The Client Interviewing Competition for England & Wales
2011
The Client Interviewing Competition is a pioneering and very successful national competition for law students. It is an annual event which focuses on the invaluable skills of interviewing and counselling and centres on a simulated law office interview. Law students, working in teams of two, interview and advise a “client” -a role-playing actor. They are assessed according to well-established criteria which take into account interpersonal skills as well as their ability to handle a legal problem. This subject background to this year’s scenarios is Privacy, defamation and confidentiality.
Entering a team
Each law school may enter one team made up two students. The
students can be undergraduate or
postgraduate law students. Each law school may select its team in any way that it considers
appropriate, but usually this will be by way of an internal competition. No student may
take part in this competition on more than one occasion
even if they are now studying at a different institution. This is to
ensure that the experience of taking part is open to as many students as
possible.
The closing date for entries has now passed.
28 teams are taking part.
Heats
and finals
There will be two regional finals this year. These will be held on
29th January 2011 and hosted by Hull University and the University of Sussex.
Each team interviews 2 clients and eight or nine teams go
forward to the national finals at Oxford Brookes University on 5th March 2011. In the finals, each team interviews
three clients. The highest
scoring team over these rounds will be the winners. There is a reception
in the evening.
The
interviews
Interviews in this competition are always first interviews with new clients. The
client has already been informed that the interview will cost £50+
VAT unless they are legible for public funding and that the law firm charges £150 + VAT per
hour for future work.
International competition
The winning team receives a trophy and a prize from the Law Society Advocacy Training
Sub-Committee. They are then invited to go on to compete in the 2011
Brown-Mosten International Client Consulting Competition which this year will be
hosted by Maastricht University in April
2011. Click here for more details about the
international competition. The 2010 national winning team from Oxford
Brookes were runners-up in last year's international competition which was
hosted by the University of Hong Kong. 22 countries participated in the event.
Primarily, the aim of this competition is that everyone who participates will learn by their experience and the experience of others.