All India Moot Court Competition for KLA Trophy
********************* THIS EVENT FOR THE YEAR 2021 HAS ENDED *********************
About the Competition
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the prestigious 30th All India Moot Court Competition for the KLA Trophy, hosted by the Kerala Law Academy will be held via virtual mode from 10thto 13th of February 2021 from the Kerala Law Academy Campus, Peroorkada, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The competition is conducted through the online platforms ZOOM and GOOGLE MEET. All the participating teams should have good access to the internet and be able to access the above said online platform at the scheduled dates and time. This is a mandatory requirement for participation.
Team Composition
The Competition is open to all Law Colleges / Law Schools and Faculties / Universities, Departments of Law in India (hereafter “participating institutions”) recognized by the Bar Council of India. The participation is limited to LL.B / B.L. / B.G.L. students both in the Three year Scheme and Five Year Scheme. Students doing post-graduation in law and students undergoing correspondence courses are not eligible to participate in the Competition.
Only one team from each participating institution shall be registered for the competition. Each team shall comprise three members (two speakers and one researcher).
Registration Process
The team intending to participate must register on or before 25th January 2021 (25.01.2021) by submitting the duly filled Proforma provided on the Kerala Law Academy website (https://keralalawacademy.in/wp/) and making online payment of Rs 4000/- as registration fee through the online link provided in the Kerala law academy website (https://keralalawacademy.in/wp/forms/moot-2021/) or send Demand Draft for Rs 4000/- drawn in favour of “Kerala Law Academy Moot Court Society” payable at Thiruvananthapuram, to “ The General Secretary, Kerala Law Academy Moot Court Society, Kerala Law Academy campus, Peroorkada, Thiruvananthapuram 695005” to reach on or before 25th January 2021.
E-mail id: [email protected]
Registration Fees
for a team is Rs 4000/-
Team codes shall be allotted on the 26th of January 2021 (26.01.2021)
Dress Code
The dress code for the competition is formal. Men are required to wear a Black suit with a white shirt and a black tie. Women are required to wear a white shirt, Black trousers/skirt and a black jacket or Salwar kameez and black jacket. Gowns and bands are not permitted to be worn by the Participants in the Competition.
Memorials
a. Each team is expected to be ready with written briefs and oral arguments to argue for either side of the case. The Court will follow its own procedure within the accepted norms of judicial practice, and in case of doubt or dispute in the matter of procedure or facts, the decision of the presiding member of the Panel of Judges of each Court shall be final.
b. The teams must send the 4 hard copies of the memorial for the petitioner and 4 hard copies of the memorial for the respondent by 4th February 2021 (11:59 pm) and send a soft copy to [email protected], which must be in PDF file extension and Doc. with the subject of the email as “Memorial Submission”. The file name of the memorials shall be in the following format- For eg.- “Memorial Petitioner” or “Memorial Respondent”
The hard copy of the memorials shall be sent to,
The Student Convener
Kerala Law Academy Moot Court Society,
Kerala Law Academy Law College,
Peroorkada, Thiruvananthapuram-695005
Submissions made after the specified deadline may lead to penalties in the form of deductions from the memorial marks.
d. The Memorials shall not contain any information that will reveal the identity of the participating team, except their code numbers. The violation of which will attract disqualification.
e. There will be a briefing session for all the participants on the 10th of February 2021(Wednesday) followed by a draw of lots & an exchange of memorials in the evening after the inaugural function. The Memorials will be made available to the teams through email in their individual mail ids after the briefing session.
Contents
a) Memorial dealing with jurisdiction, issues involved in the problem, a summary of arguments and arguments supported by authorities, conclusions and prayers shall be prepared by each team both for the petitioner’s side and respondent’s side. The body of the Memorial shall not exceed more than 25 typed pages. The cover page, table of contents, index of authorities, jurisdiction, statement of facts, questions presented, a summary of pleadings, title page and back cover are not included in these 25 pages. But these 25 pages will include the pleadings, conclusions, and footnotes. Any issue or pleading, not discussed within the body of the Memorials shall not be included in any other section of the Memorials.
b) The following content specifications must be strictly adhered to:
Language - English
Font and Size (General) - Times New Roman (14 pts), Tahoma, Bookman Old Style, Arial, Verdana - 12 pts
Line Spacing (General) - 1.5 lines
Font and Size (Footnotes) - Times New Roman (12 pts), Tahoma, Bookman Old Style, Arial, Verdana - 10 pts
Line Spacing (Footnotes) - Single line
Page Margins - 1 inch on all sides (except right margin which shall not be less than 2 cms)
Footnote - Follow any of the uniform systems of citation [the use of The Blue Book: A Uniform System of Citation (2020, 21st edition) or (2015, 20th edition) (Harvard Blue Book) is preferable].
Cover Specification: Petitioner - Blue and Respondent – Red
Plagiarism
The KLA MCS reserves the right to impose a penalty on a team, at any stage of the competition, if the memorial or any other part thereof, is found to be plagiarized.
Evaluation
There shall be a Quorum of judges selected for each court from among a panel of judges constituted for the purpose including eminent Judges, Lawyers and Law Teachers from all over India. The finals will be presided by a full bench of sitting Judges of the High Court of Kerala.
Marks will be awarded to the memorials by the Committee of Judges out of a maximum of 20 marks. Each Court will assign marks for oral arguments to each individual participant and the team. Each individual's marks for oral arguments will be added with memorial marks to make the individual's marks out of 100. Out of 100 marks, the division of marks for each individual participant is as follows:
Written Memorial - 20 marks
Oral Arguments - 80 marks
Assessment of Memorials
The memorials shall be assessed out of 20 marks, by a team of experts on the predetermined criterion, as specified hereunder:
Clarity of Facts (5 marks)
Use of Law, Use of Authorities/Precedents & Citation mode (5 marks)
Argumentation and Clarity of thoughts (5 marks)
Presentation & Originality (5 marks)
Oral Rounds
a. The order of the competitions including the days, if any, and the side (petitioner/respondent) for which each team appears will be declared on the basis of taking lots before the commencement of the competition during the briefing session.
The entire scheme of the competition thus drawn out will be notified to the participating teams. The Society reserves the right to make any necessary alterations in respect of the side to be taken by the competing teams, in case, it becomes absolutely necessary due to withdrawal of any team/teams at the last minute, or if the competing teams had no opportunity to argue the other side of the problem. The host team, if it gets qualified, will not be able to participate beyond the quarter-final round.
b. The duration of each Court will not exceed one hour and ten minutes, including time taken to answer questions. To be precise each participating team will get 35 minutes including the rebuttals / sur-rebuttal. One speaker must speak not less than 10 minutes.
c. Rebuttal/Sur-Rebuttal: The maximum time provided would include the time that each team may want to reserve for their rebuttal/sur-rebuttal. At the commencement of each session, the team shall notify the Court Officer as to the division of time between the 2 speakers (including rebuttal/sur-rebuttal). In case any speaker continues to speak after the completion of his/her time, the additional time that was used will be deducted from the time allocated to his/her co-speaker, or from the time allocated for the rebuttal/sur-rebuttal, as the case may be. The teams can reserve a maximum of 5 minutes for the rebuttal/sur-rebuttal.
d. The final decision as to the time structure and the right to rebuttal/sur-rebuttal will vest with the Judges.
e. The language of the Court shall be English.
f. During the oral rounds, the team shall not be allowed to use any type of electronic devices such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets except the one they are using for accessing online platforms like zoom or google meet for the purpose of the competition.
g. Evaluation of the arguments in the oral rounds will be based on:
Knowledge & Use of facts
Correct articulation of facts, factual analysis & use of evidence
Correct articulation of legal issues and legal analysis
Knowledge of law & its interpretation
Use of authorities and citations
Response to questions
Skills of advocacy and persuasiveness
Language & style
Clarity, brevity & ingenuity
Court manners and general impression
h. Marks are awarded on agreed criteria by the Committee of Judges and the factors constituting the criteria shall be such as “EXCELLENT”, “GOOD”, “AVERAGE”, and “POOR”, based on the performance of the participants. The decision of the Committee of Judges shall be final.
i. The individual prizes will be awarded on the basis of the average of the total marks secured by the individual participant from the pre-quarter round. (The average of the total marks secured by the individual participant in the preliminary rounds or any round before the pre-quarter round, will not be counted for individual prizes).
j. In preliminary rounds, each team will have to argue for petitioner/appellant and for respondent (Two rounds).
k. 16 teams getting the highest marks after the preliminary rounds, will be selected for the Pre-quarter round.
l. If there are more than 50 teams including the host team, there may be qualifier rounds after the preliminary rounds and before the pre-quarter round, at the discretion of the organizers.
m. From the Pre-quarter rounds, out of 16 teams, 8 teams winning their respective rounds will proceed to the quarter-final rounds. The Quarterfinals, semi-finals and Final rounds will be held on a knock out basis.
n. The arrangement of teams for the pre-quarter rounds onwards will be based on their marks in the earlier rounds or on some fixed pattern/norms set by the organizers, and the slot of the teams as petitioner or respondent will be decided by lots.
Awards
Best Team
Second Best Team
Best Student Advocate
Second Best Student Advocate
Best Lady Advocate
Best Memorial
The winner will be awarded the KLA Trophy & other trophy, certificates and a cash prize of Rs. 1,00,000 (Rupees One lakh only) and the Runners-up will be awarded a trophy, certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 50,000 ( Rupees Fifty Thousand only). Other prize holders will be awarded trophy and certificates.
All the participants will be awarded E-certificates of participation.
Miscellaneous
Secrecy of Identity: During the course of the Oral Submissions, the speaker shall neither reveal his/her identity nor the identity of their College/University by any means whatsoever. Such actions on part of any member of the team will lead to disqualification of the team from the competition.
Scouting: Scouting is strictly prohibited. Teams found scouting will be disqualified immediately.
Online Platform
The competition is conducted through the online platforms ZOOM and GOOGLE MEET. The Meeting ID, Password and Link will be communicated to the teams via email 25 to 15 minutes before each round in which they are participating. All the participating teams should have good access to the internet and be able to access the above said online platform with a good camera. This is a mandatory requirement for participation.
Appeal Committee
The organizers are entitled to change the format of the competition, without prior intimation. In case of complaints/disputes, the same shall be submitted to the appeal committee, which shall consist of Sri. K. Hareendran, the Professor in charge of Principal of KLA as its President and two other faculty members of the host institution. The decision of the Appeal Committee shall be final.
Schedule of the Competition
Registration
25-01-2021
Online Desk Registration
10-02-2021 (2.00 pm)
Inaugural Function
10-02-2021 (5.30 pm)
Briefing Session and Pick of Lots
10-02-2021 (7.00 pm)
Preliminary Round 1
11-02-2021 (8.30 am)
Preliminary Round 2
11-02-2021 (2.00 pm)
Pre-Quarter Round
12-02-2021 (11.00 am)
Quarter-Final Round
12-02-2021 (3.00 pm)
Semifinal Round
13-02-2021 (10.00 am)
Final Round
13-02-2021 (2.30 pm)
Valedictory Function & Prize Distribution
13-02-2021 (5.00 pm)
Mandatory requirements for online arguments
The competition will be held either in Google Meet or Zoom or both. All the participants are required to have the respective app on their Desktop or Laptop.
During the competition, participants are required to use Desktops or laptops. Mobile phones can cause technical issues and therefore not permitted for video conference, for the purpose of participating in the competition.
Sound internet connection is a mandatory requirement. The organizers will not be responsible for any such connection errors from the side of the participants.
In each panel or section, there will be a technical assistant who will be helping the participants and judges to deal with the technical issues.
The organizing team will take all the responsibility in case of any technical error on the part of the organizers.
Screen Sharing or any kinds of malpractices are not allowed and if found, such a team will be disqualified.
When the competition starts the team members are asked to switch on their videos till the end of the session. With respect to the mike, the team member has to unmute it while they are speaking and mute when they are not speaking in order to avoid disturbances, failing which, points may be deducted from the score by the judges at their discretion.
Team members are requested to participate in the competition in a closed or disturbance-free area for the smooth conduct of the competition.
Link, passcode or entry for the particular slot will be sent to the registered email id 25 to 15 minutes before the rounds. The teams are supposed to join the slot 15 minutes prior to the actual time.
Every participant should use earphones during the rounds except in cases of medical conditions which should be intimated to the organizers in advance.
There should be a distance of 1 meter between the webcam and the participants.
There should not be anyone present in the room with the participants, except the researcher during the rounds and in case of any malpractice, the team will be disqualified.
Contact
For any queries, please write to [email protected] or contact any of the following:
Dr. Dakshina Saraswathy – 9744169215 (Assistant Professor & General Secretary, KLA Moot Court Society)
Sunil Kumar S – 9744036660 (Assistant Professor & Member of MCS Faculty Team)
Nithin Rajeev – 8075278235 (Student Convenor, Moot Court Society)
