A Guide to Mooting - Foreword to the First Edition

Aberdeen University Law Mooting Society - A Guide to Mooting

Foreword to the First Edition by The Rt. Hon. the Lord Mackay of Clashfern, The Lord Chancellor

I am delighted to have been asked, as Honorary President of the Law Mooting Society of Aberdeen University, to provide this foreword to the Society's first handbook.

When I first went to Parliament House as a pupil to a leading junior, now Lord Grieve, I had the opportunity of listening to great masters of the art of advocacy pleading in court. Like most of my contemporaries I spent a lot of my time listening to those distinguished advocates and seeking to assimilate the art of which they were such masters. My colleagues and I learned that there is no one right method of advocacy. Each of them had their own distinctive approach which suited their different personality but all were effective in their different ways. We learned that you had to know the facts and the law of the case you were pleading very thoroughly since the judges probed the case deeply as it was being developed. Generally it was useless to be tied to a speech carefully prepared in advance, since it was highly likely that the judge by careful questioning would throw a new light on the problem by which the argument might be advanced in a different way from that which had been envisaged in the study the night before. We learned that one had to be open to adopt and adapt suggestions that might be helpful while discarding with courtesy, but firmness, suggestions that might be put forward as obstacles.

Nothing that I have seen or heard in subsequent years leads me to beleive that those very simple principles observed then are in any way flawed. They are, I think, as relevant today, both in court and moot, as they then were.

I very much hope that everyone who uses this handbook and participates in mooting will find it an enjoyable and educative experience.

I wish you all success.

LORD MACKAY OF CLASHFERN

London

August 1991

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