Western Law strikes gold at Hicks Cup
April 01, 2019
First-year law students Zachery Sippel and Matthew Patterson have won the 2019 Hicks Cup. The annual provincial labour law moot competition was held in Toronto on March 29 hosted by Hicks Morley LLP, Canada's largest labour law boutique firm.
The Hicks Morley Moot provides an opportunity for students from Ontario law schools to litigate current legal issues of significance in the areas of labour and employment law.
Teams from law schools across Ontario competed before panels of judges drawn from the firm.
Competing against teams from the University of Windsor, Osgoode Hall Law School, Queen’s University, and the University of Ottawa, Sippel and Patterson argued the management side of several real-life workplace law issues involving Suncor Energy and Unifor that have been recently litigated in the Alberta courts.
"This is a wonderful achievement for Zachery and Matthew. The Hicks Cup is a demanding moot competition, with challenging legal issues to argue and top-drawer teams from other Ontario law schools,” says Professor Michael Lynk, the team’s faculty advisor.
“Their success is particularly noteworthy because they are first-year students, competing against mostly upper-year teams at the Hicks Cup. This reflects well on the depth of our mooting program here at Western Law," he says.
This is the third time since the moot was established in 2006 that a Western Law team has taken home the Hicks Cup. Previous team winners were Edward O’Dwyer and Tori Crawford in 2012, and Jessica He and Michael Barrett in 2016.
