Participating in legal essay competitions offers more than just a chance at prize money – it’s a golden opportunity to sharpen your skills, build your network, and ultimately boost your pupillage prospects.

What’s in it for you?

Winning an essay competition is gilt-edged evidence of written advocacy skills. Indeed, the criteria against which chambers assess paper applications frequently reserve marks for essay prizes over and above those given for academic qualifications. With hundreds of applicants competing for a few dozen places at interview, this can be decisive.

Essay prizes can be especially valuable for law conversion students who may have had fewer opportunities to demonstrate their legal writing skills. Additionally, winning a competition in an area of law practiced by your target sets demonstrates an interest in their work and provides a point of discussion at interview.

They are also good networking opportunities. Winners may be featured on social media, invited to meet the judging panel or taken for coffee at the chambers or law firm organising the competition. Some may even offer mini-pupillages to successful entrants.

Last but not least, essay competitions can be valuable in monetary terms. Most offer cash prizes and some reach well into four figures.

Choosing a competition to enter

Finding a competition to enter can be harder than it sounds. They are not advertised on the tube and the deadlines for entry can slip by unnoticed. In this regard, Lawbore is your friend. The Law Essay Competitions page has an up-to-date list of competitions available to enter. X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is another good resource. Searching for ‘law essay competition’ or similar will throw up adverts for competitions that may not be publicised elsewhere.

It may be tempting to enter every competition you come across, but such a scattergun approach is unlikely to lead to success. Indeed, you may find yourself with half a dozen half-finished essays which you cannot submit. Writing a winning essay requires time. You are better off focusing on one or two competitions on which you think you have something original to say.

Top tips for success

  1. Read the rules. The competition will have rules on formatting, word limit and the like. Read them and stick to them. Don’t give the judges an easy reason to dismiss your entry. It is especially important to check if footnotes are included in the word count and how they should be styled.
  2. Take a position. This is more than just the age-old advice to answer the question. Most prompts tap into an existing area of debate or ask you to consider reforms to the law. Your response should come off the fence and offer a definite view as to the arguments you favour and why, rather than just giving an overview of what others have said. The more original your perspective the better.
  3. Be concise. You rarely have more than 1,000 words to make your argument and have no room to waffle. If you can make the same point in fewer words, do. Judges reward short punchy sentences over flowery rhetoric. It is also better to fully develop a small number of core arguments than skim lightly over many issues.
  4. Sleep on it. Resist the urge to submit immediately after finishing your essay. Instead, close your work and come back the next day for a final proofread. With fresh eyes, you’ll catch typos and mistakes you missed. This in turn requires organisation. Start writing early and plan around your other work so you don’t have to do things last-minute – a valuable lesson for pupillage applications too.