Help USJ Law Students Fund Their Participation In The Most Prestigious International Commercial Arbitration Competion!!!

Organized by the Association for the Organization and Promotion of the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, and supported notably by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the Vis Arbitral Moot is the world’s most prestigious academic competition in the field of international commercial arbitration.

Said competition aims to foster the study of international commercial law and arbitration for resolution of international business disputes through its application to a concrete problem between two parties and to train law leaders of tomorrow in methods of alternative dispute resolution (if interested, you can find out more about the Vis Moot at: https://vismoot.pace.edu/site/about-the-moot).

USJ 3^rd and 4^th year law students have been taking part in this competition since 2012, competing against such universities as King’s College London, Harvard, NYU, McGill, Panthéon-Assas, Fribourg, Genève, Munich and Hong Kong to mention but a few. This year’s Moot groups 350 universities coming from over 67 countries, and the oral pleadings phase is scheduled to be held in Vienna, Austria, in March 2018.

Although USJ students are not naturally familiar with arbitration (we have no course on arbitration in our curriculum- yet!), previous USJ teams have been able to achieve considerable results in a very short period of time. Our previous best is rank 14, not to mention the individual awards won by some of our colleagues. This year’s team is doing everything that is within its capabilities to achieve a new best, aiming for nothing short of rank one and determined to make sure that the names ‘USJ’ and ‘Lebanon’ make their breakthrough in the international commercial arbitration arena.

Our team has been working on its target for two months now.

The first stage of the competition (submission of written memoranda) took off. The work already achieved looks promising, and in a couple of months ahead we are going to prepare ourselves for the second phase- the oral pleadings phase- which is scheduled to be held in Paris and Vienna from the 22^nd till the 29^th of March 2018. Our school will provide us with a small amount, but our team still needs to amass an approximate sum of 25,000 US$ in order to cover all costs pertaining to an effective participation in the oral pleadings. These include transportation to and from, as well as accommodation expenses for the 8 members and the coaches' stay in Paris and Vienna.

We were hoping that with your help and contribution, we will achieve USJ team's personal best.