Shanza Arif wins 2023 Mandy MacLeod Prize for Excellence in Mooting

For third-year law student Shanza Arif, participating in the competitive moot program at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law has been a transformative experience.

“Prior to law school, I thought my dream was to become a transactional lawyer and work on large mergers and acquisitions,” said Arif. “However, the moot program helped me discover that I want to be on my feet and in a courtroom. Now, the dream is to litigate landmark cases before the Supreme Court!”

A seemingly natural mooter, Arif was awarded the 2023 Mandy MacLeod Prize for Excellence in Mooting for her exceptional advocacy skills and her commitment to mentoring others in the moot courtroom.

Chris Samuel, director of the Faculty of Law’s Legal Research and Writing program, noted that Arif distinguished herself from early on.

"I have been impressed with Shanza's abilities since I first saw her moot in her 1L year. Since then, it's been an absolute pleasure to work with her as a writing fellow and to watch her develop further as an accomplished advocate.”

He offered high praise for her legacy in the program, saying, “In my opinion, she is one of the finest mooters to ever come out of our Faculty.”

Arif is no stranger to being honoured for her moot accomplishments. In her first year, she won the inaugural Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin First Year Moot Competition, distinguishing herself in a field of 184 students in the competition.

The following year, she received an honourable mention in the Brimacombe Selection Moot, an internal competition to determine the placement on teams to represent the Faculty at competitive moots that year.

That performance earned her a spot on the Faculty’s Gale Cup team. At the Gale Cup, Arif’s team competed against 20 law schools from across Canada, eventually winning fourth place. Arif and her partner, Annie Redmond, also received a prize for second-best factum out of 40 submissions.

In her third year, Arif won the Brimacombe Selection Moot and earned a spot on the Wilson Moot team, competing against teams from 13 other law schools and placing third overall.

In reflecting on the award, Arif said, “there's no way to put it, except that it's a huge honour, especially considering the past recipients of the award. They're all individuals who I've looked up to, and it's incredible to be deemed in the same league of mooters as them.”

Arif was also eager to recognize and credit her teammates and moot colleagues, noting the collaborative effort involved in preparing for moot competitions.

“When I think about the other mooters in my graduating class, many of whom I've been teammates with, there's so much exceptional talent. . . . I consider this prize a team award, because we all make each other better in the process of working through a moot problem for months on end,” Arif said, characterizing success in moot as “a team effort.”

Arif also expressed her gratitude for Samuel for his ongoing encouragement to continue in the moot program, as well as her husband Usman “for being my sounding board and biggest supporter during these experiences.”

In addition to competing, Arif served the Faculty’s moot program as a moot mentor and as a writing fellow in her second and third years, respectively. For Arif, this was an important opportunity to “pay it forward” for the important help and guidance she received from second- and third-year law students during her first year of law school. This included writing fellows as well as her moot mentor, who she characterized as “absolutely instrumental” in the path that she took in moot.

She credits this help to the collegial environment at the Faculty.

“I had always heard that the Faculty of Law was a tight-knit community, but I only realized how true the statement was after starting law school here. The upper-years really go out of their way to help the first-year students” she said, observing that this was particularly meaningful due to the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time required that Arif and her classmates attend their first year and a half of law school remotely.

After she receives her JD from the University of Alberta, Arif will be clerking for the Court of King’s Bench in Edmonton before completing her articles with Bennett Jones in Calgary.

The Mandy MacLeod Prize for Excellence in Mooting, which includes a plaque and a monetary award, was established in 2020 to honour the contributions of Mandy MacLeod, ’14 JD, as a participant and coach in the Faculty of Law’s moot program. The prize is awarded annually to a JD student who has “displayed exceptional advocacy skills at moot court competitions, both internally and externally,” and additionally has “provided mentorship and guidance to other Faculty of Law students in the context of moot court competitions.”