5th Sports Law Arbitration Moot (SLAM)

The 5th Edition of the international Sports Law Arbitration Moot (SLAM) 2024 Grand Final will take place on 12 - 13 April 2024 at the Court of Arbtration for Sport, Lausanne, Switzerland. 

The final round and award ceremony are held at the end of a special sports law conference for competitors and leading lawyers, academics and exectuives from the sports world. 

The SLAM is a world class competition, with the aim to promote greater knowledge of the values and rules of international sports arbitration, the go to dispute resolution mechanism in the sector.  

SLAM provides students from around the world the opportunity to:

1. Develop and showcase their legal and advocacy skills before the world’s leading arbitrators and practitioners virtually and in-person;
2. Gain real world experience of international sports arbitration under the leading procedural rules;
3. Receive training on writing submissions and advocacy from some of the world’s leading advocates and arbitrators in world sport.

The competition is open to all current students. 

SLAM is organised by LawInSport, the world’s leading sports law knowledge hub and global community.

The cases for each round will be based on real world scenarios and the registered teams will need to familiarise themselves with CAS case law and sport rules that may be relevant to their arguments. Teams will also be arguing these real-world disputes at the hallowed halls of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In the qualification round written submissions and oral advocacy will be evaluated by a selected panel of lawyers and CAS arbitrators. The successful teams will go through to regional rounds where the focus of the assessment will be solely on oral advocacy.

The winners of the regional rounds will progress to the quarter-finals of the competition, where on all rounds will be held in person at the offices of CAS in Lausanne, Switzerland. At each stage of the competition, the party for the team asked to advocate will be assigned randomly, which may mean acting for the same party more than once. 

In cooperation with CAS, the competition uses the prevailing Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS/TAS) Code of Sports-related Arbitration (CAS Code).

Schedule

SLAM Judges

All the judges have extensive experience as either arbitrators at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and other arbitral bodies, or they are experienced advocates in sports dispute resolution and at CAS.  The judges from the quarter-final rounds onwards are all experienced CAS arbitrators.