RULES

SHORT INTRODUCTION TO COMPETITION

Sports law Arbitration Moot is organized by the SportLex Law Institute and University of Ljubljana, Faculty of law. The aim of the SportLex Institute is to get the best Universities and best law students involved with the competition and to stimulate the study of sports law.

The competition is composed by two (2) stages: the written round and the final round.

The maximum number of teams for the written round is twenty-four (24) teams. In final round there will be four (4) teams.

Team is composed of three (3) students. They are required to argue a hypothetical case as if they were appearing in front of CAS.The parties may authorize the Tribunal to decide ex aequo et bono.

The second edition of the competition is scheduled to take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 30th to 31st March 2021. Participation in the Moot court is open to all students.

TIMELINE

Announcement: October, 2020

Team registration: until December 1, 2020

Case materials will be sent to teams until: December 2, 2020

Deadline for submitting questions for clarification: January 5, 2021

Submission of written memorandum: February 15, 2021

Announcement of the finalists: March 15, 2021

The final part – oral proceedings: will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia on 30th and 31st March, 2021.

GENERAL RULES

LANGUAGE

The official language of the competition is English.

PARTICIPATION

The competition is open for all law schools, law faculties and other institutions offering the law degree programme. 

Team is composed by three (3) students representing the same university and may be supervised by a coach. A diversity of gender is desired but not compulsory.

Team members are enrolled in Bachelor or Master Programme on their law school, law faculty and other institution offering the law degree programme.

Students admitted to practice, including having taken and passed the bar exam are not allowed to participate.

Present and former Members of the Organizing team are excluded from the participation.

REGISTRATION

Team shall register within the deadline, which is announced by the Organizing team. The register procedure is published on the website sportlex.si/slam. Each team must specifiy the contact person/team representative. This person could be the team member, coach or the faculty advisor.

Any changes in the team composition must be communicated to the Organizing team until January 5, 2021 the latest.

A team is considered as participating team after the Organizing team has received the official registration form and the registration fee in a timely manner.

Receipt of the registration form will be acknowledged via email to the team’s contact person(s).

FEE

The registration fee for the competition is EUR 375 per team (Early bird registration fee by 15 November 2020, EUR 320).The Organizing team will issue an invoice for payment of the registration fee. Payment can be made by bank transfer according to the following bank account:

Bank: Nova ljubljanska banka (NLB), Trg Republike 2, 1520 Ljubljana

Beneficiary: ZAVOD ZA ŠPORTNO PRAVO – SPORT LEX, RAIČEVA ULICA 50, 1000 LJUBLJANA

IBAN: SI56 0201 0026 2904 304

SWIFT: LJBASI2X

Each team must pay an invoice until 15 December 2020 at the latest (Early bird until 25 November 2020 at the lastest). The registration fee of a team whose registration is withdrawn prior to 15 December 2020 will be refunded in full, less any bank charges incurred. In case of withdrawal of the registration after 15 December 2020 there will be no refund of the registration fee.

Irrespective of the payment method chosen, all transfer fees must be paid by the transferor.

The payment of the registration fee will be acknowledged via email to the team’s contact person(s).

The Organizing team may under exceptional circumstances and at its full discretion give a full or partial waiver of payment of a fee to a team or upon a reasoned request of this team, which provides detailed information on why such a waiver should be justified.

EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE

Team must develop their own arguments without the assistance of anyone who is not a team member (i.e. external persons such as teachers, other students, lawyers,…).

Each team may have one (1) team coach. Coach can only assist the team in general (i.e. general discussion on the case, presentation skills, linguistic issues…). The coach may attend the oral proceedings but is not allowed to communicate with other teams and tribunal.

ACCOMODATION AND TRAVEL COSTS

Two (2) nights of accomodation will be provided to all student members of the teams. Coaches are not included.

Travel costs to Ljubljana, Slovenia are not covered by the registration fee.

All important information about accomodation, travel costs and also about the official programme are published on the official sportlex.si/slam.

All provisions under this paragraph (Accomodation and travel costs) are applicable only if the finals are held live in Ljubljana.

CONFIDENTIALITY

To ensure anonymity each team will have assigned an ID number at the start of the competition, which is emailed to the team upon receipt of the registration form and the registration fee. During the written proceedings teams will be identified only by this assigned ID number. During the oral proceedings teams will be representing their law school, law faculty or other institution offering the law degree programme.

DATA PRIVACY

There are strict rules which now govern data privacy within the European Union, and which impact the competition. Details of these rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can be found at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/justice-and-fundamental-rights/dataprotection/2018-reform-eu-data-protection-rules_en

Competition is an educational event and it is necessary that personal data be collected for the operation of the event. The Organizing team will not disclose any personal data to third parties unless your specific permission has been obtained. If you have concerns or queries about the way your data is being used please contact the Organizing team.

THE CASE

The case is based on a fictitious case prepared every year by the Organizing team. The aim of the case is to resolve one of the legal disputes in the sports field through the arbitration.

The case will be distributed at the same time to the team representatives and it will be also available on sportlex.si/slam.

Such disputes may involve matters of principle relating to sport or matters of pecuniary or other interests relating to the practice or the development of sport and may include, more generally, any activity or matter related or connected to sport.

CLARIFICATIONS

Any questions concerning the interpretation of the case that arises during the written phase of the competition must be emailed to the Organizing team at slam@sportlex.si.

Requests for clarification should be limited to matters that would appear to have legal significance in the context of the problem. The Organizing team has the right not to answer to the questions, if they are deemed to be irrelevant or could significantly alter the outcome of the case. After the deadline the case will be revised to include clarificatory information.

WRITTEN PROCEEDINGS

Every team must submit two (2) written pleadings, one for each of the parties. Both written pleadings must be in the form of PDF document named »assigned number_claimant« and »assigned number_respondent«.

COMPOSITION

Both written pleadings must be composed of the following parts:

• Cover page – the name of the case, the title of the document and team number in Times New Roman 16 pt font size.
• Table of contents – may not exceed one page in length.
• List of abbreviations – the list of used abbreviations accompanied by their full forms.
• Summary of the arguments (bullet points) – may not exceed one page in length. 
• Main argumentation – in this section you will structure your argumentation into comprehensible sub sections.
• Submission – it may not exceed 300 words in length. Suggest to CAS what decision should be issued in the case.
• List of sources – (books, judgments, law reviews,…). The system of citation should allow an easy and unambiguous identification of the documentreferred to.

Inside pages are in Times New Roman, 12 pt font size, interlinear space should be 1.5 and margins should be 3 cm top and bottom and 2 cm right and left. The text must be 1.5. spaced. In the footer should be the page number on the right side. For footnotes the font and style is Times New Roman, 10 pt font size.

The length of the written pleading must not exceed ten thousands (10.000) words including footnotes but excluding cover page, table of contents, list of abbreviations and list of sources.

Written pleadings must not contain any images, photographs, diagrams, charts, drawings or video recordings.

Please be informed that slang or contractions should not be used in the written pleadings.

Plagiarism in written pleadings will be sanctioned with the disqualification of the team.

SUBMISSION

Teams shall submit their written pleadings to the Organizing team by e-mailing the 2 PDF files within the submission deadline.

Teams that fail to submit their written pleadings to the Organizing team before the deadline are disqualified.

After the deadline expiration no Team may revise, substitute, add to, delete or in anyother manner alter and resend its written pleadings.

Please be informed that printed copies of written pleadings are prohibited.

The written pleading should not carry any mark that identifies the team, such as the name of the university, country or team members.

ORAL PROCEEDINGS

The oral proceedings will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Four (4) teams will participate in the semi-finals and two (2) teams in the final.

The time schedule will be communicated before the arrival to Ljubljana, Slovenia.

In case of force majeure, the oral proceedings will be held in form of a virtual hearings by use of a videoconferencing platform. Details of the selection of the platform and specific rules for the conduct of the virtual hearing will be communicated at a date prior to the hearings.

ROLES

Each team is required to plead in the following positions: as the claimant or as the respondent. The pairings will be made by a random draw. A coin will be tossed to determine the positions of the teams. The exchanging of written pleadings will be executed by the Organizing team on March 30, 2021.

HEARING

Each hearing proceeds as follows: The President of the Tribunal shall conduct the hearing and ensure that the statements made are concise and limited to the subject of the written presentations, to the extent that these presentations are relevant. Teams are not restricted to the arguments in their written pleadings but submission may not be changed.

The Tribunal may limit any part of their testimony, on the grounds of irrelevance. Once the hearing is closed, the parties shall not be authorized to produce further written pleadings.

The arbitrators are requested to act during the oral hearings the way they would in a real arbitration. Teams should be prepared that some arbitrators may interrupt a presentation with persistent questioning and some arbitrators may listen the whole argument without asking any questions.

During the pleadings it is strictly prohibited:

• for the attending audience to interact with the teams;
• photographing, broadcasting and recording of hearings, unless permission has been obtained;
• to take written notes or electronic recording for the attending public.

Only those who present are permitted to communicate with each other, as long as they do not hinder the person presenting at the moment.

Where a team fails to arrive for a scheduled session, the tribunal, after waiting for ten (10) minutes allow the round to proceed ex parte. The attending team presents its oral arguments and is scored by the tribunal.

Team members may only leave a room during a session in which they are taking part to go to the bathroom or for medical reasons.

TIME KEEPING

The main arguments of the both parties shall each be presented within fifteen (15) minutes.

The reply shall take no more than ten (10) minutes each, including to answer the tribunal’s questions.

The Timekeeper shall indicate with green, yellow and red card the last 5, 1, 0 minutes of the time allocated to the speaker.

The arbitral tribunal may exceed the time limits stated so long as neither team is allowed more than twenty (20) minutes to present its argument.  The responsibility of the tribunal is to ensure that the teams are treated fairly.

The timekeeper will participate in the evaluation of the team’s performance with the tribunal.

MATERIALS

Speaker may use notes, but is encouraged not to read from the prepared text.

The use of electronic devices (including digital watches) is prohibited during the pleadings.

Notes, legal books, textbooks and other materials shall be clearly visible at the table to allow verification by the Organizing team.

JUDGES AND MARKING

Judges, assessing the written pleadings are high profile law experts. Each of them shall act individually and independently. The scoring will be kept on official scoring sheet.

The written pleadings are evaluated by two members of the evaluating panel.

Judges will grade each pleading with maximum score of 50 points attributed as follows:

• correct legal analysis and argumentation – maximum of 30 points;
• presentation and style (logic, structure, citations, style) – maximum of 10 points;
• linguistic skills – maximum of 10 points.

The score the team receives for written pleadings is the average of the scores (note: maximum of 100 points) given by the two members of the Moot court Judges.

The dedicated member of the Organizing team is responsible for the calculation of the total score achieved by the teams.

Teams with equal score will be ranked by advancing from overall impression to written pleadings score only so far as the scores remain equal.

Judges are encouraged to provide constructive feedback to the teams however they are not obliged to do so.

Moot court Judges in the oral proceedings will be experienced arbitrators from CAS’s List of Arbitrators.

Participating teams and Moot court Judges shall not be in contact on any matter related that might influence the performance of the participants or the judgments. In proven cases of such contact, participants and the judge will be disqualified.

Teams are awarded maximmum of 50 points based on their oral performance in accordance with the following criteria:

• correct legal analysis and argumentation – maximum of 30 points;
• presentation and style (logic, structure, citations, style) – maximum of 10 points;
• linguistic skills – maximum of 10 points.

The score the team receives for oral pleadings is the average of the scores (note: maximum of 100 points) given by the two tribunals.

In the final teams are awarded maximmum of 50 points based on their oral performance in accordance with the following criteria:

• correct legal analysis and argumentation – maximum of 30 points;
• presentation and style (logic, structure, citations, style) – maximum of 10 points;
• linguistic skills – maximum of 10 points.

The score given to teams for oral pleading is entirely within the discretion of the arbitrator. There is no requirement that the arbitral panels agree scores. However, the arbitral panels may, and are strongly encouraged to, discuss scoring at the end of a hearing and prior to submitting the scores.

These scores are confidential and will only be revealed on the official team’s scoring sheets handed out at the end of the finals. Teams which are not qualified to the oral proceedings may be informed of their score by emailing the Organizing team.

AWARDS

The winning team, the best written proceedings team, the best oral proceedings team and the best speaker are awarded with recognition award and some practical prizes related to sports law.

 Important: to be entitled for the best speaker award, the speaker must have argued one whole session.

Each team member will receive the certificate of participation.

Letters of Recognition for participating team coaches will be prepared from the names of coaches submitted in the registration form.

PENALTIES

Applicable penalties for infractions of the rules:

*A delayed submission of the written pleadings will result in disqualification.

*Exceeding the mandatory word limit of 10.000 words will result in the following penalties:

***exceeding the limit up to 500 words = minus 2 points

***exceeding the limit up to 1000 words = minus 4 points

***exceeding the limit over 1000 words = minus 4 points + 1 point for each additional 1000 words

*Disclosure of the identity = minus 5 points.

*Non-complying with other formalities = minus 2 points for each of infraction.

*Inappropriate behaviour in the competition may result in deduction of penalty points (minus 5-10 points) or in extreme cases to the disqualification of the team.

*Team coach actively taking part in oral pleadings = disqualification.

*Change of team composition after registration without prior notification to the Organizing team = disqualification.

*Including pleading in the footnotes = minus 2 points for each of infraction.

*Missiong section of the written pleadings = minus 5 points.

These Rules are applicable to all procedures as of October 2020. The Organizing team reserves the right to make changes to the event program and rules in case of any exceptional circumstances. 

+ CONTACT US

Blaž Bolcar
blaz@sportlex.si
+386 40 455 677

Tilen Lamut
tilen@sportlex.si
+386 40 655 245

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