A team of University of West Los Angeles law students has won the Best (Petitioner's) Brief award at the 31st annual National Criminal Procedure Moot Court Competition, held November 1-3 at the University of San Diego School of Law. 

In moot court a team of law students writes an appellate brief and then advocates legal arguments on unresolved Constitutional law issues to a panel of judges and they field questions from a bench that typically includes a combination of actual judges and practicing attorneys. 

Third-year students Natalie Hairabedian and Edgar Portillo represented UWLA in this prestigious national tournament, which featured 40 teams from all regions of the country. The great majority of the participating schools in the competition are large ABA institutions. Both UWLA students, unlike most of their competitors, are working while attending law school.

In addition to winning the prestigious written portion of the contest, Hairabedian and Portillo advanced to the quarter-finals of the oral advocacy portion of the event, finishing in the top 8 of the 40 competing teams in that category.

Both students earlier completed Adjunct Professor David Glassman's Appellate Advocacy class. This is the third time Professor Glassman's students have won a Best Brief award in this competition. His former students have also reached the final round of the oral advocacy portion of the tournament. Professor Glassman commends these students for their outstanding achievement and appreciates the faculty members and moot court alumni (Adjunct Professors Miriam Billington and Sam Ekizian and alums Christopher Davis and Kristen Gozawa) who volunteered to assist this year's team during preparations for oral argument.