disaster" may be an overstatement - I argued twice, lost once. However, given how much shit I had talked to just about anyone who was within earshot at any given moment, I certainly fell short of my own and I'm assuming (hopefully) others' expectations.

So yes, I ended up losing to a kid who has almost no moot court experience and didn't fully grasp the arguments and the questions asked by the judges (not claiming I did), and doesn't speak English as his primary language. Yup. Not sure how that impacted the judges' analysis, but hard to believe it didn't have one effect one way or the other. So it goes. Sucks that I screwed the pooch, doesn't suck that I spent afternoons lying around naked with a pretty girl. You win some, you lose some.

Moot Court Back in Action.

So after all the chaos that was my regional moot court competition, the organizers decided to throw us a bone and invite us as an exhibition team. This meant we didn't get to actually compete, that we have to help bailiff other rounds, but that at least we got a trip to D.C. on the school's dime and it turns out we were the only American school to get an exhibition team invitation. I'm sure it has to do with how badly we felt shafted at regionals and this invitation was their way of trying to buy us off. Well, I have my price, and it is room, board, and a plane ticket.

Since we weren't actually competing anymore, I took the opportunity to get shit-housed a couple of times. My team "argued" against schools from Ethiopia, Mexico, and France. Our judges don't get told that we're only exhibition teams, so when they did find out, they were usually quite surprised that we weren't still in the competition.

The last night there, I ended up in a hotel room for a South American sausage fest. Chilean dudes, Argentinian dudes, Uruguayan dudes, 1 UK/French dude, me, and 2 of my female teammates. They were pieces of meat, I had the least attractive accent in the room. Our shuttle departed at 5 am, our flight was at 7:45. I was told I was getting "out of control." No teeth lost, no shirts torn, all luggage packed: win.

San Ho + "Mormons."

So the moot court competition did not go so well. My primary concern was that I didn't get blamed for our lack of progression, I was worried about choking - that didn't happen. The rest of my team was furious with the way things shook out, they left for home even though we all had 2 more nights on our hotel rooms.

Well shit, those hotel rooms were nicer than my bedroom, so I decided to stick it out another night. Fortunately, I had a San Jose homeboy who was willing to take me out on the town for the evening.

I don't recall everything. I know I started with whisky + sobe, switched to pbrs, helped consume a wee bottle of sake, then we went out. I don't remember ordering much, but I know the tecate rounds were firing off like machine guns at Normandy.

I stumbled into a cab, told brosif to take me back to the hotel. I had him hold my wallet while I withdrew funds from the hotel ATM. He told me it wasn't necessary, I think I assured him it was. I don't remember going to my room, but I woke up without puke on my shirt, so score one for the good guys.

And when I finally looked in my wallet a few hours later, there was a random ass number. No name, I'm not even sure it was a bird I was talking to. The area code is Atlanta, go fucking figure.

Now I'm in Utah, god damn this place is white.

Moot Court Shit Show.

So I'm pleased with my team's performance so far. From the sounds of it, the other pair of my took care of Stanford's ass in short order. My partner actually received a strong challenge from New College, I'm not really even sure who took that round. Moot court competitions are a funny little bitch like that. A school like Stanford has so much going for it that they don't need/want to invest in their advocacy program. Consequently, it is "student run" and 1Ls can apparently be on the teams. I wouldn't universally say that 1Ls aren't prepared for stiff moot court competition, but the reality is that if they haven't even completed their spring semester moot court program, chances are slim they've even received the minimum amount of guidance on how to structure an argument, how to deliver it, and how to carry oneself before the judges. New College on the other hand, chip on the shoulder I assume that they have, were very well prepared, knew the law well, and were able to simply and clearly present it to the judges. I'm left assuming that "schools with something to prove" are generally more geared to kicking ass at moot court competitions than T15 schools who really have nothing left to prove.

I think I may have been sharing eyes with one of the birds on the New College team, I dig sharing eyes with birds.

Besides all that mess, this competition has been a shit show as far as organization is concerned. I don't want to name names, so just let's just call him Fuckwad McTard. So Fuckwad, or Mr. McTard, was responsible on the execution of this event. He was able to secure about one-third of the required amount of judges, and a little better percentage of the bailiffs. This translated into all the team coaches having to "volunteer" as preliminary round judges. What the fuck is that? How fair is it to have coaches judging? Here's why that is retarded:

1. Familiarity with the Material

While there is certainly a variance in competence, some of these judges are clearly very invested in this competition. This translates into tougher questions that a regular judge, only familiar with the bench memo, would never think to ask. I'm not 100% opposed to tough questions, as I like the opportunity to shine, but still, not exactly kosher.

2. Incentive to Down-Score

Normally I might say, "well, that shit sucks, but at least it sucks for everyone." Nope, not the case here. Not all the rounds will have a coach participating as a judge. This might not mean much in the W-L columns, but it could mean a shit-ton when it comes to raw score tie-breakers. I don't want to bore you with the details, but I'll leave it at this: Coaches have an incentive to push other teams' score down in order to better the position of the team they coach in the event of a tie-breaker.

3. What the Fuck Happened to Being Anonymous?

So all the teams get told to show up to this meeting, an orientation thing of sorts. They tell us it will be our only chance to learn the numbers of all the teams, information which will not be released at any other point because "the information is confidential." So yea, it's so confidential that it makes sense to tell us at this meeting?

Before telling us the numbers, Fuckwad made sure to note: "are there any judges in the room? No? Okay, here are the teams..." Following the number reading, he asked all the coaches to stay after for a short meeting. That meeting was to tell all the coaches that they must judge, otherwise the competition might have to be cancelled.

WAIT A SECOND. Fuckwad made sure all the judges were out of the room before he read the numbers? But then decided to tell all the coaches that they needed to be judges? No Fuckwad, the room was not empty of judges, there were about as many judges as there are teams and you fail at life. I'm really dumbfounded at how McTard didn't realize that he was reciting team numbers to a group of people he was going subsequently ask to judge. Way to keep up that confidentiality asswipe.

I don't know man, I'm drinking some black velvet on the rocks right now. It tastes okay, I'll stop bitching now.

On With the Show.

My moot court competition is this weekend. While other teams get to travel to exciting places like New York, Boston, and New Orleans, by team gets to travel to Santa Clara - a city that is fairly and universally labeled by non-residents as “shitty.”

Sans the crap location, I am looking forward to finally getting on with the competition. Months of practice, arguing, writing, researching, more arguing, more revising, and here we are. Thank fucking goodness.

Next week I will be enjoying the snow and the mountains, wine, whisky, DVDs, and catching up on my readings. Eat your fucking heart out.