Student Essay Prize
SCoLA CORPORATE LAW STUDENT ESSAY PRIZE 2025
The Society of Corporate Law Academics (SCoLA) student essay prize is offered to recognise exceptional scholarship by students in Australian or New Zealand universities for essays concerning topics commonly covered within a company law subject.
The winners will be determined by the SCoLA executive in its sole discretion. The SCoLA Executive reserves the right to award less than 3 prizes or not to award the prize in any given year. The SCoLA executive may award joint winners in which case the prize money will be divided evenly between them. The decision of the SCoLA Executive is final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the validity of the decision.
The prize winning papers may be offered an opportunity to be published in the Australian Journal of Corporate Law and must acknowledge the SCoLA Corporate Law Student Essay Prize in their paper. Offers to publish in the AJCL will be in the sole discretion of the Journal’s editors.
PRIZES AVAILABLE:
First prize will be awarded $300
Second prize will be awarded $200
Third prize will be awarded $100
(monetary prizes to be determined in Australian dollars at the date the prize is awarded)
ELIGIBILITY
The paper must be sole authored by a person who (at the time of submission of the paper) is a current full time or part time student at an Australian or New Zealand university, or who graduated in 2022, 2023 or 2024. Students may be studying undergraduate or postgraduate degrees. Students who are on leave from their studies or undertaking an honours degree are also eligible.
The author must submit two versions of the paper, a full version (including name, email address, degree program, company law subject studied and subject coordinator’s name (if applicable), the year and semester the subject was completed, and name of university) and an anonymous version where all author details have been removed.
The paper must be written in English and submitted as a Microsoft Word document with a minimum of 12 point font size in Times New Roman.
The paper must not have been published (either online or in a book or journal) and must not be under consideration for publication. Papers submitted and marked for assessment purposes are eligible for submission (please include the essay question in your submission).
Students should include their Turnitin or equivalent plagiarism verification certificate with their submission.
The length of the paper is to be no more than 5,000 words in length (not including footnotes). However, papers up to 10,000 words may also be considered for a prize if in the opinion of the SCoLA committee there is an outstanding paper.
The style guide for the paper is the AGLC 4th edition.
CRITERIA FOR THE AWARD
The prize will be awarded to the writer of an essay that in the view of the SCoLA Executive is of publishable quality in a scholarly journal and best meets the judging criteria.
The criteria are:
Significance of subject
Originality
Critical analysis of subject matter
Use of relevant and appropriate references in accordance with the AGLC
Well-developed argument
Organisation and clarity of style
An entry may be rejected if it employs language or concepts deemed by any member of the SCoLA Executive to be unscholarly, defamatory or otherwise unpublishable.
HOW TO ENTER
Papers are to be submitted and endorsed by the coordinator of the corporate law subject(s) at the student’s university. There is a limit of three submissions from each university School/Faculty. Submissions may relate to essays submitted for assessment at any time during 2022 or 2023 or 2024.
All papers are to be submitted by the 10th of January 2025.
SCoLA may terminate the prize competition at any time by notification on its website and to entrants.
PAST WINNERS
2024 Annual Conference: Nicholas Cokis
2023 Annual Conference: Not awarded
2022 Annual Conference: Elise Jensen
2020 Annual Conference: Madeleine Muddle (Newcastle)
2019 Annual Conference: Natalie Young