ANNOUNCEMENT FOR –
The College of Labor
and Employment Lawyers and
American Bar
Association Section of Labor and Employment Law
Annual Law
Student Writing Competition for
2016-2017
The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and the ABA Section of
Labor and Employment Law are pleased to announce their 2016-2017 writing
competition. This competition is open to articles
written while the author is a student at an accredited law school in the United
States. Authors may not have graduated
from law school prior to December 1, 2016. Graduate students in law school (LLM
candidates) are not eligible. Entries
should address aspects of public or private sector labor and/or employment law
relevant to the American labor and employment bar. Students are encouraged to discuss a public
policy issue, practical implications of a leading case or doctrine, a statute
or the need for statutory modification, or a common law doctrine.
Articles may address U.S. law, international law of relevance to U.S. labor and
employment attorneys, or how a legal topic is treated in states across the
country. Papers limited to the law of a
single state will not be considered. Papers must be analytical in nature,
not merely a summary of the law. Students must present and discuss
competing points of view with respect to the issue addressed and must
distinguish their conclusions from opposing positions with sound logic and
reference to multiple primary and secondary sources. We discourage students from writing articles
about recent a Supreme Court decision or a case pending before the Supreme
Court unless the article focuses upon case law or statutory developments
subsequent to the Supreme Court’s decision.
The following
prizes may be awarded by the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers: First Place:
$3000, Second Place: $1000, Third
Place: $500. The first-place winning article will be
published in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law.
In addition, the author will be a guest at the annual CLE program of the
ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law and honored at the Annual Induction
Dinner of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. The College and the Section reserve the right
not to select any article for publication or award any prizes if, in their
judgment, the submissions do not meet their standards for outstanding legal
writing.
College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and
American Bar Association Section of Labor and Employment Law
Annual Law Student Writing Competition 2016-2017
Rules
1.
Judges will pay
specific attention to these questions:
◊ Is the topic relevant to
labor and employment law practice?
◊ Is the paper well written?
◊ How
well is the author’s position argued and supported?
◊ Is
the topic handled with originality and not simply descriptive of a court
decision or other legal development?
2. Entries will also be evaluated on grammar, spelling, usage and
syntax, clarity, structure, overall appearance, strength of writing, and strength
of consideration of competing viewpoints.
3. Students are strongly encouraged to confer or consult with a labor or
employment law professor or practitioner on topic selection and in the
formation of arguments presented in the paper.
However, manuscripts must be the original work of a single author, may
not have been written for paid employment, and may not have been submitted for
publication elsewhere.
4. The article should be in
12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced,
with the footnotes single-spaced and double-spacing between footnotes on 8 ½ x
11 inch paper with one-inch margins on all sides. The manuscript, exclusive of the cover page, must
be between 20 and 35 pages. Do not
submit endnotes, a table of contents, or table of cases. Articles must be submitted as two
attachments, one in Microsoft Word and one in PDF format. Please do not use author’s name when saving the
file
5. All citations should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of
Citation (20th Edition).
6. Submissions must have been written
while the author was a student at an accredited law school in the United
States. Authors may not have graduated
from law school prior to December 1, 2016.
Graduate students in law school (LLM candidates) are not eligible.
7. No person may submit more than one
entry.
8. The judges reserve the right not
to award any prizes and to reject any or all submissions.
9. Articles must be submitted to
swan@laborandemploymentcollege.org, using the subject line “Writing
Competition,” by midnight (EDT) on June 15,
2017. To assure that competition
judges are not provided information on authors’ identity, a separate
cover page must also be submitted that includes the paper’s title, author’s
name, law school, graduation date, e-mail, street address and telephone
number. No personal information should
appear on the manuscript itself; however, the title should appear at the top of
the first page and pages should be numbered.
Do not include your name as part of the file names of your Word or PDF
documents; instead use a descriptive name related to the subject matter of your
article, such as “Sexual Harassment” or “Union Organizing.”
Publication and Prizes
1. The College
of Labor and Employment Lawyers may award the following prizes: First Place: $3,000; Second Place: $1,000; Third Place: $500.
2. The
first-place winning article will be published in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment
Law.
3. The names of
the authors of the second- and third-place winning articles will be mentioned
in the ABA Journal of
Labor & Employment Law.
4. The author of
the first-place winning article will be invited as a guest of the annual CLE
program of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law and honored at the
Annual Induction Dinner of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.
5. The College
of Labor and Employment Lawyers may, at its discretion, include a copy of any
or all of the prize-winning manuscripts in an issue of its newsletter and/or on
its web site.
