The Willem C. Vis Moot

The Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Moot is an international competition with the goal to foster the study of international arbitration and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). It is the world’s biggest moot competition in the field of civil law and is conducted in English.

Every October, the organisers publish a fictive case on which all the teams first compose a Memoranda on behalf of the claimant. The cases are typically complex but true-to-life: Last year’s problem (2019/2020) dealt with sustainability regarding the energy sector. The goal of the team is to find the most favourable arguments for the claimant and to present them convincingly in their memorandum. To achieve this, the team members are supported by the professors and coaches, but perform most of the work themselves.

After submitting the memorandum for claimant, the teams will then be assigned a memorandum from another law faculty to which they most respond and which must be rebutted.

The written phase is followed by the preparation of the oral arguments, during which team visits pre-moots and law firms in Germany and usually also around the globe. Finally, the highlight is the final round in Vienna where teams from all over the world (last year: 402) compete against each other. Which teams enter the round of 64, 32 etc. is decided by international tribunals which consist out of professors, lawyers and judges.