ELI Young Lawyers Award

The ELI Young Lawyers Award was officially launched at the 2016 Annual Conference and General Assembly. The goal of this award is to provide the young European legal community with a mechanism to propose practical suggestions for the improvement of European law, as a way of giving voice to future European legal experts and to help ELI in fulfilling its core mission of improving the quality of European law. The award is supported by ELI and other appropriate participating institutions.

Applicants must be students enrolled at a university currently undertaking a university law degree, whether undergraduate or postgraduate; or contenders who are within five years of being awarded a law degree at the date by which entries must be submitted.

Candidates must submit a unique and original paper which was not previously published and which deals with a European legal issue that could be improved. Joint submissions, by the means of co-authorship of up to two applicants, are also accepted. The contribution has to be submitted in English. Papers for the ELI Young Lawyers Award have to be submitted by 30 April of each year to the following email address. 

The Jury of the ELI Young Lawyers Award is comprised of representatives of ELI and other participating institutions. It is selected by the ELI Executive Committee every two years.

Entry Requirements

All papers submitted by candidates for the ELI Young Lawyers Award should follow the Rules regarding structure, form, style, reference formats and citations. Papers should follow the submission template and be anonymised. Candidate details should be attached in the application form.

The awarded candidate(s) will be invited to present their paper in front of the Jury in the course of the ELI Annual Conference.

In addition, the winning contribution will be published on the ELI website and its author(s) will be awarded a EUR 500 cash prize as well as two years of free ELI membership, which will allow them to be involved in Special Interest Groups, present project proposals and participate in the Members Consultative Committees of the different ELI projects.

The ELI and sponsors will further cover their accommodation and travel expenses up to EUR 1.000. This will provide the winner(s) with an opportunity to meet and greet some of the world’s leading law experts and exchange ideas with them.

In the case of a joint submission of co-authors the prize will be split. The co-authors’ travel expenses and accommodation will be covered up to the above-mentioned sum. The cash prize will also be split by two. Both winning contributors will be awarded with a one year free ELI fellowship.