Some facts: Between 7-10 November, the Polish Chamber of Commerce together with the European Legal Studies Institute held the oral rounds of the first ever Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) International Arbitration Moot Court Competition. A fictitious dispute was drafted by Fryderyk Zoll (Jagiellonian University) focusing on service contracts, more specifically in the construction business, which was to be settled by the Polish Chamber of Commerce in arbitration proceedings.

MEPLI decided to coach a team, so together with my property law colleague, Willem Loof, I had the great pleasure of getting to know and working with five remarkable students: Tom Dopstadt, Maryam Salehijam, Stephanie Kohl, Katja Zimmerman and Armin Lambertz representing Maastricht University.

After going through a written round focused on delivering a Statement of Claims and a Statement of Defense, the team was selected together with other seven to compete in the final oral rounds held in Warsaw. The geographical representation of the finalists was rather diverse, as the final round brought together two teams from Poland (University of Silesia in Katowice, Jagiellonian University in Krakow), one team from Russia (Saint-Petersburg State University), one from Germany (University of Bayreuth), the United States (South Texas College of Law), from Kosovo (University of Prishtina) and of course Maastricht University.

The preliminary oral rounds brought us first before Bayreuth and Saint Petersburg, and upon qualifying further, we met Prishtina in the semifinal. Having the honor to reach the final itself, we were announced winners of the competition after a challenging session against Silesia.

Some thoughts: Moot court competitions are an interesting species. A combination of skills, passion, team work, talent, luck, time (a lot of time) and management, not to forget the social component. I am a tremendous fan of such events myself, having experienced quite a few as a student.

The most famous competitions of this kind, whether on public or private law, whether national or international, work with laws that are applicable in real life and that have been tested by courts one way or another. So the simple idea of working with the DCFR, one of the most well known European academic exercises destined to support Member State legislators with a common frame for law-making in private matters, was quite difficult to tackle in the beginning. In spite of the lengthy commentaries, when zooming in on legal issues the comparative web is sometimes not specific enough. This was our first challenge. We managed to solve it by taking the comparative research even further, and in spite of the DCFR’s autonomous interpretation, searching for answers regarding issues such as defects of consent or withholding of payment for defective works in the national laws of Member States, to better understand and apply the DCFR provisions.

The second great challenge was preparing on Skype. With the start of the pleading preparation, the team was never under the same physical roof until one day before the start of the oral rounds. Three of our students are currently doing their exchange programmes, so with Tom in Hong Kong, Maryam and Armin in Glasgow, and Katja and Stephanie in Maastricht, we had to reinvent oral training. Luckily, the immense dedication of each of them to the greater good of the team did not let us down. Taking their task as serious as possible and preparing with passionate curiosity, the team managed to rapidly gain a strong sense of direction. Where this took them – it became clear when the organizers announced the winners. Our very own Katja described the process of collaboration by referring to the words of Henry Ford: ‘Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.’

Some conclusions: The organization of the competition was very well assembled. Apart from the fact that students got to interact with prestigious Polish law practitioners, the organizing team ended the event with a panel discussion formed by Chantal Mak (University of Amsterdam), Hans Schulte-Nölke (European Legal Studies Institute Osnabrück), Fryderyk Zoll (Jagiellonian University) and Maciej Zachariasiewicz (Leon Kozminski University in Warsaw). The sophisticated insights offered by the panelists into the very drafting of the DCFR was without a doubt rewarding for an audience that had been preparing various corners of the DCFR since the problem was issued in April.

What did we take with us from this experience?

Well first of all, there’s the DCFR aspect. How did it work in practice on the service contracts segment we had to prepare? Remarkably well is the answer. Apart from having no case law to rely on for the interpretation of specific provisions, the application of the DCFR did not raise any concerns that are not already present in national law. Is the DCFR difficult to grasp because when talking about unfair exploitation the avoidance term is left under the discretion of reasonableness? I would answer this in the negative, since in practice both parties to the dispute could profit from what is academically considered an ‘open-ended concept’ attack on predictability. So overall, it was a pretty interesting experiment, since as Fryderyk Zoll put it, these students were the first lawyers ever to practically apply the DCFR. This makes for innovative methodology as well, as a lot of ink can be used to describe the politics of the DCFR, but its actual application might show different. Having said that, we are definitely going to represent Maastricht University at the competition’s next Warsaw edition in 2014.

Second, there’s the educational aspect. Students with amazing talent need to be supported in their endeavor to find their legal identity; and what better way than flirting with a specific field of law for the period of the Moot Court? Although all pleadings were professional and well prepared, the organizers chose three students who according to them had the best performances. We were happy that one of these three was our Armin. Moreover, the Skype experience encouraged us to consider technology as a friend rather than a foe when it comes to academic collaboration. With some internal support from Maastricht-based Paul Adriaans, we were able to gather online and benefit from the current state of art of online conferencing. Having collaborated so smoothly is in my eyes enough to support the increasing role of online platforms in education.

Third, there’s the social aspect. As Stephanie put it: ‘We were still happy to see each other even after spending 32h together working on the memorandum’. Teams are normally selected as a sum of excellent individuals. Our team came to us as a group of friends who had academic appreciation for each other. I believe this was a very important lesson, as being individually competitive can only take a team so far. Thinking about the team, what is best for the team and accepting decisions made in this light, was essential for team work in our case. Eventually, it was the contributive competitiveness of Katja, Armin, Stephanie, Maryam and Tom that helped them achieve such good results, and that ensured they are still friends after having worked together. No tears, no dramas, just very good work.

Well done, team. Well done.