RIVERVIEW, FLA. – Cooley Law School’s Moot Court team won the Best Brief award at Florida State University’s Claude Pepper Elder law Moot Court competition, held Nov. 7-9, at FSU College of Law in Tallahassee, Fla. The team consisted of law students from Cooley’s Tampa Bay campus: Gabriella Logiudice, Safa Kudia, and Colby Weron.
During the competition, 20 briefs from 20 Moot Court teams were evaluated, including teams from George Washington University, Baylor University, University of Chicago, Chicago-Kent, Stetson, University of California San Francisco, and Texas Tech. Law students from Cooley’s Lansing, Michigan, campus also competed in the competition, including: Arjan Malushi (brief writer), Larry Westcomb, and Jasmin Guillen.
The competition does not allow any help from outside sources with anything except the basics of brief writing. Teams could not talk with practitioners or professors about the legal issues raised by the fact pattern.
For Cooley, Logiudice was the brief writer on the team, while Kudia and Weron conducted research and spent countless hours debating the structure of each argument. They progressed to the elimination rounds, and faced George Washington University in their elimination round and did not progress.
“This competition draws some of the best Moot Court teams from around the country,” said Cooley Law School Professor Christine Zellar Church, who coached the Tampa Bay team. “All of our students learn so much from picking a fact pattern apart, researching the fine points of the law, writing a brief, and then engaging in oral argument with teams from other schools. We are all so proud of the hard work and excellence of our students.”
Cooley Law School was founded on a mission of equal access to a legal education and offers admission to a diverse group of qualified applicants across the country.
Since the law school's founding in 1972, Cooley has provided a modern legal education to more than 21,000 graduates, teaching the practical skills necessary for a seamless transition from academia to the real world. An independent, non-profit law school, accredited by both the American Bar Association and the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Cooley holds classes year-round at its Michigan and Florida campuses.