Students will be required to submit a preliminary rough draft response to the Compromis.

This assessment task complies with the University's early assessment policy. Its purpose is to engage students with their unit as soon as possible and to provide an opportunity for early feedback.

More specifically, this assessment task is designed to direct students to identify the issues raised by the Compromis. The preliminary response should be prepared as though providing a memorandum on the relevant issues raised by the Compromis. Students are free to agree upon the format of the response. The preliminary response should raise the issues for both the Applicant and the Respondent, but these may be dealt with together. Issues need only be raised in a general sense; students are not expected to provide answers to the issues, merely to identify them and possible arguments.

The preliminary response should include:

a)     a table setting out a timeline of important events set out in the Compromis;   b)     a summary of the legal issues;    c)     a list of the most relevant cases or other materials;        d)      a summary of each of the cases or other materials; and   e)     a short explanation of the relevance of the cases and other materials.

The Report is to be handed in to the Unit Convenor at her office. It is due Wednesday,17 October 2016.

It is a group endeavour, and each individual contribution will be assessed by the Convenor (after consultation with the Team).

It is essential that all student participants work as a Team, both in constructing the Memorials, and in preparation for oral argument, and for support during oral argument.Contributions to the Team and to work on both written and oral arguments are to be made by all Team members at all times. While this is a Team-oriented assessment, there is a mark for each individual contribution, which will be determined by the Convenor after consultation with the Team.

The written Memorials must comply with the 2016-2017 Rules (to be available on iLearn for this unit). Students must be familiar with the current Rules, but may also wish to scrutinise previous years’ Memorials.

Word length: The Pleadings section must be no longer than 9,500 words, which is inclusive of any footnotes and the Conclusion and/or Prayer for Relief; The Summary of Pleadings section must be no longer than 700 words; The Statement of Facts section must be no longer than 1,200 words. All parts of each Memorial shall be produced in a single file using Microsoft Word as appropriate. Word count shall be conducted using the standard ‘word count’ feature in Microsoft Word.

Please note that Cover Page, Table of Contents, Index of Authorities, Statement of Jurisdiction, or Questions Presented shall not be counted in calculating the number of words in each Memorial. The text of all parts of each Memorial (except for the cover page, table of contents, table of authorities and footnotes and headings) must be at least double-spaced. The text of footnotes and headings may be single-spaced, but there must be at least double-spacing between separate footnotes, and between headings and the body-text of pleadings. Quotations in excess of 50 words or more may be block-quoted and may be single-spaced.

Important Note:

The draft 9,500 word Memorials submitted for this assessment task must comply with the current ILSA Rules, but will be able to be revised by the Team before submission in accordance with the Rules. The due date for submission of the Memorials for the competition will be advised when known; it will probably be sometime in the first or second week of January 2017.The date for submission of this draft group Memorial is 27 December 2016.

Assessment:

Each individual's contribution to the Memorials will be assessed by the Convenor in consultation with the Team.

All students will make oral submissions during the preliminary parts of this Unit. The mark for oral submissions before the National Competition will be judged on the basis of each student’s performance in all preliminary practice moots leading up departure for to the National Final. Students will be individually assessed on this assessment item.The majority of these practice moots will occur before submission of the Memorials, so as to acquaint students with the varying arguments. It is on these preliminary oral arguments, and those before departure for Canberra,  that the Convenor will make preliminary judgements as to whom may be oralists in the National Finals. The decision as to whom will be the oralists in any of the National Competition rounds in Canberra will be that of the Convenor, in consultation with the Team.

Practice moots will commence as early as possible once the Memorials have been submitted to the competition organisers. Judges of practice moots will record a mark for each participant. Contributions of the non-speaking members for each practice moot will also be noted.