Monday, March 30, 2015

Mon, 30 Mar 2015
Dave Thompson

The moot court program at Liberty University School of Law continues to see a level of success unprecedented in the school’s brief history.

Liberty took first place this weekend in the Irving R. Kaufman Memorial Securities Law Moot Court Competition, besting a field that reads like a who’s who of top law schools with solid business and securities programs.

The team of Joshua Turner and James Sosnoski defeated Florida State in the final round, arguing in front of a panel of judges that included U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. As an added bonus, they were treated to dinner with the associate justice and his wife.

“To have a Supreme Court (associate) justice tell you that you’re the winner was pretty special,” said Professor Scott Thompson, director of the school’s lawyering skills program and coach of the team.

Twenty-seven teams competed in the 40th annual tournament, held at Fordham University in New York City.

Professor Rodney Chrisman, who teaches Securities Regulation and other business law courses at Liberty, served as an advisor to the team. He said the other schools competing had topnotch business and securities programs, so he knew competition would be stiff.

The field included Brooklyn Law School, and law schools from Duke University, Florida State, Georgetown University, New York University, Southern Methodist University, University of Florida, University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, William and Mary, and University of Wisconsin, among others.

In the preliminary round, Liberty beat UNLV and Florida State. The third team they beat in the preliminaries had not been specified by Monday. In the quarter-finals, Liberty defeated Southern Methodist University and took down the University of Iowa in the semi-finals.

“To win in that caliber of competition, it really does say something about the seriousness of our business and planning program,” Chrisman said.

He praised Turner and Sosnoski’s grasp of the issues, in addition to their argumentation skills.

“I don’t think any team in the tournament had a better understanding of the issues and the law,” he said.

Chrisman called securities a “very complex and intricate issue,” which made Turner and Sosnoski’s victory all the more impressive, as they outargued a field of schools with dedicated securities programs and recognized experts in the field, not to mention teams that had previous experience at the tournament.

“We’re preparing these students to really enter into this type of law and excel. Our students can compete with any students in the country,” he said.

As coach of the team, Thompson said he was impressed with all of his students’ arguments, particularly those in the final round, and said this victory is a significant one for the school, whose moot court program was recently ranked eighth in the nation by the University of Houston. Recent rankings have Liberty sitting at number 15, but those do not include the results from the Fordham tournament.

“To go into a tournament we’ve never competed in and win against the best schools in the country is a huge boost to the program.”

Chrisman said the experience of arguing before Justice Alito was a great experience for the students.

“Very few law students get to argue before Supreme Court justices, period. To be able to make the type of impression … was really something special.”