Annual Writing Award

Harvard Law School Writing Prize

Submission Requirements and Deadlines

  1. The 2024 Writing Prizes submission window is now open. To submit a paper(s) for prize consideration, students should complete and submit the online submission form.
  2. Unless noted below, the deadline for prize submissions is 5:00pm ET on April 19, 2024.
  3. Nominating statements from faculty/instructors supervising the paper, where required for submission as detailed in the prize description, should be emailed by the faculty/instructor to [email protected].

Paper Requirements

  1. Please be sure your name does NOT appear on the paper itself.
  2. Only papers written by HLS students during their enrollment at HLS will be considered for the School’s student writing prizes. Joint papers are eligible, but all authors must be current HLS students.
  3. Papers that have been edited by others in preparation for submission to a journal or previously submitted to a journal may not be submitted for a student writing prize in edited form. Such papers may be considered for prizes only if an original, unedited version of the paper is available.
  4. Unless otherwise noted, students may submit multiple papers for a single prize and may submit a single paper for multiple prizes. However, each paper is eligible to win only one of the prizes for which it is submitted. This rule applies to winning papers submitted in a prior year.
  5. Nominating statements from faculty/instructors supervising the paper, where required for submission as detailed in the prize description, should be emailed by the faculty/instructor to [email protected].

Winning Papers

  1. The name and paper title of all prize winners will be published on the HLS Website.
  2. The names of graduating prize winners and prizes won will be listed in the Commencement Program. Non-graduating prize winners’ names will be listed in the Commencement Program in the year they graduate.
  3. Prize-winning papers may be published online in the School’s DASH student-paper repository.
  4. If a prize has more than one winner, the prize money will be divided.

Please contact April Pettit in the Office of Academic Affairs, with any questions about HLS student writing prizes.