Irish Legal History Society Student Essay Competition
- Sponsor: Irish Legal History Society
- Topic & Eligibility requirements include: "Undergraduates and postgraduates are invited to submit essays on any period of Irish legal history to compete for the Irish Legal History Society Student Essay Competition, now in its fourth year."
- Forma requirements include: "Essays must be no longer than 5,000 words (including all references). All entries must use an accepted referencing style (such as APA, Harvard, Oscola), be typed, double-spaced, and include an abstract of approximately 100 words."
- Prize: "The winning entrant will receive a prize of €250."
- Deadline: "Essays should be received no later than 31st May 2025."
Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition (annual)
- Sponsors: Legal History and Rare Books Section of the American Association of Law Libraries, in cooperation with The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
- Topic in 2025 Competition: "Essays may address any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives; criteria on which papers will be judged include originality of topic or approach, quality and depth of research and analysis, clarity of presentation and contribution to the field. The subject should be explored in depth with appropriate reference to sources."
- Format: 2025 Full Explanation includes: "Essays should be at least 5,000 words and no more than 10,000 words (excluding footnotes). The Committee anticipates entries in the range of approximately 20 to 30 double-spaced pages, including footnotes (preferred) or endnotes, but entries must fall within the word count requirements regardless of page length. Citation: Citations should be clear, consistent, and follow one of the following styles: The Indigo Book (freely available online), The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed., 2020), or The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed., 2017). Not previously published: No essay or portion of an essay that has been published, or submitted or accepted for publication before June 20, 2025, will be eligible for consideration. Before submitting an essay, authors are responsible for having conducted a search to ensure that a substantially similar paper has not been published elsewhere." This web page links to:
- Eligibility requirements in 2025 Full Explanation include: "Full and part-time students currently enrolled in accredited graduate programs in library science, law, history, or related fields are eligible to enter the competition. Membership in AALL is not required. The competition is open to students attending graduate school either in the United States or abroad, and students need not be U.S. citizens to enter. Students attending foreign graduate schools who submit entries to the competition may be asked to provide evidence of current accreditation of their schools by the appropriate government or administrative entities."
- Prizes in 2025 Competition: "The winner will receive a $1,000 prize from The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., and will present the essay at an LHRB-SIS sponsored webinar. The winner and runner-up will have the opportunity to publish their essays in LHRB-SIS’s online scholarly journal Unbound: A Review of Legal History and Rare Books."
- Deadline for submission in 2025 Competition: "Entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m., June 20, 2025 (EDT) to be considered."
Selma Moidel Smith Student Writing Competition in California Legal History
- Sponsor: California Supreme Court Historical Society (CSCHS)
- Topic: 2025 Student Writing Competition Announcement states: "The California Supreme Court Historical Society (CSCHS) invites all students (and recent graduates) interested in, or working in the area of California legal history (not just the history of California courts) to compete in its annual nationwide student writing competition. Papers may include elements of digital humanities and may also be co-authored." The Announcement describes the topics of recent winning papers.
- Format requirements include: "Papers should be at least 7,500 and preferably not more than 12,000 words, including footnotes and other
explanatory matter." "Submissions also must not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere, and the author is responsible for obtaining permission for any photographs/illustrations, which must be captioned."
- Eligibility requirements include: "The competition is open to students and recent graduates in history and/or law, provided that the author(s) did not have full-time academic employment when the paper was written."
- Prizes: "Prizes of $5,000 for 1st place, $2,500 for 2nd, and $1,000 for 3rd will be awarded to the best papers addressing California history, broadly considered."
- Deadline for submission: "Submissions are due by July 1, 2025 and should be sent as a Word document to director@cschs.org with the subject line 'Smith Prize.'”
