6th Moscow Pre-Moot
On 14 and 15 March 2015 Lomonosov Moscow State University hosted the 6th Willem C. Vis Moscow Pre-moot. The Willem C. Vis Moot is a leading competition for students, where the teams from all over the globe prepare written and oral submissions on the matters related to the international sale of goods and international commercial arbitration. This year’s moot case involved the issues of jurisdiction over a non-signatory to an arbitration agreement and emergency arbitration (the proceedings were governed by the ICC Rules), as well as the problem of avoidance for fundamental breach in commodity sales under the CISG.
While the main competition takes place in Vienna, each year various pre-moots are organized in leading law schools of the world with the aim to help the teams to train their arguments before Vienna. Lomonosov University hosts the Pre-Moot since 2010. The participating teams include Russian and foreign teams. This year, together with Russian teams, the University was happy to welcome Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz team (Austria) and Ankara team (Turkey).
Not only the Moscow Pre-Moot is a helpful step in preparation to Vienna rounds for those competing in the Moot, but is also a great networking experience. The Pre-Moot gathers partners and lawyers from various Russian and international law firms, such as Quinn Emmanuel, White & Case, Baker & McKenzie, Cleary Gottlieb, Morgan Lewis, Alrud, EPAM, as well as academics, former Vis Moot participants and coaches of the teams. It is therefore a unique opportunity for any interested lawyer or a law student to interact with other people sharing the same interests and working in the field of dispute resolution and commercial law.
Each year, based on the scores given to the teams and individual speakers (which plead for both claimant and respondent at least once) the organizers of the Pre-Moot announce the three top teams and speakers of the Pre-Moot. This year the winner was the team of Peoples’ Friendship University. The Graz team finished second, and the MGIMO team – 3rd. The Best individual speaker of this year is Oleg Blinov (MGIMO), the second – Ani Astabattsyan (Lomonosov Moscow State University), and the 3rd place went to Vladislav Osykyn (MGIMO).
Organizing the Pre-Moot would be impossible without the support of its partners. The Lomonosov University would like to thank the main partners – Monastyrsky, Zyuba, Stepanov & Partners Law Firm (and Yury Monastyrky personally), Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP (and ScoƩ Senecal and Yury Babichev personally) and White & Case (and personally David Goldberg and Julia Zagonek) and supporting partners – Morgan Lewis & Bockius (and Jonathan Hines personally), Lidings (and personally Stepan Guzey) and Baker & Mckenzie (and personally Vladimir Khvalei).
The University is also grateful to the media partner of the event – Russian Law Journal (www.russianlawjournal.org).
Essential assistance to the event was kindly provided by the members of RAA25 Organizing Commitee – Ays Lidzhanova, Roman Kuzmin, Andrey Chernov and Alexandra Shmarko and by Olga Narkaeva.
