ONE REALLY had to pity Jane Jones. After all, there she was walking down Dublin's Capel Street one fine day, when along comes Garda Kelly and points out that the bracelet she is wearing just happens to be the Booterstown Bracelet, half inched from the National Museum earlier that day.

Garda Kelly, sensing promotion, duly asks for some clarification on the matter, pointing out to Jane: "If you don't tell me, you could be charged." He then also tells her she has the right to remain silent, which is a bit of a contradiction and might lead one to suspect that Garda Kelly is not a chap to let civil rights stand in the way of a conviction.

Poor Jane breaks down, is brought into custody and ends up being charged with handling stolen property. The beak decides to send her down but an appeal is lodged and a young woman's future hangs in the balance. It's a job for Perry Mason or, in this case, law students in the Irish Moot Court Competition.

"One of the great ideas in legal education has been the introduction of mooting, so students on university courses and in the King's Inns can develop a skill so important to them when they come to practise," says Mrs Justice Susan Denham, president of the Irish Moot Court Committee.

This was the fifth year of the moot competition, in which students prepare written and oral submissions on a fictitious case for eventual presentation before some top legal minds.

Each of the participating institutions in the final stage (UCD, TCD, UCG and the King's Inns) had submitted a 25 page memorial, or written submission, on the case in February.

Last Thursday they participated in a series of oral presentations, before TCD and the King's Inns progressed to the final to argue for the appellant and prosecution respectively before Mr Justice Geoghegan, Mr Justice Moriarty and Mr James Nugent SC, chairman of the Bar Council.

It took Mr Nugent some time to enter into the spirit of the thing. After all, this was his day out as a judge and one would have expected him to exercise his gavel hand a little more and generally make up for usually being on the receiving end of awkward questions from the bench.

It was really only with the presentation of the King's Inns Sophie Crosbie that Mr Nugent swung into action, referring to Garda Kelly's apparently contradictory statements to the appellant as a "nonsensical circumstance". This was more like it, but since Crosbie was the last speaker, one couldn't help but feel that Nugent had kept his powder dry too long.

It was, as Justice Geoghegan later said, a close run thing, but Jane was saved by the advocational skills of the TCD team of Decian McGrath, Neil Steen, Sara Antoniotti and Lorna Lynch, names to remember if one is planning to thieve national treasures and wear them on busy city streets.

TCD not only took the best team award but also the award for best memorial and, for McGrath, best advocate. Stephen O'Sullivan took the award for best advocate not appearing in the final and the King's Inns team of Peter Leverett, Sophie Crosbie, Denise Brett and Conor Dignam received, in common with the others, book tokens from those nice people at Butterworths, joint sponsors of the competition with the Bar Council.