Winner of last year’s Oxbridge contest clearly no moot point

IT’S not just the annual Boat Race that sees teams from Oxford and Cambridge go at it hammer and tongs.

In fact this year’s law mooting competition was more than a match for the battle on the Thames, with both sides getting their legal briefs in a twist.

The bitter row blew up after Oxford erroneously claimed their team had won last year’s Herbert Smith Freehills Disability Mooting Championship.

That sparked a heated response from Cambridge, with its students posting jibes at Oxford for claiming the crown they had in fact lost.

It had been claimed on an Oxford Law Faculty website that its team had won the championship staged by the law firm last year, with the news item stating that “in a very close decision, Oxford were awarded the win”.

Students at Cambridge’s Pembroke College – from where the pair who had actually won came – took umbrage, especially after noticing the post was still live months later.

They embarked on a lively social media campaign in the run-up to this year’s final of the HSF moot, with “light hearted” posts questioning Oxford’s motives in claiming the win.

“The frustrations came out,” said one of this year’s contestants. “Students at Pembroke pointed out it was two students from their college who had in fact won the moot.”

Then, as if to add insult to injury, two students from Oxford went on to win this year’s mooting championships, held online last month.

Jake Emerson and Oliver Clement, of Magdalen College, Oxford, won the equality, disability and housing law debate – after what observers described as “high quality advocacy of both teams, which blew the audience away”.

Runners up were the Cambridge team, Jonny Yin and Saifullah Shah, of Downing College. Mr Shah, 20, said: “It was pretty annoying Oxford claimed to have won last year’s final. It was certainly a howler on their part to do so, though I don’t think it was malicious.”