Skip to main content

Posts

Writing Competitions: Prizes for Your Papers

Did you write a seminar paper that made you especially proud this year? Consider reworking it for a legal writing contest this summer! The AccessLex Institute's Law School Scholarship Databank maintains a list of Writing Competitions , currently featuring close to 80 contests with prize amounts into the thousands of dollars. Many competitions also include publication opportunities in addition to cash prizes, making these a great opportunity to share your work with a wider audience.  Most listed competitions fall into the "up to $5,000" range, but some extend beyond that – such as the Judge John R. Brown Scholarship Foundation’s Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing , for which the first-place winner receives $15,000 (and four more finalists also receive cash prizes). That particular competition does require a faculty letter of recommendation along with the submission, so you’d have to work quickly to make it into consideration before the May 30 deadline. Other com...
Recent posts

Summer Reading Staff Picks

It’s that time of year again! The Goodson Law Library staff are happy to provide another round of summer reading recommendations, both fiction and nonfiction. You can see some of these titles in person at the service desk display this month, along with fun stickers and bookmarks to take with you. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism , by Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025). (Request a print copy or e-book !). “The Silicon Valley motto of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ sounds powerful when we're thinking about work on the cutting edge of technology. But what if one of those ‘things’ ends up being democracy? Sarah Wynn-Williams' memoir explores how what they describe as a toxic work culture can spill out, quickly and profoundly, into the culture at large.” –Wickliffe Shreve, Head of Scholarly Services Orbital: A Novel , by Samantha Harvey (2023) . (Request a print copy or e-book !) “Sneaking in at under 150 pages, this elegiac space pastoral beat out 3...

Summer Access to Legal Research Resources

Whether you are graduating from Duke Law this month or continuing your legal studies next year, your access to legal research services and other campus databases may change this summer. Below is a summary of policies for the major legal research databases that you might wish to access over the summer. Continuing Students Westlaw allows continuing students to use Thomson Reuters products, including Westlaw® and Practical Law, over the summer for non-commercial research (i.e., "to gain understanding and build confidence in your research skills, but you cannot use them in situations where you are billing a client"). Examples of permissible uses for your academic Westlaw password include the following: Summer coursework Research assistant assignments Law review or journal research Moot Court research Non-Profit work Clinical work Externship sponsored by the school Your Westlaw summer access will continue automatically - no action is needed on your part. Lexis : A...

The Finals Countdown

Time to get ready for spring exams! Just a few more weeks separate you from your summer, and here are some resources to make the most of your remaining study time. Additional recommended productivity apps and time management tips are available from Bowdoin's Wicked Smart Learning Strategies , Central Michigan University's Study and Success Strategies , and the Duke Academic Resource Center's Study Strategies that Work . First, fill in those outline gaps with study aids , available in print and online via the Law Library. The West Academic Study Aids Library includes Acing, Concepts and Insights, Hornbooks, Nutshells, Black Letter Outlines, Legalines, and Sum and Substance audio. The Aspen Learning Library includes Examples & Explanations, Glannon Guides, and Emanuel Law Outlines. Elgar Advanced Introductions to Law provides accessible yet comprehensive overviews of more than two dozen legal topics, particularly strong in comparative and international areas of law...