09 March 2015

Duberstein Musings

A week ago I posted here about taking a team of Regent law students to the 23rd annual Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot competition in New York. Our Friday morning flight from Norfolk to New York was cancelled so instead of a quick hour or so in the air it was a seven-hour road trip up the Eastern Shore, through Delaware, along the always-scenic New Jersey Turnpike, and then through the Lincoln Tunnel into mid-town Manhattan.

Saturday began the competition with 60 teams and saw our oralists Kathleen Knudsen and Andrew Butler compete in two sets of arguments. They did well in both but along with brief writer Aaron Lindquist we nonetheless spent all our free time refining arguments, developing illustrations, and coming up with metaphors in light of the judges' questions.

Saturday night into Sunday morning saw the team lose an hour of sleep to the switch to Daylight Savings Time but they performed at their best in the third preliminary arguments. Even though I couldn't be certain, I was confident Regent's team would advance to the next round of sixteen. Going from 60 to sixteen teams is a steep cut but we made it and thus it was on to two more sets of arguments Saturday afternoon.

The quality of Regent's opponents in both of the afternoon arguments was top-notch; no one gets to the top sixteen unless they're very good. While I gave the nod to our team with respect to both arguments, progress to the quarter-finals is based on cumulative points as scored by the two sets of judges and we did not advance.

All in all, a great experience for all involved and again props to the Boleman Law Firm and Rusty Boleman for making it all possible.

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