The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and American Bar Association Section of Labor and Employment Law Annual Law Student Writing Competition for 2020

The ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law and The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers are pleased to announce their 2020 writing competition. This competition is open to articles written while the author is an active student at an accredited law school in the United States. Authors may not have graduated from law school prior to December 1, 2019. Graduate students in law school (LL.M. candidates) are not eligible.

Prizes are as follows: First Place: $3000; Second Place: $1000, and Third Place: $500. The first-place winning article may be selected for publication in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law. In addition, the author of the first-place paper will be a guest at the ABA Annual Section of Labor and Employment Law Conference 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.

Complete rules are attached and should be read in their entirety. Competition rules can also be found on the College website.

Articles must be submitted via email using the subject line “Writing Competition,” by midnight (EDT) on June 15, 2020. To assure that competition judges are not provided information on authors’ identity, a separate cover page must be submitted with your manuscript (see last page of rules). 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 “Free Speech and the National Labor Relations Act,” or “Religion and Employment Law.”

Publication and Prizes: 

  1. The following prizes are available: First Place: $3,000; Second Place:  $1,000;  and Third Place: $500.
  1. One or more articles may be selected for publication in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law.
  1. Names of the authors of the winning articles and titles of their articles will be mentioned in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law.
  1. The author of the first-place winning article will be invited as a guest of the annual Continuing Legal Education program of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law and honored at the Annual Induction Dinner of the College of Labor and Employment Law.
  1. 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 or on its web site.
  1. Editors of the ABA Journal of Labor and Employment Law have the final authority, in their discretion, over whether to publish a winning article. A paper may not be published, among other reasons, if the winning paper’s topic is the same, or similar to, other articles that have largely covered the field or predominantly covered the field or predominantly covered the field.

For the 2020 Law Student Writing Competition and Student Information and Verification form, see the website or ask your CDO advisor.