18 pupils in Lower 6 and Upper 5 travelled to London for the national finals of the Independent School’s Mock Law competition which was held at the Old Bailey. A tough day of legal battle saw the team secure a very impressive third place. Below, are various reports from pupils in the lead up to the competition.

Middle Temple visit (Barnaby Karlson-Evans)

After arriving at Liverpool Street Station (and grabbing a selection of coffees and snacks), we made our way to Middle Temple; one of the four Inns of Court that members of the English bar are a part of. We met with the director of education there, who gave us a tour of the building, and its surrounding gardens. We were also shown a selection of original artworks - a particular favourite of mine was ‘The Judgement of Solomon’ - a Roman painting regarding two mothers fighting over the custody of a child. This is evidently a fitting painting to be on display - King Solomon had to exercise a degree of impartiality, and made use of logical tests to determine who was the true mother of the child - UK courts are built upon the very foundations of being unbiased.


After the tour, we were given the opportunity to have lunch in Middle Temple Hall - we were served a fantastic lunch, and on each of our messes (tables), we sat with a barrister, or students learning law, which provided us with an in-depth insight into what a career in the field entails.

Royal Courts of Justice (Sourish Brahma)

Upon arrival to the Royal Courts of Justice, I admired the old and Medieval look of the exterior with the RCJ emblem to the right of the door as we entered, a brilliant combination of black and gold. After passing the security checks, the interior was equally magnificent on the inside as it was outside, the centre of the main hall containing a list of the different court trials going on within the 88 possible courtrooms. My friends and I decided to do a little bit of snooping around and visit some of the publicly open court cases and explored the varying courtrooms. We found a door that had no posted signage (usually indicating that we can go inside as a member of the public) and decided to send to of our trusted members inside, two by two, the rest of us waited outside for a minute or longer to go in. Only about 30 seconds later did our first two come back out, we were confused as to why they came out so abruptly, to our surprise it was a private case involving family matters, so we continued our exploration and laughed about the incident in embarrassment.

After further admiration of the paintings in the main hall, we then went to a Court for a workshop workshop which comprised of a real case about a blazing car murder back in 1931. Alfred Arthur Rouse suffered memory loss from a WWI shell explosion wound and was traumatised to the point of where he couldn’t tell the truth, Rouse was the primary suspect in a case where a man was so badly burnt he couldn’t be identified. I was on the defence, and it was my job to prove that he was innocent using the small number of facts given. After a long and gruelling 2-hour trial, we found him not guilty, I found the workshop very insightful on how cases took motion in the past and learnt that in the real case he was proven guilty and confessed to the murder, I also enjoyed the thrill of coming up with persuasive facts about the case and the world at the time to convince the jury that he wasn’t guilty while remaining composed.

Mock Law competition (Vishnu Sudeep)

Wake up time… 06:45. Breakfast… 07:30. Out of the hotel by 08:00. Saturday 29th June. It was the day of the final. (Dramatic, I know). We headed to the Old Bailey on foot and arrived in good time. After successfully passing through security (whew!), we made our way up the magnificent marble steps to the upper courtrooms. There we met our fellow competitors, all pacing up and down before the competition started. After thoroughly scouting out our competition, we completed our morning briefing, and the tournament began. While some of us went off to deliver our cases, the rest of us became part of a jury.

Walking into one of the many courtrooms of the Old Bailey, it felt like we had walked into somewhere we weren’t meant to be! We certainly felt honoured to be there.

Succeeding two tense but rewarding rounds, and happy with our performances thus far, we sat down for lunch. A Tesco’s meal deal was the perfect way for us to relax for a few minutes. By 14:20, it was time for the final round: R v Hynes. All eyes were on our final team to pull through and deliver the best performance they can.

Hours passed, and the results were in. Being up against so many talented schools, we knew it was all to play for. Thankfully, all of us put in the best performance we could, and we came home with the bronze, thus placing Norwich School third in the country. We were incredibly proud of our achievement with probably the most annoying bit being that we were not so far off from first place! All in all, it was an incredible experience, and it certainly enriched every single one of us who were there.