Writing Competitions for Law Students: Law & Social Inquiry

Law & Social Inquiry Graduate Student Paper Competition (annual)

• Sponsor: Editors of Law & Social Inquiry  Note: American Bar Foundation sponsors Law & Social Inquiry (LSI).
• Topic in 2025 Competition was: "[A]nnual competition for the best journal-length paper in the field of law and social science written by a graduate or law student.  Law & Social Inquiry publishes empirical and theoretical studies of sociolegal processes from a variety of disciplinary perspectives."  "LSI invites direct submissions from graduate and law students and nominations of student work from faculty.  All authors must be a graduate or law students at the time the paper was written and when submitted."
• Format requirements in 2025 Competition included: "Submissions must include a title page with a mailing address, email address, and phone number, as well as an abstract of no more than 200 words.  The total length of submissions, including references and footnotes, must not exceed 15,000 words."
• Eligibility requirements in 2025 Competition included: "All authors must be a graduate or law students at the time the paper was written and when submitted."
• Additional requirements in 2025 Competition were: "Please send your article as a Microsoft Word document to lsi@abfn.org.  Please indicate that (1) you intend to be considered in the competition, (2) you are currently a graduate student, and (3) you have not submitted your article to LSI or any other journals for publication.  Submissions are limited to one paper per student."
• Prize in 2025 Competition was: "The winning paper will be published in Law & Social Inquiry and the author(s) will receive a total cash prize of $500 (US)."
• Deadline for submission in 2025 Competition was: April 11, 2025.