Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia School of Law recently finished ninth in the world at the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot held in Vienna, Austria, competing against 290 teams from 63 different countries.
The team was composed of second-year student Mark E. Grafton and third-year law students William D. Hamby-Hopkins and Ryan Peters Gentes, who both graduated in May. The team was coached by Phillip L. Ray Jr., former senior counsel for Siemens AG legal services and a 1978 law school alumnus. In addition to the team’s high overall finish, Hamby-Hopkins received an honorable mention as best oralist.
Organized by the United Nations, this tournament teaches students the art of advocacy before an international forum. Teams spend six months writing two full-length briefs on an international commercial law complex problem. This year, the UGA team argued against schools from the Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Italy, Serbia and the Netherlands.
The law school’s advocacy program has had a record year, bringing home four wins in national competitions. In addition to the national trophies, several regional titles and individual team honors were also earned.
UGA School of Law
Consistently regarded as one of the nation’s top public law schools, the School of Law at the University of Georgia was established in 1859. With an accomplished faculty, which includes authors of some of the country’s leading legal scholarship, Georgia Law offers three degrees-the Juris Doctor, the Master of Laws in U.S. Law and the Master in the Study of Law-and is home to the renowned Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy. The school counts six U.S. Supreme Court judicial clerks in the last nine years among its distinguished alumni body of more than 9,700. For more information, see www.law.uga.edu.
