Leading Moot Parliament Programme 2024

The Moot Parliament Programme is a six-month MOE Gifted Education Branch attachment that places student teams under the mentorship of practising lawyers to draft a real legislative bill. I served as Team 1 Leader for ACS(I), and our bill was the Public Order (Amendment) Act.

Leading the team through the drafting process taught me things about law that surprised me. The gap between 'this policy intention seems right' and 'this clause actually achieves what we intend' turned out to be enormous. Every definition had to be precise, every scope carefully calibrated to avoid unintended consequences without becoming too narrow to be useful. Our mentors, experienced lawyers who had worked with legislative drafting in practice, never let a weak assumption slide.

What stayed with me was not the legal knowledge but the way of thinking. Working under lawyers who taught through questions rather than answers was unlike any intellectual exercise I had done before. The drafting process exposed the gap between legislative intent and what the clause actually says. That gap is where most policy fails. Knowing it exists is the first thing law taught me, and it has shaped how I think about policy writing and communication beyond the chamber.