Background

Judicial Interrogatory Simulator (JIS), previously known as Moot Court, is a web-based simulated courtroom built for first-year law students. For first-year law students, Moot Court is an important part of their curriculum where they need to build confidence and participate in speech and argument in court. A moot session would involve two teams presenting their argument to a panel of judges. For JIS, we’ve simulated the Judge and courtroom for students to practice both their speech and arguments by having two versions: Classic and IntellaJudge. The classic version focused on articulating speech and time management. IntellaJudge version serves as an AI language tool providing live feedback and judge-like questions for students to practice delivering their argument and responding to questions from the judges.

Objective

Our project has fulfilled our four objectives. The first one is resolving remaining bugs or technical issues found from the previous Moot Court. We have fixed and improved the issues from the previous Moot version. We’ve also improved the previous Moot Court build by enhancing the visuals, animations and user experience. We have upgraded the build by updating the UI and adding more judge motions. We have built an AI Judge for students to have more support in the student’s preparation and performance and build an immersive experience while using the application. The last objective is developing a VR version of JIS that acts as an immersive simulated environment for students to further be exposed to courtroom experience.

Impact

This project provides first-year law students with multiple ways to practice for their Moot Court assessment and expands upon the educational pedagogy within the field of law. Furthermore, the desktop version of Moot Court is provided as a resource to first-year law students, meaning that this product has been tested by its designated users.

The Team

Principal Investigators

• Jon Festinger, K.C., UBC Peter A. Allard School of Law
• Nikos Harris, K.C., UBC Peter A. Allard School of Law
• Barbara Wang, UBC Peter A. Allard School of Law

Staff

• Frederik Svendsen, Staff Developer (September 2023 – April 2024)

Student Team

• Leah Fernandez, Project Lead, Developer (May 2023 – April 2024)
• Jazzy Wan, UX/UI Designer (September 2022 – April 2024)
• Angelia Felicia, UX/UI Designer (September 2023 – April 2024)
• Jiho Kim, UX/UI Designer (January 2023 – August 2023, January 2024 – April 2024)
• Poh Leanne Kee, Developer (September 2023 – December)
• William Watkins, Developer (May 2023 – August 2023)
• Grace Bell, Volunteer (May 2023 – August 2023)