The past three years, I've been heavily involved in a moot competition entitled the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Competition. I was a member of the last two University of Denver Sturm College of Law teams for the 13th and 14th competitions between 2005 and 2007. The competition takes place in both Vienna, Austria and Hong Kong, China each year. You can see the Vienna competition website here: Willem C. Vis Moot Competition Website. The Hong Kong competition website is here: Willem C. Vis (East) Moot Competition Website. This year, I am coaching a new team for my business school at the University of Colorado Denver. I noticed a few European business schools at the competition in Vienna, so I figured, why not try to create a team at an American business school? Based on some quick research, it looks like we will be the first American business school in the competition!

The competition takes place once each year and involves the sale of goods between a buyer in one country and a seller in another country. For example, the 13th Moot was about a printing machine for chocolate candy wrappers. The 14th Moot was about fuse boxes that were installed in a new office complex. The current 15th Moot involves the sale of 20,000 cases of Blue Hills 2005 wine from a wine cooperative to a giant super market. When a scandal comes out in a tabloid newspaper that the wine supposedly contains anti-freeze, all hell breaks loose and the super market tries to revoke their offer to purchase the wine. The competition always uses the same fairy tale countries of Mediterraneo, Equatoriana, and Danubia.

Something always goes wrong with the goods, anti-freeze will tend to do that, and we end up with an arbitral dispute under the arbitration rules of one of the moot sponsors like the Chicago International Dispute Resolution Association, the Court of International Commercial Arbitration, Romania, or this year: the JAMS arbitration institute.

The competition requires the submission of a claimant's memorandum and a follow-up respondent's memorandum, each limited to 35 pages of substantive argument. The actual oral arguments take place in Vienna, Austria and Hong Kong, China in March. There are three arbitrators, and two students from each team argue together. Picture three tables arranged in a U shape with all parties seated, the arbitrators at the middle table and the claimant and respondent teams facing each other. The arguments last about an hour.

My team at the University of Colorado Denver Business School consists of Jason Doedderlein, Hanna Shanes, Tracy Nicholas, Renee Dyrda, and Michael Chin. My co-coach is Ted Gleason, who was on the last two DU Law teams with me. I have a huge amount of respect for these five teammates because they've taken intricate legal concepts and rules and managed to come up with good arguments and a good claimant's memorandum. All this in the middle of an intense 11-Month MBA program. We are finishing up our respondent's memorandum now and beginning our practice oral arguments. Our team will be arguing in Hong Kong the first week of March 2008.

We argue against:

1. The University of Munich (Germany)

2. Victoria University (Australia)

3. The University of Mainz (Germany)

4. Chinese University Hong Kong (China)

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my incredible coaches from the DU Law team, Lucky Vidmar and Aubrey Ardema. I learned so much from them and had so much fun that I place this as one of the absolute best experiences of my life. I hope that my attempt to coach a new team at the University of Colorado Denver is a tribute to how much and how well they taught me the last two years.

I will soon post more information about my team's struggle through this competition!

Todd A. Wells