Chicago-Kent wins the best brief award at the 2017-18 Moot Court National Championship

The Chicago-Kent appellate advocacy team of Christopher Gerardi ’18 and Anthony Joseph ’18 won the first-place best brief award and finished as semifinalists in the 2017–18 Andrews Kurth Kenyon Moot Court National Championship. Only 16 law schools from around the country were invited to participate in this "best of the best" competition, held January 25 to 27 at the U.S. Courthouse in Houston, Texas.

In addition to winning the tournament’s best brief award, Chicago-Kent’s team excelled at oral arguments, losing only to the team from the University of Oklahoma that eventually won the competition. Gerardi and Joseph were awarded a combined $3,250 in scholarship funds for their performance in the tournament.

Christopher Gerardi earned a bachelor's degree in history from DePaul University. He is an executive articles editor for the Chicago-Kent Law Review and president of the Chicago-Kent Lambdas. Anthony Joseph graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor's degree in music and political science. He is the editor-in-chief of the Chicago-Kent Law Review and a legal writing teaching assistant. In 2017, Gerardi and Joseph, along with their teammate Erika Auger ’18, finished in second place and won the best brief award at the William E. McGee National Civil Rights Moot Court Competition. 

This is Chicago-Kent's second best-brief award in the Moot Court National Championship, a tournament of champions launched 10 years ago by the University of Houston Law Center's Blakely Advocacy Institute. Each year, its field consists of teams from the top 16 programs in the country based upon their performances in appellate advocacy competitions during the prior academic year. Chicago-Kent earned its place in this year's field by finishing seventh in the nation in the 2016–17 rankings. Chicago-Kent is one of only two law schools in the country to qualify for and argue in all ten championships. 

Chicago-Kent's Ilana Diamond Rovner Program in Appellate Advocacy, the umbrella program for many of the law school’s moot court activities, was established in 1992. Since then, Chicago-Kent students have won numerous individual honors and regional and national competitions, including consecutive titles in the New York City Bar Association’s National Moot Court Competition.