Charleston Law School students win national competition

A three-person team from the Charleston School of Law won the National Tax Moot Court competition for the second year in a row Saturday, besting 15 other teams from around the country.

“Winning once is a huge thing,” said Assistant Professor of Law Kristin Balding Gutting, the team’s faculty adviser. “Winning twice is quite a feat.”

The national competition was held in Clearwater, Fla., and is considered the “Super Bowl” of tax moot courts for law students.

Second-year Charleston School of Law students Lane Jefferies of Charleston, Gabe Hogan of Fort Worth, Texas, and Leslie Boodry of Pensacola, Fla., won the competition, with coaching from student Beverly Weshnak of Princeton, N.J.

Jefferies was also named Best Oralist, based on an oral presentation to the judges.

At another competition at the law school in Charleston on Saturday, a two-person team from the Florida Coastal School of Law won the sixth annual Charleston School of Law National Moot Court Competition.

The competition drew 14 teams from 10 law schools around the country.

The students argued points of law as though they were appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This year students debated the constitutionality of two issues: whether a state can collect, maintain and use DNA samples the way it does with fingerprints and whether a state could abolish the so-called “insanity defense.”