Thought Leaders Fire magazine issue 9 published earlier this week published articles about the International Law Book Facility (ILBF), successful law undergraduate essay competition in 2022 including articles by me, the ILBF’s CEO and the essay winner. The final round of judging for the competition was undertaken by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (ILBF founder and patron) and Professor Richard Susskind. The goal of the competition was to provide law undergraduates with an opportunity to secure a coveted internship with a law firm, and thereby to support efforts to improve diversity in the profession. Brown Rudnick sponsored the competition and provided the internship for the winner. Jude, the winner arrives 6 June to start his internship in the London office. I am looking forward to meeting him then.
The competition was launched on 25th November by Lord Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice. It was open to all law undergraduates studying at a UK university, and was promoted to the heads of over 120 law schools in the UK. The junior judges, ILBF trustees and partners at Brown Rudnick made short videos to promote the competition which were posted to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and You Tube.
The response to the ILBF essay competition was excellent. We had entries from students at 17 universities, 55% of which were non-Russell group. Nearly half of all entries were from students in their second year of undergraduate study and were evenly split between male and female students from a diverse cohort.
The prize for the winner of the competition is a week’s internship at Brown Rudnick in early June 2022, plus up to £500 in expenses for the week. The winning essay and runners up essays have been published in Thought Leaders 4.
See the following article which includes a link to the announcement of the winner by Lord Thomas and Professor Susskind, with Jane Colston (ILBF trustee and partner at Brown Rudnick) and Katrina Crossley (CEO of the ILBF): https://ilbf.org.uk/2022/03/law-undergraduate-essay-competition-announcement/