Odds are, you have spent hundreds of hours on legal writing during law school. With LAW I, LAW II, App Ad, Transactional Practice, Advanced Legal Writing, numerous seminars, writing for journals, and employment, you’ve possibly spent more time writing than reading. Even if you are only a 1L, your LAW I closed memos or judicial opinions have been completed, and writing probably took so much longer than you ever thought it would when you first sat down in class.
If the thrill of learning or the hope of earning an A aren’t enough motivation or reward for all that time spent writing, consider putting your writing experience to work by submitting something to a law student writing competition. Suffolk University Law School and the Moakley Law Library have created iCompete Writing: A Compilation of Legal Writing Competitions, which arranges competitions by date and topic, giving you a chance to win glory and cash prizes up to $25,000. You can write on a wide range of subject areas—41 to be precise. But if nothing in particular captures your attention, some competition prompts are quite broad: “There is no page limitation or restriction on the topic except that the writing must be on a legal subject” according to the rules for the Judge John R. Brown Award of $10,000 for Excellence in Legal Writing.
Give it a shot. Submit to several competitions if rules allow. Quite often the submission pools are not deep, and you have a high chance of winning something. If you’re concerned about your writing skills, this could be an opportunity to develop them further under low-stakes circumstances. And of course, we in the law library have developed a research guide designed to help you get organized, come up with topics, write well, and address any other legal research and writing need you might have. Feel free to schedule a research consultation to get started earning money for all that legal writing effort you’ve made over the years.
If the thrill of learning or the hope of earning an A aren’t enough motivation or reward for all that time spent writing, consider putting your writing experience to work by submitting something to a law student writing competition. Suffolk University Law School and the Moakley Law Library have created iCompete Writing: A Compilation of Legal Writing Competitions, which arranges competitions by date and topic, giving you a chance to win glory and cash prizes up to $25,000. You can write on a wide range of subject areas—41 to be precise. But if nothing in particular captures your attention, some competition prompts are quite broad: “There is no page limitation or restriction on the topic except that the writing must be on a legal subject” according to the rules for the Judge John R. Brown Award of $10,000 for Excellence in Legal Writing.
Give it a shot. Submit to several competitions if rules allow. Quite often the submission pools are not deep, and you have a high chance of winning something. If you’re concerned about your writing skills, this could be an opportunity to develop them further under low-stakes circumstances. And of course, we in the law library have developed a research guide designed to help you get organized, come up with topics, write well, and address any other legal research and writing need you might have. Feel free to schedule a research consultation to get started earning money for all that legal writing effort you’ve made over the years.