Essential info on essay competitions

As a law student you know you'll be writing a few essays along the way – one way to get some valuable writing practise at the same time as being in with a chance of earning yourself some money is to enter one of the numerous essay competitions out there.

These range from the long-standing competitions like The Times Law Awards, which runs in association with One Essex Court, to the less well known. This year we saw The Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research (CEPLER) at Birmingham Law School launch its inaugural essay competition. This made one of our GDL students very happy; Chris Richards won first prize. 

Essay competitions usually ask for a very limited number of words (around the 1,000-1,500 mark generally). This means limited space to impress with your biting critique, creative reasoning and engaging style. This is all great practise for those compulsory written pieces you’ll need to submit as your course progresses.

More hardcore competitions include the Bar Council Law Reform Essay which asks students to propose a case for law reform which is "desirable, practical and useful" in under 3,000 words.

Judging panels for these competitions feature influential people and if you win you'll get a chance to meet them - opportunities to network like this don't come around too often. At The Times Law Awards this year, two of our students and one alumnus got to meet Lord Grabiner, Chris Grayling, Lord Wilson and Times editor John Witherow after taking the top three prizes.

A list of current law essay competitions can be found on Learnmore, the legal skills element of the Lawbore resource run by the City Law School. You can also find links to lots of winning entries to give you some inspiration.

Most law essay competitions run with a question of a very topical nature – this year there are many asking you to grapple with the issues around legal aid, access to justice and regulation. So it’s important that you keep up to date and start to form opinions of your own on these matters. There are a number of ways to do this: keep an eye on Twitter for breaking legal news (and the opinions that follow soon after!) and attend the wealth of legal events out there. Many of these can be found on the Lawbore events calendar. Start to build up familiarity with leading legal commentators via blogs, journals and law student magazines.

Essay competitions with deadlines still outstanding include the Future Legal Mind Award (5 February 2015) courtesy of the National Accident Helpline in association with Lawyer2B, and the ARDL Marion Simmons QC Essay Prize (30 January 2015). The deadline for The Times Law Awards is 24 November – you still have time to address this year’s title: "Is Magna Carta more honoured in the breach?" Those interested in human rights have until 13th February 2015 to submit their entries for The Graham Turnbull Essay Competition. A number of competitions will also launch early in 2015. 

What are you waiting for? Get writing!

Emily Allbon is a lecturer in law at City University London and creator of the Lawbore and Learnmore websites. She tweets – @lawbore.