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I am already on LR w/ SA in hand.
But i was accepted a position in moot court. is the extra work and resume line worth it (as far as employment goes, such as lateraling)?

Absolutely not.

Honestly, I have a hard time coming up with a good reason for people who don't even have journal to fall back on as an extracurricular.

No point unless you like it or want to clerk. You've already got the offer for the summer, that's mostly all it was good for. If you get no-offered then it would might be a little useful.

It is worth it if you have time.

1. Moot court will give you additional experience writing a appellate briefs. No matter how good of a writer you are, you still have room to improve your writing. I do a good amount of writing for law review, but there is a difference between academic writing and brief writing.

2. Moot court will increase you oral advocacy skills. Most of use won't be in trial early in our carriers, but you may be asked to attend a hearing for a partner. Moot court is excellent training for hearings. It is also good preparation for giving a presentation to a group of partners that are asking you difficult questions. The whole process helps you learn to think and speak on your feet.

3. Moot court will also add another dimension to your resume. You may not like the firm you will work for this summer, or the firm may not make you an offer. It is a good idea to have as much on your resume as possible.

I understand that not everyone wants to do moot court, but it is worth it in my opinion.

It's largely moot due to already having a SA Position, but generally, it's worth it if your grades won't otherwise suffer for it.

Moot Court will you give you the ability to speak succinctly and think on your feet, as well as train you to write appellate briefs. In terms of its influence on lateraling later on in your career, I doubt it would matter much, if at all.

Didn't get an SA but have LR. I wanted to focus more on hopefully getting my note published/grades than adding another time commitment with Moot Court. Should I do it for the additional line on the resume? Is it extremely important for clerking?

As said above, do not do moot court for additional line on resume if you already have LR; it will not make or break anyone's decision to interview or hire you. Do it, if at all, for the practical value of it (brief writing, oral advocacy skills, semi-practical legal training). That goes for clerkships (screwed w/ out LR anyway) and private practice (LR>>>>>Moot Court).

If no LR, then you should definitely do moot court (IMO).

You have two years to do things that'll be on your resume for the next ten. Do the math.

zomginternets wrote:If no LR, then you should definitely do moot court (IMO).

I would agree with this, but I wouldn't necessarily agree with the rest of the post ("don't do it if you already have LR"). Just because you have LR doesn't mean you shouldn't also do moot court, provided that you have the time to do both. I did board @ secondary journal + moot court + RA in the same semester (with an otherwise full courseload), it's a significant time investment but it's doable and my grades didn't suffer just because I added moot court to it (in fact, it was my highest GPA semester).

Of course, you do need to prioritize. Grades are more important than having moot court on your resume. Getting your note published is likely more helpful than having moot court on your resume as well. But if you can do everything, do it. Any little boost helps.

lolwat wrote:Of course, you do need to prioritize. Grades are more important than having moot court on your resume. Getting your note published is likely more helpful than having moot court on your resume as well. But if you can do everything, do it. Any little boost helps.

I agree that any little boost does help, but as you noted, I was thinking about it more in terms of what gets sacrificed in return. I'm just doing LR + full course load this semester (2L), and I'm swamped (I don't know how you did journal + MC + RA). Some people might even just not want to sacrifice their downtime/sane time for a relatively small additional resume boost that one would get from LR + MC over just LR itself. I was offered both MC and LR and I turned down MC for that reason, and I'm still glad I did.

More power to you if you can handle it, but I think most people can't/don't want to.

lolwat wrote:
I did board @ secondary journal + moot court + RA in the same semester (with an otherwise full courseload), it's a significant time investment but it's doable and my grades didn't suffer just because I added moot court to it (in fact, it was my highest GPA semester).

Secondary journal is totally different than LR in terms of difficulty and time committment. Very few people I know do LR + Moot court and those that do really hate themselves for doing both.

NinerFan wrote:No point unless you like it or want to clerk. You've already got the offer for the summer, that's mostly all it was good for. If you get no-offered then it would might be a little useful.

Moot court doesn't really matter for clerking.

Don't do it for the line on your resume. Do it for the experience it gives you.

For experience, yes (if you want to litigate). For a resume line, no.

Younger Abstention wrote:For experience, yes (if you want to litigate). For a resume line, no.

This is lulz-worthy. Participating in and/or coaching a couple MC competitions isn't going to prepare you to litigate. You do it for the resume.

Surprised nobody has posted this yet: --LinkRemoved--