The Virginia Law Review (VLR) is excited to announce its Student Essay Competition, centered on “Lived Experience and the Law.”
This competition is open to all law students (including LLMs) who are currently enrolled at an accredited law school in the United States.
The winning submission will be published in Virginia Law Review Online in the spring of 2027. The winner will be awarded a $5000 grant to be used toward a project or program that intersects with the topic of the article and a $2000 cash prize. In addition to the article submission, authors must include a brief grant proposal for $5,000 to provide legal support for the community, identity, or individuals related to the essay topic.
Topic: The law is often portrayed as a neutral, impersonal vehicle for solving problems, furthering particular policy goals, or addressing widespread social issues. The law and legal institutions are often removed from the experience of those they purport to govern; similarly, a legal education – though broad in scope – often fails to recognize the direct impacts of its “objective” doctrines. As future lawyers, it is important that we recognize the law’s concrete and societal impacts.
We would like to learn more about the ways in which a singular law, set of laws, legal precedent, or legal institutions more broadly have affected or continue to affect the experiences of an individual, community, or identity. This could include focusing on statutes, executive orders, or mayoral decrees, as well as precedents set by state or federal courts. This topic is intentionally broad, but successful submissions will identify one narrow aspect of the law and its application in order to highlight previously overlooked experiences. Successful submissions will not solely summarize a narrative; rather, the Essay will leverage the highlighted experiences to offer a novel understanding of the chosen topic via rigorous legal analysis. Ultimately, we hope to pave the road for a more intersectional understanding of the law.
A non-exhaustive list of potential topics includes: The Americans with Disabilities Act and its contemporary limitations; intersectional perspectives on housing policy; Loperbright and its effect on environmentally at-risk communities; patriarchal approaches to parole violation conditions; prison populations and voting power; disparate enforcement of desegregation mandates across States, disparities between impact litigation rulings and individual plaintiffs’ factual circumstances.
Grant Proposal: The grant proposal must be less than 500 words and request support for a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, a pro bono clinic, or a project of the author’s own initiative. The cause supported must relate to the essay topic and the best proposals will be designed to implement the novel legal thinking argued for in the essay. The proposal must include contact information for the primary recipient of the funds. If the author proposes to support a non-profit or clinic, the author must also include a brief description of the organization’s activities and mission.
Deadline: All pieces must be submitted by January 7, 2027, at 11:59 p.m.
Submission Instructions: Submissions must be emailed to valawrev.online@gmail.com.
Rules: Submissions shall be between 6,000 and 9,000 words, inclusive of footnotes. Please use double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font for the body of your submission. Please use single-spaced footnotes rather than endnotes for citations and references. All comments should be cited in proper Bluebook format.
Each individual may submit no more than one piece, and submissions must be previously unpublished. Jointly-written pieces up to two authors will be accepted, in which case the winning students will split the cash prize. Students may not receive advising from VLR Online or the VLR Notes Department advisors on pieces submitted to the Competition. Pieces may reflect conversations and light comments from professors and other students. They should not, however, be edited by anyone other than the author(s).
All submissions must abide by these guidelines:
- The document should include a cover page containing:
- The title of the piece;
- A word count for the piece, both with and without footnotes.
- The file must be named with the title of the piece, and the subject line of the email must be “VLR Student Essay Competition Submission.”
- Any identifying information must be removed from the body of the document as well as the personal information embedded in the digital file by following the instructions below. This includes removing identifying information typically included at the beginning of a Note in a * footnote. Correctly following all instructions will maintain each author’s anonymity.
- Word 2010, 2013, 2016:
- Go to File, select “Info”
- Click on “Check for Issues”
- Click on “Inspect Document”
- In the dialog box, click “Remove All” and close box
- Save document.
- Word for Mac 2016, 2018:
- Go to Tools
- Select “Protect Document” or select “Protect Document” button on Review tab
- Save document.
- Word 2010, 2013, 2016:
- The grant proposal must be submitted as a separate document, entitled “VLR Student Essay Competition Grant Proposal.” The grant proposal may include identifying information.
- In addition to the documents above, all submissions must include the following information in a separate document, which is to be attached to the same email in .pdf format. The PDF should be titled “[Piece Title].Confidential”. This separate document should be a single page and include:
- Your name, phone number, e-mail address, and mailing address;
- Your law school and class year;
- The title of your submission; and
- A signed statement (an electronic signature will be accepted) that your piece was not heavily edited by anyone other than the author(s).
Any questions should be directed to VLR’s Online Development Editor, Madeline Kahl (umt9kx@virginia.edu).