Texas Law students don’t take Saturdays off.
That was especially evident on Sept. 27, as 80 students competed against one another in the Texas Business Law Society’s annual Transactional Skills competition, while a competition team from Texas Law’s Advocacy Program earned the top prize in the Summit Cup after besting 11 top-ranked teams from across the country.
Texas Transactional Skills Competition
Held at the Law School, the Transactional Skills Competition provided a taste of what real-life practice might be like.
“We hope that by providing that experience for transactional law, students feel better prepared to enter the profession and more informed about the variety of career paths available to them,” says Ana Stanovcic ’27, executive director of Texas Transactional Skills Competition.
The competition has two divisions: one for 1Ls, and a second for upper-level students, including 2Ls and 3Ls, as well as LLMs. In the 1L division, 37 two-person student teams—and two students who competed individually—negotiated a confidentiality agreement between a hypothetical private equity firm and limited liability company. In the upper-level division, eight students negotiated a term sheet based on a hypothetical scenario involving a private equity-backed company. The competition is judged by more than 30 attorneys from the community who practice in various areas of transactional law, “scoring students on the form, substance, and functionality of their drafts through all rounds of negotiation,” says Stanovcic.
“The Texas Transactional Skills Competition gives our students a great opportunity to step into the role of practicing lawyers—drafting, negotiating, and advocating in real-world deal settings,” says Eliot Cotton ’10, director of the school’s Law and Business Program. “It’s meaningful in that it pushes students to blend technical precision with creativity, teamwork, and judgment under time pressure, all of which are essential skills for transactional practice.”
First-year students Sebastian Whitaker and Matthew Betker took first place in the team division, while 1Ls Faith “Mika” Chavez and Diego Hinojosa were the runners-up, and 1Ls Damon Grim and Ben Wilkie took third place. In the upper division, students competed as individuals, with 2L James Lucky winning, 2L Savannah Gunter earning second place, and 2L Spiro Athanas taking third.
All the participants walked away with deeper knowledge, and an appreciation for the student organization behind the event. “The Texas Business Law Society is committed to helping its members become better future lawyers engaged in more fulfilling work,” says TBLS President Samuel Collins ’26, “providing students with hands-on transactional experience, ample learning and networking opportunities, and academic support.”
Summit Cup
Meanwhile, 900 miles northwest of Townes Hall, a Texas Law team won the Summit Cup, hosted by the University of Denver. The Summit Cup is an exclusive mock trial competition that only invites the 12 schools who won one of the most prestigious tournaments—including the Student Trial Advocacy Competition, the National Trial Competition, the Tournament of Champions, or the Summit Cup itself— the year before. Texas Law earned entry by virtue of a win at the 2024 Georgetown White Collar Crime Invitational, which they’ve won three years running.
This was the third consecutive Summit Cup appearance for Texas Law, who also reached last year’s finals, where they lost a closely contested trial to a team from Harvard Law School.
This year, in Colorado, the competition’s fact pattern was based on the high-profile Karen Read trial, with each team required to argue the plaintiff’s side of the case in some rounds and the defendant’s side in others. Texas Law’s team argued for the plaintiff in rounds 1 and 3 and for the defense in rounds 2, 4, and in the finals.
Other competing schools included UCLA, Berkeley, Harvard, South Carolina, and Maryland, among others. Texas schools in the competition, besides Texas Law, were Baylor and South Texas College of Law Houston.
“Our team went undefeated in all five rounds of the tournament, cruising through a murderers’ row of elite teams,” says Mike Golden ’01, director of the Advocacy Program.
The Texas Law team of 2Ls Drew Ashlock, Josianne Alwardi, and Bhavana Ravala, and 3Ls Emily Layton and Aleyna Young defeated UCLA’s vaunted team twice—once in the third round, and then again in finals.
Another Texas Law team won the season’s earlier mock trial competition, the TEX-ABOTA Best in Texas Voir Dire Competition, also going undefeated.
“In 11 competition rounds this year, Texas Law is 11-0,” says Golden. “No school in the country can claim anything close.”
“The momentum at Texas Law is something to behold these days,” says Dean Bobby Chesney. “It’ s not just all the new faculty, the unprecedented level of applicant interest, and the incredible jobs graduates get. Those things are fantastic but seeing both the litigation-oriented students and the transactions-focused students putting their practical skills to work and bringing home hardware as a result, well that’s especially fun.”