Congratulations to Melissa Brown and Sara Thompson who won this year's finals on Saturday 27th February. The event was hosted by Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford. Sarah Ingram and Andrew Kendall from Cardiff were runners-up with Michael Polak and Lea Christiaansen from City University coming third. Melissa and Sara will be representing England & Wales in the International Client Counselling Competition in Hong Kong from 7th-11th April.
The other teams that took part in the finals were Anglia Ruskin University (Jenna Abbott & Rachel Eldridge), University of Hertfordshire (John Goh & Linda Fail), Hull University (Line Kristensen & Tom Bell) , Leicester University (Christopher Towland & Ben Taylor with Madeline Atkins in support), Liverpool John Moores University (Kathryn King & Catherine Magee) and Manchester Metropolitan University (Lauren Mayer & Jennifer Seex).
This year's topic was white collar crime. 24 teams took part in this year's national competition with 12 each at the regionals at Cardiff and Staffordshire Universities on 30th January. Thank you to Julie Price and Rhonda Hammond-Sharlot for organising these events so efficiently. It is good that we have been able to maintain the level of entry this year and well done to all in actually getting to the regionals despite the bad weather! The other teams that took part this year were University of Bradford, De Montfort University, University of Greenwich, Keele University, Kingston University, University of Liverpool, Newcastle University, University of Reading, Sheffield Hallam University, Staffordshire University, University of Sussex, Swansea University, University College London, University of Warwick and University of Westminster.
In the finals, the teams had to advise a senior publishing editor who was being threatened with criminal proceedings by an employment agency, the female MD of a construction company who had been involved with illegal bid-rigging and a disgruntled executive who had been involved with unlicensed software (and wanted to blackmail the boss). Congratulations to you all on handling these difficult situations so well.
The finals were superbly organised by Lindsey Squire and Michelle McCanna and their team (including Richard Edwards). Everything ran very smoothly. Lindsey is retiring after the competition and she was presented with a card and a bouquet of flowers as a thank you for all her efforts over the years. Lindsey has coached am astonishing 6 national winning teams. This is far ahead of anyone else and is indicative of her expertise in lawyers' skills and brilliant teaching ability. Last year's Anglia Ruskin team of Lindsey Crockett and Kim Corby also finished runners-up in the 2009 International Competition. So thank you again Lindsey. We wish you a happy retirement -but we do hope we will be able to still use some of your know-how in the future!
Graham Robson
Chair
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