Public speaking scares the pants off most people. We get out of it if we can; if not, we stumble through and hope that we’ll be rescued by the fire alarm. Michael Attenborough, however, does it for fun.

Well, fun and professional advancement. Attenborough, who will be called to the Bar later this month, has made his mark in mooting – arguing a legal case in a mock court.

He took up the discipline as a law student, hoping that it would help him to prove that he had the abilities needed to succeed as a barrister. “I had in mind that it would be a useful way to demonstrate the skills needed in the profession,” he says. “It gives you something concrete to back up your claims when you get into an interview and say ‘I am a good advocate’.”

This is particularly true when, as in Attenborough’s case, you can say that you beat students from more than 50 universities to win the 2006 National Mooting Competition. His first win was against LSE – “this was something of a grudge match because they had knocked us out last year” – while in the next round he and his partner, Vijaiya Poopalasingam, beat City, the reigning champions. “That’s when we started to ... realise that we were only a few rounds away from some quite nice prizes.” Nice indeed: £1,000 each, £1,000 for his law school, Queen Mary, University of London, and a week of work experience at a respected chambers.

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On the down side, preparing for each moot added to his already significant workload. One slight problem was that he found it easier to motivate himself to research his moot topics than to write essays – even though coursework would help to decide his degree result. “Mooting is important but your degree is clearly more important, but you get to see the benefits of a degree only right at the end.” Moot preparation, however, bears fruit the moment you step into the courtoom and discover whether you’re equipped to deal with the judge’s interjections. “Winning a moot isn’t an ecstatic feeling. You’ve done so much work that the overwhelming feeling is relief that you didn’t lose.” Fortunately, by the time the finals came around he was through his exams and could concentrate on the event, where he and Poopalasingam defeated a team from Birmingham.

Since then, Attenborough has completed his professional training and will start his 12-month pupillage – the final compulsory stage in a barrister’s training – in October. While his moot success may have helped him to secure this position (there are far more applicants than places), it wasn’t necessarily because his win impressed the interviewer.

It’s that mooting is good preparation for a tough interview, he says. “It gives you valuable experience of making arguments in front of an audience, taking adverse arguments from a judge – or an interviewer – and rebutting them. It teaches you to stand your ground.”

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