UH Blackstone’s National Criminal Advocacy Competition 2018

Two teams from the Oxford Brookes Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) programme have been highly successful in the leading national criminal advocacy competition.

This year the School of Law entered two teams into the 2018 UH/Blackstone’s National Criminal Advocacy Competition. The ‘A’ team of Alice Aubrey-Fletcher, Dana Bilan and Gregory Chilson were unbeaten, and narrowly missed qualifying for the national finals, while the ’B’ team of Bramble Badenach-Nicolson and Carola Binney qualified for the national finals in first place, and will now go up against 7 other teams on the weekend of 21-22 July.

The UH/Blackstone’s National Criminal Advocacy Competition was founded by the Hertfordshire Law School. It involves students undertaking a series of mock trials and pre-trial applications such as those relating to bail and character.

Advocacy competitions differ from traditional mooting as they take the form of a full criminal trial, including opening and closing speeches and the cross-examination of witnesses (role-playing actors).

Marc Howe, Principal Lecturer in Law and joint team coach, commented: “Both Oxford Brookes teams performed extremely well in their second round matches, in which they were drawn against the University of Lincoln and the University of Exeter respectively. A special congratulations to Bramble and Carola who qualified in first place overall.”

The School of Law regularly enters its students into mooting and advocacy competitions as part of its range of co-curricular activities aimed to promote graduate employability.

Pictured: (L-R): Bramble Badenach-Nicolson, Richard Latham QC and Carola Binney.