Tallinn University Law Students won the 2026 Kirjutuslahing Competition hosted by ELSA Estonia and Advokaadibüroo COBALT
Between February and April 2026, ELSA Estonia and the COBALT law firm hosted their annual Kirjutuslahing legal problem solving competition. The contest involves solving complex and practical legal problems while also interacting with a hypothetical client. Tallinn University was well represented by three two-student teams participating in the event, finishing the competition by placing in the top two positions.
This year’s case concerned a cross-border start-up financing and secondary sale involving LexBot OÜ, an Estonian legal-tech company. Although the competition, client instructions and client-advice element were in Estonian, participants were required to draft the transaction documents in English, reflecting the multilingual nature of international transactional practice. Teams first drafted an English-language Series A term sheet and advised the founders on corporate-law issues including the option pool, investor rights, governance arrangements and management duties. The second task required them to prepare a share purchase agreement for the transfer of existing shareholding interests to a foreign investor, while addressing related questions on liability limitations and the negotiated scope of representations and warranties, form requirements, consents, reclassification of shares and dispute resolution. The case tested transactional drafting, client communication, legal analysis and negotiation judgment in an international investment context.
Tiim Kullid (“Hawks”, in English), composed of third year Tallinn University Law students Laura Taklaja and Jonathan Noah DeRose earned first place. As first-place winners, the team members also have the opportunity to complete a practical training placement with COBALT’s M&A team.
Laura Taklaja brought directly related experience from her practical training in the field, while the competition offered Jonathan a first substantial exposure to this specific type of transactional work relating to M&A and venture financing. Both team members also benefited from the company law foundation provided in their Law BA courses at Tallinn University.
For Jonathan, the competition was also significant as an opportunity to strengthen Estonian legal research and writing skills. In addition to drafting English-language transaction documents, participants had to work with Estonian-language client instructions, formulate legal advice in Estonian, and follow the competition seminars in Estonian. This made the exercise not only a test of transactional drafting, but also of multilingual legal communication.
Tiim Legally Blonde came in second place and was composed of Marten Lukas Tamme, a second year Tallinn University Law student and his team mate from Tartu University. According to Tiim Legally Blonde, "The M&A field, in general, is not something that is directly taught at University; therefore, the competition became a valuable learning opportunity to explore the daily challenges M&A lawyers face and how to solve clients’ requests most efficiently as a team. The competition provides an excellent opportunity for participants to better understand whether this is a field they would like to pursue as a career. As second- and first-year law students respectively, we feel that this opportunity allowed us to improve our drafting and problem-solving skills, and we highly recommend the competition to all law students."
Tiim Justice League, composed of third year Tallinn University Law students Polina Hindo and Jaana-Maria Frosch, really enjoyed participating in the COBALT Kirjutuslahing 2026. For our team, it was a great opportunity to challenge ourselves, apply our legal knowledge in practice, and work together in a dynamic and motivating environment. The competition gave us many valuable experiences, new ideas, and even more interest in legal writing and problem-solving.
For Jaana-Maria, COBALT Kirjutuslahing 2026 was a very interesting and useful experience. She enjoyed working with a practical legal problem, discussing ideas in a team, and seeing how the knowledge gained at University can be used outside the classroom. The event also helped her develop her legal writing, argumentation, and time-management skills.
All of the teams thanked ELSA Estonia and COBALT Legal for organising the competition, in particular Elis Toim and Paul Schifrin for the opportunity to practise transactional legal skills in a realistic format.
Congratulations to all participants and especially to the winners Laura Taklaja and Jonathan Noah DeRose!