'I did not believe that something like this was possible'

Jan Wagner, the Best Graduate of the 2025/2026 Cohort, discusses his studies, why he is returning to the Faculty as a moot court team coach, and what law has in common with reporting on volleyball matches. Averaging 5.00 for five years. With such results, is there life beyond academics?

I won't pretend – such an average is not achieved by studying for an exam the evening before. For a month to a month and a half around the examination session, one must focus on studies one hundred percent. I used to joke with my friends and fiancée that I would move into the University of Warsaw Library (BUW) for that period. I really appreciated initiatives like "BUW for Owls" or 24-hour shifts – I would stay late and return home on night buses. However, outside of the examination session, I did not have to study all year. I had my system: I attended the vast majority of lectures. Even the less captivating ones familiarised me with the subject's terminology, which I later used more freely – and this is noticeable and highly scored in oral examinations. As a result, by the time of the session, I only needed to revise and learn a few additional things.

This sounds like a tip for junior students.

I don't know if it's a tip – I realise that attendance at lectures can be low and that not everyone will appreciate it. When enrolling for classes, I was guided by one more principle: I chose instructors who, on the one hand, demand something and conduct classes in an interesting way, and on the other hand, have a good reputation as examiners.

Are such lecturers probably hard to get into?

Registrations in USOS have become legendary at the Faculty, and I also had varying luck with them. On WPiA Wiki, you can check who allows students to be added to their group – so you had to have a ready email with a request at hand. The further into my studies, the easier it became: having already achieved something, I always had a "basis" to ask to be admitted to classes, if only to better prepare for a competition. Moreover, there are increasingly many excellent lecturers from the young generation of PhD students who do this with great energy.

How did the idea of participating in moot courts come about?

My moot court journey is rather unique, as for four years I was not involved in this environment at all. I learned about these competitions in my third year from a colleague who had joined the Vis Moot team and competed for two consecutive years – the second time, the University of Warsaw team, with him as a member, reached the knockout stage for the first time in its history. Towards the end of my fourth year, he somewhat encouraged me, and I also became interested myself. I also spoke with Professor Marcin Dziurda, the academic supervisor of Vis Moot, who emphasised that it is a substantively demanding competition – based on numerous legal acts and thorough research, and it also teaches how to connect argumentation threads and develops soft skills. I managed to get into the team and met great people: coaches, including Jan Ciaptacz, MA, with whom I will now co-coach the team, and Jadzia Przybylska, with whom I competed. She had much more experience and greatly helped me as a "newcomer". Ultimately, in Hong Kong, we reached the 1/8 finals – one step higher than our colleagues the previous year.

You are returning to the Faculty as a coach. What does this job entail?

I became a coach as a result of the generational relay we are striving to build. The leader of our coaching team, Janek Ciaptacz, once coached Filip Olszówka; then Filip also became a coach; together they coached me, and now I have joined the team. We hope this will continue. The role of a coach is to pass on knowledge. We introduce new team members to the world of the competition, teaching them how to draft a memorial – they write the first drafts, we assess them, assist with research, and together we finalise the memorials. Then begins the oral phase, i.e., the pleadings: we explain the structure of the presentation and the method of formulating arguments, and then spend long evenings jointly pleading, asking questions and trying to anticipate what the participants will hear from the jury. Along the way, there are also pre-moots – trial competitions, organised in various European cities, including Warsaw – during which everyone has the chance to test themselves before the arbitrators. Moreover, moot courts are not only about Vis: there are also FDI, Jessup, the Frankfurt Investment Arbitration Moot Court, and many others. Vis mooters also become coaches there – Jadzia and Pola coach the FDI team.

What do such competitions offer – to the university and to the participants themselves?

They enhance the university's prestige and international recognition. For the participants, of course, they are also a valuable entry in their CV, appreciated by law firms – but a moot is more a means to an end than an end in itself. It is about skills that endure for years. I joked after Graduation that had it not been for Vis, I would not have agreed to deliver a speech at all, as I would not have felt capable. For a year, I had to sit as I am now and argue why the seller could not dispatch vanilla orchids, or why the recipient is not responsible for being unable to collect them. Therefore, we would like students outside the teams to also benefit from such training. The next edition of the Vis Moot Academy is currently underway – a series of workshops conducted by law firms, organised by the UW Moot Association student society – but the meetings take place late in the evenings and are irregular. Our ultimate goal is formalised faculty classes on oral advocacy and legal writing. The Faculty is expanding its offering of practical classes, from procedural workshops to contract drafting, so we hope the idea will be well-received when we present a concrete proposal.

Before Vis, there were civil procedure competitions.

These were my challenges in my fourth year. Civil procedure had to be passed anyway at that time, and as it is my area of academic interest, I put a lot of effort into it. The All-Poland Civil Procedure Knowledge Competition relies on a solid knowledge of the KPC – first the university stage, where each university selects two representatives, then the final, this time in Kielce: a written and an oral part. I managed to win. The second was a competition for a gloss on a selected Supreme Court judgment, organised by the University of Poznań – there I tied for first place. I wrote my master's thesis in the same field and I would like to pursue my doctorate in it.

Of which achievement are you most proud?

From Hong Kong. Entering the Vis Moot, I didn't believe such a thing was possible. I was prepared to be a team researcher, to suggest to the pleaders how they could argue – I felt good at legal-theoretical work, but I never felt outstanding in oral presentations. Meanwhile, I was nominated to perform. Through immense work – my own, that of the coaches, and Jadzia's – we reached a level where we were among the sixteen best teams and could compete on an equal footing with the best universities in the world. The most difficult thing to repeat, however, would be the 5.00 average. I checked in USOS: twenty-five exams in compulsory and core subjects, and together with Erasmus, blocks, specialisations, and general courses – forty-eight different types of assessments. Not to make a single mistake required a lot of luck. If, with today's knowledge, I were to go back to the first year, it probably wouldn't succeed a second time. Although I laugh that the fourth and fifth years would have been easier if there had been a three at the beginning – there wouldn't have been such pressure.

A year you remember best?

Third year – Erasmus in Ljubljana. There were also subjects and exams, but in a completely different atmosphere. A beautiful country, interesting classes. It only became less pleasant after returning, when it was necessary to pass obligations and administrative procedure.

On a different note, to conclude: life outside the law?

My childhood dream was to become a sports journalist. From an early age, I have been a fan of all kinds of sports, especially Olympic sports today. In my first year, I even began collaborating with the sports editorial team of Poinformowani.pl – for almost two years, I wrote news, previews, and reports. I had a great time doing it, but I remember a volleyball match between Poland and Thailand, late at night. I was covering it live; the girls were losing 2-0, and I thought it would end soon and I would go to sleep – but they turned the score around and won 3-2. I wasn't angry that the match was continuing; I was furious that I had to keep reporting. It was then that I realised this job somewhat strips the excitement from being a fan. Sport is an escape for me, so I prefer to combine it with travel. After submitting my master's thesis, I spontaneously bought a resold ticket for the French Open semi-final and attended that much-discussed match between Maja Chwalińska and Diana Schneider.

What are your immediate plans?

My priority is the KSSiP examination at the turn of October and November – ultimately, I would like to pursue a career as a judge. I treat my doctorate as a parallel path*. The examination requires revising material from my entire degree and memorising several acts, so it is a significant challenge. *After the interview, Jan Wagner received the results of his recruitment to the Doctoral School – from October, he will be a doctoral student at our Faculty. Congratulations!

You said at the Graduation: "we are not slowing down".

That's true, but for a moment one needs to stop and rest. And only then face further challenges.

Thank you for the interview, and we are keeping our fingers crossed.