Events :: Touro Law Center

March 24, 2008

Touro Law Center Team Reaches Final Round in International Moot Competition

The Touro Law team on the final stage in Vienna for the prestigious 15th annual Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Moot in Austria (from left to right): Lena Davydan, Aleks Bespalov and Matthew Moisan.

Central Islip, NY – Touro Law Center’s student team advanced to the final round in the prestigious 15th annual Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Moot in Vienna, Austria. The competition included 204 teams comprised of approximately 1,400 law students from over 50 countries around the world. Congratulations to team members Lena Davydan, Matthew Moisan and Aleksandr Bespalov.

“This incredible performance demonstrates both the extraordinary commitment and talent of Touro Law students,” said Professor Jack Graves, faculty coach for the team. “This competition was a great platform for our students to prove they are among the best in the world.”

All 204 teams participated in four preliminary rounds over the course of four days, after which the field was reduced to 64 teams who competed in elimination rounds for a place on the final stage in front of almost two thousand students, arbitrators and law professors from around the globe. In reaching this final round, Lena Davydan and Matt Moisan successfully prevailed in their oral arguments against teams from Tubingen, Heidelberg, Stockholm, NYU, and Victoria, Wellington. In a very close final round, Carlos III (Madrid) ultimately prevailed, thus leaving the Touro team with the 2nd place award—an outstanding achievement.

Graves further explained, “Lena and Matt delivered what I thought was one of the most outstanding final round performances I’ve ever witnessed in the Moot, and their school, their state, and their country ought to be very proud of them.”

The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is the largest and most prestigious private law student moot in the world. The event was designed to foster study and increase global awareness in the areas of international sales law (focusing on the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the Sale of Goods) and international commercial arbitration (focusing on the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration) and also to bring students, practitioners, and law professors from around the globe together for a single event in Vienna. Each year, the Moot revolves around a fictional international transaction in goods, which includes an agreement to resolve any disputes in arbitration. For the students, the six-month enterprise includes the submission of written memoranda for both Claimant and Respondent, followed by oral arguments held in Vienna the week before Easter. In addition to students and coaches, the event draws hundreds of preeminent practitioners and law professors from around the world to participate as arbitrators.

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Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center has a new 185,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art law campus adjacent to and working with a state and a federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York. Touro’s new campus provides a one-of-a kind learning model for law students, combining a rigorous curriculum taught by expert faculty with a practical courtroom experience. Touro, which has a student body of approximately 750 and an alumni base of nearly 5,000, offers full- and part-time J.D. programs as well as graduate law programs