Meet the NLIU team that won the Amity International Moot, 2015

The team of Addway Bandyopadhyay, Vikram Amrawanshi and Madhura Khandekar from NLIU, Bhopal won the Amity International Moot Court Competition 2015 which was organised this month. The team from Army Institute of Law, Mohali were the runners-up..In this interview with Shreya Vajpei the team talks about their experience at the competition..Shreya Vajpei : Why did you choose this moot?.NLIU: I have always chosen to work on unconventional moots ranging from Air Law to International Trade law. Further, I have always been fascinated with International Law as a whole. International Criminal Law, as a subject, is not something taught in law school and hence, researching on a relatively new field of law was particularly exciting. A common ground for Addway, Vikram and I was our love for International law, which planted the seeds for the formation of this team. Addway (my co-speaker) and I were particularly excited about arguing in front of the International Criminal Court, as we were intrigued with the entire process of a criminal trial..SV: How did you prepare?.NLIU: We knew we had to be very thorough with our basics of International Criminal Law and International Humanitarian Law. Therefore, the first step was to read up the basics of International Criminal Law. A major focus for us was brainstorming and coming up with various combinations of innovative arguments, as we were sure the only way to succeed was to stand out from the crowd. Playing the devil’s advocate during these sessions really helped, as streamlining our research was vital, so that we spent the least amount of time drafting the memorial. After, we had our research prepared along with the line of argument, we divided the drafting work between ourselves to maximise our time. Addway and I were mooting for the first time together, however we were well aware of each other’s strengths, and we played off each other, which in the end was key to our win. Vikram, was of course a tremendous help on the research side of things, and summed it up with winning the Best Researcher award..SV: What was the competition like?.NLIU: There were 37 teams in the competition, which in any moot is a sizable number. We felt that the preliminary rounds were a bit of a breeze, to be honest. However, the level of mooting during the knockout rounds was challenging considering that in some rounds we faced teams with similar research and content. All in all it was an enriching experience..SV: Any special moments from the Moot?.NLIU: Addway was always the maverick speaker in the team. Sometimes, his speeches would really put me in a tizzy as to whether I was doing as good a job as he was! But, he was really sweet in motivating me to go and match his scores, which pushed my morale a lot and it showed. In the end, I was not very far from his scores, which was the key in winning the competition. I guess, our team chemistry was the real special moment of this moot, where Addway and Vikram gave me a free hand in drafting and structuring of the memorial, and Addway assumed the responsibility as anchor of the team in speaking.