Law Student Community Essay Contest

Future Voices of the Legal Profession: 2025 D.C. Bar Communities Essay Writing Contest

Calling all law students! The D.C. Bar Law Student Community invites law students, enrolled full-time or part-time at any law school in the United States, to compete in an essay writing contest for the chance to get published in the D.C. Bar’s award-winning Washington Lawyer magazine. 

Submission Deadline: November 3, 2025, 5 p.m. EST

Contest Guidelines

Topic: All essays must respond to a D.C. Bar-provided prompt. The prompt and submission form will be available on this page starting September 15, 2025.

Eligibility: The contest is open to law students enrolled at any law school in the United States for the 2025–2026 school year. Each entrant is allowed only one submission.

Length: Submissions should be 1,200–1,500 words, excluding the title.

Format: Submissions should be submitted in Word document, single-spaced, at 12 pt. Times New Roman font. 
No endnotes or footnotes are allowed. Citations or sources of information should be embedded in the body text.

Content: All submissions must reflect original thought and analysis grounded in research, not personal opinions.

Essays must be written entirely by the student without the assistance of artificial intelligence tools. All entrants must comply with their law school’s Honor Code against plagiarism. Any violation will result in disqualification.

Submissions should be nonpartisan and adhere to the D.C. Bar’s editorial standards for originality and accuracy.

Judging Criteria: Essays will be judged on originality of thought, clarity and structure, legal accuracy and strength of research and factual support, and relevance to the prompt.

Announcement of Results: The winning essay will be selected in mid-December and published in the March/April 2026 issue of Washington Lawyer. 

For questions or more information, contact [email protected]. 

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