FDI Moot 2014

The University of Warsaw prevailed over NYU in the final of the 2014 FDI Moot held at Pepperdine University School of Law in October 2014. Warsaw had overcome Jagiellonian University in an all Poland showdown in the semi-final and last year's winner and this year's highest ranked team (memorials and preliminary oral rounds), Harvard Law School. Jagiellonian and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens ultimately shared third place, and HLS shared 5th place with Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo.

The round of 16 featured teams from 11 different countries: Brazil, Canada, Greece, India (3), Lithuania, Poland (2), Russia (2), Slovakia, Spain, UK, and US (2).

The Thomas Wälde Award for best Advocate went to Dominika Jędrzejczyk of University of Warsaw, followed by Anand Deshpande (Gujarat National Law University) and Max Bernstein (NYU).

Pepperdine will make one full-tuition scholarship for its Dispute Resolution LLM available to a top-20 advocate. The top memorials were produced by Harvard Law School, University of Ottawa, University of Warsaw, and Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and are published in this annual TDM special.

The panel for the final included Maria Chedid (Chair) of Arnold & Porter, Eric Van Ginkel of Pepperdine, and Diego Brian Gosis of Gomm & Smith. In addition, almost 70 arbitrators travelled to Malibu from all corners of the world to hear the preliminary and knock-out rounds.

Forty-one teams (with 189 students and coaches) had travelled to California, with a total of 69 teams participating through the regionals in Seoul and New Delhi. At this point I would like to thank several generous OGEMIDERS, FDI Moot alumni, FTI Consulting and Skadden for contributing to the Thomas Wälde Fund thereby allowing us to disburse USD8,300 to help five teams from less wealthy jurisdictions travel to Pepperdine.

The 2015 FDI Moot finals will be held at King's College London, and the 2015 case, which is being authored by John Gaffney and Marc Jacob, will be published in January 2015.

We hope to see you in London!

Christian Campbell
Center for International Legal Studies (CILS)

Christopher Gibson
Suffolk University Law School