Recent moot competition success for Hertford Law undergraduate Navin Sivakumar

16 July 2026

Second-year Law undergraduate Navin Sivakumar shares his recent achievements in major moot competitions. Mooting is a form of competitive courtroom advocacy, primarily for law students, where participants test their skills of persuasive advocacy in a simulated hearing before a panel of judges.

National success

‘At the end of June, I won the Kingsland Cup, a national moot on administrative and environmental law, organised by Francis Taylor Building. This was the first time since the competition’s inception in 2011 that it has been won by an Oxford team. I participated with a fellow Law undergraduate, Lukas Lim, from Brasenose College. The Finals were presided over by Sir Keith Lindblom, former Senior President of Tribunals and Lord Justice of Appeal. Our victory was the culmination of multiple rounds of oral and written submissions. We had been selected on the basis of our written arguments to advance to the semi-finals, against teams nationwide. We won the semi-finals against a team from Cambridge, in a round presided over by a High Court judge, Mr Justice Kimblin, and then won the finals against another Cambridge team to take the Kingsland Cup.

International grand slam

Over the spring break, I also represented Oxford in the 33rd Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Vienna, earning an honourable mention. The moot involved issues of arbitration procedure and international sales law. I was the only undergraduate selected to be part of Oxford’s four-man team, and was also chosen as one of the team’s two oralists. The Vis Moot is the second-largest moot competition in the world, and is considered to be a “grand slam” moot. We were ranked 33rd out of the 384 participating teams coming out of the preliminary rounds, qualified for the elimination rounds and earned an Honourable Mention for the Eric E. Bergsten Award for our performance. In connection with the Vis Moot, I also participated in “pre-moots” in London, Paris and the Hague. At the PCA Hague Vis Pre-Moot, the Oxford team was ranked an impressive 4th.

Thrills and teamwork

I am delighted to have had the chance to participate in the Vis Moot and the Kingsland Cup. Both were full-blooded immersions in written and oral advocacy. I developed crucial technical skills in legal research and argumentation. They were also an absolute thrill. I spent hours on my feet before judges picking apart my opponents’ arguments while making our case as irresistible as possible. We were not always successful, but every setback was a chance to scrutinise our strategy afresh. And the early losses made the eventual victories much sweeter.

I have also found mooting to be a brilliant team sport. I will carry fond memories of long evenings spent with teammates (sometimes in Hertford’s Gilbert Library!) trawling through legal databases, finding ways to parry difficult points and tearing up our arguments to start over. For the Vis Moot, the four of us worked on the same problem for six months, and travelled together to Paris, The Hague and Vienna, where we competed against advocates from all over the world. I learnt a lot from my teammates, in what was a gruelling but very rewarding experience.

I would like to thank my tutors for backing me, my coaches for their dedication, and my friends and family for everything else.’

Congratulations, Navin!