TYLA conducted its annual State Moot Court competition last month during the State Bar Annual Meeting. As in the past, the competition was a success. This year the problem was drafted by 3rd Court of Appeals briefing attorney, Zachary Hall, of Austin. The problem centered around a slip and fall accident at a law school. Many justices judging the competition commented that this was the best problem written in several years.
Committee chairwomen, Natalie Cobb Koehler and Cori Harbour, ran the competition with help from Texas Young Lawyers Board members, Clint Harbour, Rebecca Vela and Jeff Chandler, and non-board volunteer, Wendy Humphrey. Texas Young Lawyers Association staff member Denny Sheppard worked hard behind the scenes to ensure that everything ran smoothly. Seven law schools from around Texas participated in the three day event: Baylor, Houston, St. Mary's, South Texas College of Law, Southern Methodist, Texas Tech, and Texas Wesleyan.
Each school competed in the preliminary rounds with the four highest ranking teams advancing to the semi-finals. The four advancing teams were South Texas, St. Mary's, Texas Tech and Texas Wesleyan. These teams competed before panels of sitting and former appellate court judges, sitting trial judges, and appellate law specialists. For the championship round, Texas Tech defeated South Texas College of Law with the justices of the Texas Supreme Court presiding over the round.
A big thank you goes out to all the lawyer volunteers who served as judges over the three days and to the Houston Young Lawyers Association for their help in recruiting judges. Lawyers and judges from across the greater Houston area provided dozens of attorney volunteers to judge the competition.
TYLA has already started preparing for next year's competition, which will focus on current issues in criminal law. The competition will be held in Dallas during the State Bar's Annual Meeting in June, 2009.
