The ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Short Legal Fiction honors original works of fiction that illuminate the role of law and/or lawyers in modern life.
Updated: A former public defender who represents a detainee at Guantanamo Bay is the winner of the 2024 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
A college professor with a passion for labor and employment law is the winner of the 2023 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction. Kiren Dosanjh Zucker won the $5,000 prize for her short story, “Memory of a Braid.”
The last two winners of the ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction had two things in common. Both were students at the Belmont University College of Law in Nashville, Tennessee. And both wrote their stories in a legal fiction workshop run by Kristi Arth, a legal writing professor at Belmont University.
A short story about the first lawyer in a close-knit Black family has been named the winner of the 2020 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction. The author is Daniel M. Best, an associate at Gallagher Sharp in Columbus, Ohio.
The following short story by Yvette Butler, a lawyer who promotes economic security for survivors of domestic violence, was the winner of the ABA Journal’s seventh annual Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
A lawyer who promotes economic security for survivors of domestic violence has won the 2019 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction. Yvette Butler won the prize for a fictional story with a theme of racial justice. Writing the story was “an outlet to process what’s going on” regarding the “everlasting, amorphous war on terror” as well as issues surrounding police treatment of black people, she says.
A public defender navigates her opioid-addicted clients through drug treatment court. Durham, North Carolina, lawyer Aleaha Jones was named runner-up in the sixth annual ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
