InBrief

The Australian Academy of Law is pleased to announce the offering of its Annual Essay Prize for 2016. The prize is open to anyone, wherever resident, who is studying or has studied legal subjects at a tertiary level, or who is working or has worked in a law-based occupation. There is no limit by reference to the age or seniority or experience of, or position held by, a person who may submit an entry. Accordingly, judicial officers, legal practitioners, legal academics and law students are all eligible to submit an essay.

The prize was launched in 2015 and the winner of the inaugural Prize was Queenslander, Ailsa McKeon. The amount of the prize is $10,000. The essay topic for 2016 is as follows:

What effect have the advances in technology (including in artificial intelligence) had upon the discipline of law in academia, the practising profession and the courts, and how may that effect change over the next ten years? What steps should be taken now to harness the benefits and limit the detriments of those advances?

The deadline for the submission of an essay is 31 August 2016 and persons intending to submit an essay must notify the academy of that intention in writing via the academy’s website to be received by 30 June 2016. Both of these time limits are strictly observed, as the Rules Governing the Annual Essay Prize make clear.

Those rules can be accessed on the Academy of Law’s website: www.academyoflaw.org.au

Refer to the academy’s website also for further information about notification of intention to enter and about the actual submission of an entry.