Reported by Abhishek Singh
University of Cambridge defeated Deakin University to lift the trophy of the the 2nd NLU Delhi Herbert Smith Freehills International Negotiation Competition which was organized at NLU Delhi. The competition was organized from 11-13 September 2015 and saw participation of 22 teams including 12 foreign universities and almost all the major law schools of India. The format of the competition was divided into 4 rounds, Preliminary Rounds 1 and 2, Semi Finals and the Finals. The competition was started last year and seeks to familiarize the students of top law universities to the milieu of international negotiation process and the negotiation simulations comprise of a common set of facts known to all the participants and confidential information known only the participants representing a specific party.
The teams which managed to break in the Semi Finals were University of Cambridge, Deakin University, King’s College, London and University of Oxford. The Semi Finals saw University of Cambridge battle University of Oxford and King’s College, London take on Deakin University for a place in the finals. The finals which took place between University of Cambridge and Deakin University and were judged by HMJ V. Gopala Gowda, Judge, Supreme Court of India, Mr. Mark Bardell, Partner, Herbert Smith Freehills, and Ms. Neena Gupta, Group General Counsel, InterGlobe Enterprises.
After the final rounds, the award and the valedictory ceremony took place. The award for the Best Negotiator, which was based on the score obtained in the Preliminary rounds, went to Ms Senjuti Mallick from ILS Pune and was awarded a cash prize of 200 GBP (~INR 20,000). The award for the Best Negotiation Plan went to University of New South Wales, Sidney who also received a cash prize of 200 GBP (~INR 20,000). The Runners Up of the competition, Deakin University were awarded a cash prize of 500 GBP (~INR 50,000). The winning team of the competition which comprised of Verain Vaswani and Cyrus Chou from the University of Cambridge lifted the trophy and were awarded a cash prize of 1000 GBP (~INR 1,00,000).
