Australian Legal Writing Challenge
Winners of the 2016 Challenge have been announced.
Entries for 2017 are not yet open.
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The Australian Legal Writing Challenge is an opportunity to discover and recognise Australia’s most talented legal communicators. The Challenge prize pool is $6500 in cash and is administered by Go To Court Lawyers.
Do you have a knack for explaining legal concepts in a simple and clear way?
This is your chance to show off your ability, gain recognition amongst your legal peers, and help Australians better understand our legal system.
Timeline:
Submissions for the 2016 Australian Legal Writing Challenge are now open and will be accepted up until 12:00 am (midnight) (AST) on 20 June 2016.
Prizes:
First Prize:
- $5,000 cash
- Recognition in national media release
Second prize: $1000 cash
Third prize: $500 cash
All winners and finalists will receive a certificate of recognition highlighting their result in the Australian Legal Writing Challenge.
Eligibility:
The Australian Legal Writing Challenge is open to anyone holding an Australian law degree or currently in their final year of a law degree except for employees and contractors of Go To Court Lawyers and anyone who has previously written articles for publication by Go To Court Lawyers. Multiple submissions per person will be considered.
How to Enter:
Your entry must be original, in English, unpublished, and not submitted to, or accepted by, any other publisher or producer. Anything posted online, including in a personal blog, is considered published.
All submissions will be checked with copyscape.com for plagiarism, and if found in breach, the submission will be disqualified. You will also be prohibited from entering any future Australian Legal Writing Challenges.
In submitting an article for the Challenge you relinquish all rights to the content to Go To Court Lawyers, and you acknowledge that your article may be published online, in whole or part, with or without amendment, with appropriate credit given to you.
Only electronic submissions will be considered. Submissions should be twelve-point arial font, double-spaced text and in PDF or Word files (.doc or .docx).
There is no entry fee.
What we are looking for:
Articles should pertain to an element or concept of law from any Australian jurisdiction and should aim to explain it in language and a style that would be understandable by, and targeted towards, the majority of Australians.
Part of the Challenge is for you to find a topic that is interesting and informative, and will be useful for a member of the general public should they find themselves facing a legal matter in your chosen area. As a result, there are no restrictions on the area of law about which you can write, except that it should be about something that is likely to still be relevant in 12 months time or longer.
Articles should be between 800 and 1500 words in length. External resources and references mentioned in your article should include URLs or hyperlinks to the 3rd party website or source.
Grammar, spelling and punctuation will reflect on the quality of your entry and should be of an exemplary standard and befitting a legal professional. Sub-headings are encouraged where they can add clarity to your article structure.
What we are not looking for:
Dense, obfuscated legal prose is discouraged.
Opinion piece on a recent event that would only have short term relevance.
Notification for submissions:
All submissions will receive an email after the winners have been chosen. We cannot answer any queries about the progress of submissions.
The winners will be notified directly, and a public announcement will be made through a media release.
All entries will be judged by professional lawyers. All decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into. No comment will be made, or feedback given, on individual submissions.
Additional Terms & Conditions
- The promoter of this Challenge is Go To Court Lawyers (GTC).
- By entering, all entrants agree to abide by each and every term and condition.
GTC reserves the right to withhold prizes for violation of any of the terms and conditions. - Entrants represent and warrant that their entry is the original work of the party named in the entry submission and that they have the full power and authority to enter the work in their own name. The entrant agrees to indemnify Go To Court Lawyers (GTC) for any infringements of, for example, statutory or common-law copyright, or 3rd party proprietary rights, or any other loss resulting from a breach of these warranties.
- Entries which contain, in the sole opinion of GTC, any material which is defamatory, obscene, illegal or inappropriate will be invalidated. Any misrepresentation or fraud will also invalidate the entry. GTC reserves the right to withhold prizes for any invalidated entries.
- GTC accepts no responsibility for lost or delayed entries, data charges, or any other costs associated with entry, nor will it be responsible for technical, hardware, or software failures of any kind or lost or unavailable network connections that may limit or prevent the person from participating in the Challenge.
- Entrants agree to allow the free use of their name, likeness, and general location for publicity and news purposes during this and future promotions.
- Winners may be required to submit valid identification and proof of qualification or status as final year law student before receiving their prize.
- Personal information collected will be used for GTC purposes only and managed in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988.
