GOLDEN TRIO: (From left) Talented advocates José Rodriguez, Maripau Paz, and Adriana Hardwicke celebrate their championship showing in Seattle.

A self-coached student trio vaulted Berkeley Law to victory at this year’s Hispanic National Bar Association’s Uvaldo Herrera Moot Court Competition, topping a field of 32 teams in Seattle to win scholarship money and bragging rights.

Adriana Hardwicke ’24 and classmate Maripau Paz decided to team up after Hardwicke learned about the annual contest. Hardwicke had competed on Berkeley’s Moot Court Team, Paz had chosen the Trial Team route, and they joined forces with Harvard Law exchange student José Rodriguez to make history.

Because the group wasn’t working through the school’s Advocacy Competitions Program, they had to raise money for the entry fee and travel costs. The Student Association at Berkeley Law and the La Alianza Law Students Association helped sponsor them, and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky topped off the funding.

ON THE MIC: Earlier in the year, Paz moderated a panel discussion at Berkeley Law’s California Racial Justice Act Symposium. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

“I’m really proud that we didn’t have a coach. All the other teams that made it to quarterfinals had someone leading them or telling them if their arguments were good or not,” Paz says. “It was a lot of teamwork, but we also made up for not having a coach with a really intense mooting schedule. By the time we got to the competition we had done almost 30 moots, and we felt it wasn’t our first time getting questions. I think that made us way more comfortable and ultimately more successful.”

The competition’s hypothetical problem concerned the constitutionality of a federal firearms statute and the applicability of another statute to the person indicted and convicted. After writing a brief for the respondent’s side, the moots began — at least two each week with classmates, Criminal Law & Justice Center Executive Director Chesa Boudin, and various professors listening to their arguments, asking questions, and trying to poke holes in their reasoning.

The contest itself was also grueling, with multiple arguments over the first two days followed by the final argument on the third day — a big difference, Hardwicke says, from moot court competitions she’d done before.

While it was an intense time, the students say their diligent preparation gave them a big advantage. The competition also asks teams to be prepared to argue for either side, further raising the difficulty level.

“Not only did we have a lot of practice beforehand … we were getting more practice throughout the competition every time we did it,” Hardwicke says. “There was a long road to get to the finals.”

“I’m really proud that we didn’t have a coach. All the other teams that made it to quarterfinals had someone leading them or telling them if their arguments were good or not.”

— Maripau Paz ’24

Hardwicke, Paz, and Rodriguez decided that whoever won their own coin flip would pick whether they argued for the petitioner or the respondent after the competition’s coin toss for each round.

“Basically every other team knew what side they wanted to argue because they knew which side they were better at,” Rodriguez says. “But we just wanted to make sure that each of us got an opportunity to argue.”

Paz, Hardwicke, and Rodriguez say they got a lot of nice feedback from lawyers at the event, and from some real-life jurists who judged the competition — a rarity for moot court events and a big part of the contest’s appeal, according to the students.

Looking forward, they’d like to see it become a tradition for a Berkeley Law team to compete each year, perhaps as part of the school’s formal oral advocacy program and potentially with one or more of them as a coach.

“I hope it continues,” Paz says. “I hope the legacy lives on.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw