My goal is that almost everyone who puts time into this and writes a good article will get something, so the prizes are distributed in the following fashion:
$500 for 1st place
$250 for 2nd place
$150 for 3rd place
$100 for 5 Honorable Mention prizes
$50 for 25 Great Addition prizes
The winners will be chosen in two months on September 15th.
Also, $100 in prize money will be awarded to the best entry submitted every few weeks. The first $100 will be chosen on August 1st for the best submission between now and August 1st, then another $100 for the best entry submitted between Aug. 1st-Aug. 15th, another $100 for an entry submitted from Aug. 16th-Aug. 31st and then a final $100 will be provided to an entry from Sept. 1st to Sept. 15th, when all of the winners will be chosen.
I will choose the winners, but listen heavily to TLS members on who they feel are the best submissions. Moderators are not eligible for prizes (sorry mods, gotta make sure it is fair).
Your submission can be anything you would like it to be and the most likely topic is something that you feel will be a good addition to TLS. This could be a subject we already have written about but not as in-depth as you feel it should be or running with an entirely new topic. Please use your creative juices to add to TLS. Those who win prizes would contribute their content to TLS, which hopefully is fine.
The selection of topic is yours, but the following are some areas of expansion or need I feel would be of value to TLS, with the first few being excellent topics for those currently in law school:
Profiles on Top Law Firms. These would be similar to the profiles on the law schools, with the goal being to provide insight into what it is like to work at each firm (culture, pay, hours worked, what grades and school one needs to be hired, areas of specialty, etc.)
Rankings of the top 100 law firms. This can be by different metrics such as size (National Law Journal), prestige (Vault) and other metrics such as per partner profit and quality of life if available.
Articles on how to succeed in law school, particularly during the first year. The author would ideally have finished in the top 10% of their class and can draw heavily from personal experience. There can be several of these articles written since different routes to success surely exist. Good examples would be the blog by JayCutler'sCombover (http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 11&t=77498) , and the post by Arrow (http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =2&t=77628)
A summary of law school, such as: 1) a description of the first year of law school (required classes such as Torts, Civil Procedure and what topics they cover), 2) the hard task of looking for a summer job in your first summer, 3) 2nd year classes (can either be electives but several students will take classes that prepare them for the bar such as evidence, constitutional law, etc.), 4) on-campus interviews, 5) the summer associate job where you work for the firm you hope to get employed by, 6) the potentially relaxing 3rd year if you already have your offer from a firm in hand, 7) intensive bar review, and
bar vacation (travel for 3-8 weeks as your last hurrah before the golden handcuffs).An article describing the OCI process and ideally try to find out how the process works at several different law schools (do the students get to choose the firms as at most top law schools or can the firms determine who they want to interview by selecting amongst resumes) and also how many law firms come to each law school.
There is a shortage on TLS of information on legal employment so information relevant to this would be useful.
An article on clerking and how to effectively get a clerkship.
An article on what law schools offer early admission (non-binding) and early action (binding) and the pros and cons of both of these options (with there being many cons to binding early action and many pros to applying via early admission.
Summaries of the policy of every top 100 law school discussing what schools take the highest of multiple LSAT scores or instead average the scores. Providing detailed explanation when needed for a particular school policy would be ideal.
More information on the transfer process and how to successfully transfer would be great.
More information on financial aid (and advice on trying to negotiate more aid utilizing other scholarships).
These are just some preliminary ideas and the goal is for you to write about something you feel is missing on TLS. More contests will eventually occur, but the most prizes will be awarded during the summer since this is likely to be when participation will be the greatest.
For those submissions that become articles credit will be given to the authors if desired. Please post away on either further ideas of what would be good additions to TLS or what you intend to write about (to lessen the possibility of duplicate articles). Post you submissions in this forum as new topics. I welcome any ideas on ways to improve this contest as it is my first attempt. Unleash your genius, make $, and make TLS a better place.
Cheers,
Ken
