Since 2005, the Student Bar Association has conducted its Internal Writing Competition as a forum to showcase scholarly legal writing by current and graduating students at George Washington. Recently, the SBA announced this year's top five papers, out of 49 entries, as selected by a pool of judges composed of student law journal members. The winners receive cash prizes and will work with writing fellows to prepare their papers for publication in an anthology put out by the Association. The anthology will be available for purchase through an as-yet-incomplete website sometime in late November.

3L Brian Day was the overall winner, for his essay "Collective Management of Music Copyright in the Digital Age: The Online Clearing House". Day said he was "thrilled" to win the competition. The paper grew out of his interest in copyright law and the changing state of music copyright law in particular. Day credited Professors Robert Brauneis and Ralph Oman for help in developing the paper. According to Day, the paper was recognized by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association and the American Society of Composers, Authors, And Publishers and will also be published by the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal.

Christopher Caputo's "Job Loss and the Competitive Analysis: Why U.S. Anti-Trust Enforcement Agencies Can, and Should, Borrow a Page from South Africa and Integrate Employment Considerations into Its Merger Review" took second place, and Anil Murjani was recognized with third prize for "A Flip of the Coin: Re-Examining Due Process Limitations on the Political Question Doctrine". Murjani was pleased to have been selected for publication.

"My paper concept grew out of a dialogue in Professor [Todd] Peterson's Separation of Powers class - an unresolved question from a class conversation that happened to stick in my mind," he said. "I originally wrote on the topic as an independent legal writing project, and then eventually submitted it for the competition."

Helen Jun took fourth place with "Market Abuse in the Credit Derivatives Market: Problems and Proposed Solutions", and Michael Martin's "The Digital Millennium Trademark Act" rounded out the top five papers. Martin's paper grew out of his work as a member of the American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal. He expressed "excitement" at the prospect of seeing his work published. "I appreciate that the SBA provides a venue for publication," he said, "as I expect that a published paper will not only be an impressive line on my resume, but a cue to employers and other members of the legal community that I take legal research and writing seriously."

The SBA's Director of Academic Affairs, Heather Benton, coordinated the competition, necessitating her involvement in a variety of tasks, from ensuring the fairness of the competition to overseeing the selection of judges. Benton called the competition a "wonderful experience" for all students who enter, in that it gives them an opportunity to polish their own work in preparation for submission to the competition. For the winners, the competition affords the opportunity "to learn about how to make their work publication ready," she said. "By working with a writing fellow they get individual tutoring on preparing their submission for publication." Benton also feels that the competition is useful for the students who serve as judges or editors for the winning papers, pointing to a former editor who had been asked about her experience by prospective employers.

She added, "I believe that the GW law community should really take the time to read the anthology when it is published. It will give students an opportunity to see what their fellow students have written, and it can influence them to participate in a future competition. Sometimes, seeing an example of good writing can encourage someone to look at how they are writing or to realize that their writing is just as good and they should not be deterred from submitting their work to journals and competitions."