The short answer questions provide an opportunity for you to showcase past experience in a collaborative setting, elaborate on your interest in writing for the Journal, and offer your views on the value of undergraduate legal scholarship more broadly. Your answers should be well written, clearly answer the questions, and also convey your own personality through them. More details on the questions can be found in the provided in the Application Form.

Your writing sample does not need to be related to your topic or even law in general. The purpose of the sample is to assess your writing abilities in the context of writing a piece of legal scholarship for the Journal— pieces that discuss legal, political, social, or policy issues may be a better reflection of these abilities. We are open to any writing sample you feel accurately conveys your writing skills.

Papers written for a previous course tend to serve as particularly good writing samples given that they showcase your writing in an academic setting. If you chose to submit a paper written for a class please include the prompt of the assignment it was written for. This assists us in better understanding your argumentation. If you do not have access to the original prompt please summarize it to the best of your recollection.

Your writing sample should be no longer than six pages. You are welcome to submit a portion of a longer piece so long as you indicate it somewhere in the document. If you are submitting a portion of a longer document, also try, to the best of your abilities, to ensure the excerpted section can be understood as a free-standing piece

Your article proposal forms the core of your application as it articulates the nature of the research you plan to pursue in your article and outlines the legal argument you want to make.

Your proposal should provide concise background on your topic (this is particularly important for less-well-known issues), outline the points of your argument (do not worry, you will have the chance to fine-tune and amend these later in the process, should you be expected), and demonstrate that you have some familiarity with the issue and have done preliminary research to support your argument.

Your proposal should be five to six pages, double-spaced, and formatted in a professional manner. You should cite cases, scholarly sources, and other materials that may be relevant to your topic, both to build your argument and demonstrate that you have engaged in the preliminary steps of research into the subject of your article. You are required to cite at least two relevant articles from legal publications (law reviews, law journals, etc.) in your proposal but are highly encouraged to cite significantly more scholarly sources as your final article will likely draw on a wide breadth of academic literature. You are required to cite at least one legal case relevant to your topic in your proposal but are highly encouraged to cite several relevant leading cases.

While, if you are accepted, you will not be able to change the general topic of your proposal, you may consult with the Executive Board to modify parts of your argument. Legal writing is a dynamic process in which your arguments evolve as you research. Accordingly, your proposal is not required to present an expert understanding of all aspects of your topic; however, it should demonstrate you have done some research into the topic and display a direction for further research.

For some exemplary article proposals from past volumes of the Journal, see here, here, and here.Description text goes here