The ABA’s Young Lawyers Division, in collaboration with the Access to Justice Tech Fellows and LexBlog, sponsored the first ever Legal Tech Fictional Writing Competition. The competition sought to bring an interesting new approach to engage lawyers and soon to be lawyers about how technology will impact the field.
The stories were required to be a short fun fictional read, no more than 1,500 words. This allowed students to switch gears from the typical properly cited legal memorandums and flex their creative muscles.
The competition received 21 submissions from students at 20 different law schools. All of the stories were well written and explored interesting areas of how technology might impact the legal field in the future. A handpicked selection of 15 judges from the legal tech, non-profit, and traditional law firm community narrowed down the 21 submissions to the top six. A final round of three judges ranked the top six stories. A tie resulted in two stories receiving third place. The top six stories were:
1st Place: “In the matter of Infinite Monkeys” by Theresa Yuan of Notre Dame Law School
2nd Place: “PAL: A Slippery Slope Satire of the Future” by Travis Gresham of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School
3rd Place: “F(A.I.)LIED US” by Hema Lochan of Fordham University School of Law
3rd Place: “Shall I Begin?” by Grace Myers of William & Mary School of Law
5th Place: “Predictive Innocence” by Alexandra Mateo of William S. Boyd School of Law
6th Place: “Standard 306” by Jennifer Sun of University of California Berkeley School of Law
First place received a $1,000 cash prize. Second place received a $500 cash prize. Both third place winners receive an honorable mention.
You can read the other stories here:
- Alfa, Beta, and Omega by Paula Daniela Cala Perez, Cornell Law School
- ARTIFICIAL by William Kenney, University of Missouri – Kansas City
- Bacon-Wrapped Scallops by Felicity Slater, Boston University School of Law
- Burn the Letters by Carolina Rabinowicz, Harvard Law School
- Chipped by Carrie Schwab, University of Nebraska
- Disconnection in Connection by Rachel Sullivant, University of Arkansas
- Fowl Play by Maxwell Chase, Emory Law
- Full Circle by Tyler Lantzsch, University of Toledo School of Law
- Harvest by Patrick Roach, CUNY School of Law
- I Love You To The Stars And Back by Ying Zhang, University of Washington
- On the Inside by Bailey Walker, William & Mary Law School
- Pixelated Somnia by Mónica-Lisete Hernández-Santiago, University of Puerto Rico Law School
- The Warden by Kat Albrecht, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
- With Efficiency and Justice for All by Davis Klabo, University of California – Berkeley
The competition could not have happened without our sponsors, the ABA Young Lawyers Division, Access to Justice Tech Fellows, and LexBlog. Additional thanks to the many judges who volunteered their time to read and score the stories. A list of the judges can be found at www.atjtechfellows.org/l….
The competition was run by Matthew Stubenberg, a researcher at Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab and Miguel Willis the executive director of the Access to Justice Tech Fellows Program and Innovator in Residence at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.