Congratulations to Simon Paul, winner of this year’s Gray’s Inn Moot Competition, and of the Three Raymond Buildings Du Cann Prize for Excellence in Advocacy.
Richard Du Cann QC was one of the foremost – and formidable – advocates of his generation, a student and later a Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn, who practised from these Chambers for 40 years. As well as having a distinguished career at the Bar, he had a long association with the Inns of Court School of Law, including serving as Vice-Chairman of its governing body and chairing its Finance Committee. He died in August 1994 and it was only fitting that Chambers should honour his career by the setting up of an award.
For the first ten years, the prize of £1,500 was known as The Du Cann Memorial Prize for Excellence in Advocacy. It was administered by the ICSL and awarded annually to the student obtaining the highest aggregate mark in the Advocacy Assessments on the Bar Vocational Course.
Since 2008 we have been proud to associate our award with the Gray’s Inn Moot Competition, and we take great pleasure in attending the finals and witnessing the skills of the winner first-hand.
James Lewis QC, also a Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn, presented Simon with the annual prize of a cheque for £1,500 plus a copy of Richard Du Cann’s book, the Art of the Advocate, which Master Lewis commended to the all the students present as essential reading, even today.
Simon is currently studying the BPTC at Kaplan Law School, having converted to law at BPP the previous year. He was awarded Gray’s Inn’s Bedingfield Scholarship for the BPTC, as well as scholarships by Gray’s and BPP for the GDL. Prior to that, he studied Philosophy as an undergraduate at LSE, then completed a MPhil in Political Thought at Cambridge, spending a year working in China and in the UK in between. Simon has been accepted to Harvard Law School’s LLM course, and hopes to travel to the US this year, before returning to begin pupillage in 2014.
We send him our best wishes for a successful and enjoyable career at the Bar.
14th May 2013
