Ohio State Bar Association

Labor and Employment Law Section

2019 Student Writing Competition.

This Competition was created to encourage relevant and innovative scholarly work in the area of Labor and Employment.

A judging committee comprised of distinguished practicing attorneys and faculty members at Ohio ABA-accredited law schools will review the submissions and award first, second, and third-place cash prizes to the winning student-authors.

The cash prizes for such competition has been established as follows:

First Place: $3,000; Second Place: $2,000; and Third Place: $1,000.

Funding for the Competition is sponsored by the Ohio State Bar Association Section on Labor and Employment Law—an energized community of over 1,300 lawyers representing employees, labor unions, and employers in Ohio.

All students at ABA-accredited law schools in Ohio are invited to submit entries, pursuant to the rules of the Competition detailed below. The group has also determined that for the purposes of this Competition, Northern Kentucky University (NKU)-Chase is considered an Ohio law school.

Rules:

1. This Competition will be administered by a Committee of at least five persons, each of whom will be either a faculty member at an Ohio law school or a member of the Ohio State Bar Association Section on Labor and Employment Law. Each student entry will be read by at least two Committee members.

2. Judges will pay specific attention to these questions:

• Is the analysis original, novel, fresh, and/or innovative?

• Is the topic original and not simply descriptive – i.e., does the author handle the topic with originality and not simply describe a court decision or other legal development?

• Is the paper well written, with strong footnoting following the Bluebook and providing insightful information?

• How well is the author’s position argued and supported?

• What is the quality of the author’s legal analysis?

3. Entries also will be evaluated on grammar, spelling, usage and syntax, clarity, structure, overall appearance, strength of writing, and strength of consideration of competing viewpoints.

4. Students should confer with a labor or employment law professor or practitioner on topics, and consult with such expert in the formation of arguments presented in the paper. However, manuscripts must be the original work of a single author and may not have been written for paid employment.

5. The text and footnotes should be in 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced on 8 ½ x 11 inch paper with one-inch margins on all sides. The manuscript, excluding the cover page, must be between 20 and 40 pages. It may include an abstract and a table of contents. Articles must be submitted as two attachments, one in Microsoft Word and one in PDF format.

6. All citations should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (most recent edition).

7. Submissions must have been written while the author was a student at an ABA-accredited Ohio law school. Authors may not have graduated from law school prior to December 1 of the academic year during which the student is submitting a submission to this Competition. Graduate students in law school (LLM candidates) are not eligible.

8. No person may submit more than one entry.

9. Articles must be submitted online at https://www.judgify.me/L&Ewritingcompetition. If you have any concerns, contact Jennifer Harrell, Senior Manager of OSBA Bar Services, jharrell@ohiobar.org, using the subject line “OSBA L&E Writing Competition,” and postmarked or electronically delivery verified by midnight on March 30, 2019.

10. A paper may not be submitted if it has previously been published or accepted for publication in another forum other than the law review at the student’s home law school. A paper may be submitted if it is published or has been accepted for publication in a law review at the student's home law school. If such a paper is selected for a prize, the student may be required to receive permission from the law review to publish all or significant portions of the

article as part of the award, as described in Rule 13 below.

11. Anonymous Submission: To assure that competition judges are not provided information on authors’ identity, a separate cover page must be submitted with your manuscript. 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 “Sexual Harassment” or “Union Organizing.”

12. Prizes: Up to three winning entries will be selected by the Committee. The following prizes are available for winning entries:

First Place: $3,000; Second Place: $2,000; and Third Place: $1,000.

The Ohio State Bar Association Labor and Employment Law Section reserves the right not to award any or all prizes if, in its judgment, the submissions do not meet standards for outstanding legal writing.

The authors of the winning articles will also be invited as guests of the OSBA to the Labor and Employment Section’s Annual Midwest Labor and Employment Law Conference and honored during the Conference.

13. Publication: Names of student-authors and abstracts for the winning entries may be published in whole or in part in the Ohio State Bar Association Labor and Employment Law News and/or on the Section’s web site. Submissions may include papers previously submitted for law school courses, as law review notes and comments, or pieces written specifically for this Competition. If previously published or submitted in another publication (such as a law review), the cover page must indicate to which publication the work was submitted, if the work was

published, and the publication date. Student-entrants agree to notify the Ohio State Bar Association Section on Labor and Employment Law if their submission is selected for publication in another publication after submitting to this Competition.

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