Module Announcements

Dear Students, 

We would like to introduce you to the Times Law Awards 2025 Essay Competition with One Essex Court: 

• The competition is open to all students in any discipline registered with a UK educational institution, together with all pupils and trainees with firms of solicitors or barristers' chambers established in the UK except employees of One Essex Court, Times Newspapers and News International and members of their families.
• Word limit: 1000 words
• The Times and One Essex Court, the organisers, have the right to publish or reproduce at any time all or part of any essay entered for the awards.
• The essay must be the sole creation and original work of the entrant.
• The organisers reserve the right to delete or omit from any published article anything that in their absolute discretion should not be published on editorial or legal grounds. Only one entry per person will be allowed.
• All entries will be acknowledged but not returned.
• The organisers accept no responsibility for the safekeeping of articles and entrants
• Essays should be submitted by e-mail to: tla@oeclaw.co.uk (Microsoft Word format only)
• When submitting your essay, please include your name, address, contact telephone number and details of the educational institution, barristers chambers or firm of solicitors that you belong to in the covering e-mail.  Please do not include that information in the essay itself.

PRIZE: 

• 1st - £3,500
• 2nd - £2,500
• 3rd - £1,500
• Three runners-up prizes of £1,000 each

The title for this year's competition is:

“Assisted dying – MPs have given it the provisional go-ahead, but how might the creation of what the justice secretary criticised as the state offering death as "a service" change society’s and the law’s approach to death?”

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill sparked fraught and emotional debate before being passed at the end of November by 330 votes to 275. It proposes giving terminally ill people the right to request and be provided with assistance to end their lives. Crucially, a High Court judge will have to rule on every application, with those eligible required to be diagnosed with a terminal illness that is expected to kill them within six months. Once granted, individuals would have a fortnight’s cooling-off period before being offered a fatal substance prepared by a doctor. Proposed protections for the process sparked some of the fiercest debate. It will be unlawful to use dishonesty, pressure or coercion when discussing assisted death with individuals, and offenders will face up to 14 years in jail.

Do the safeguards in the Bill provide sufficient protection for the risks involved, bearing in mind vulnerable people, the risks of coercion, and uncertainties in medical diagnoses? The Family Division of the High Court is already burdened with a backlog of cases – will assisted dying applications overload judges? Is it fair to expect judges to make decisions in such cases, and should the law be an instrument of death in this way?

The essay competition is open to all students registered with UK higher education institutes, pupil barristers and trainee solicitors. Essays should be no more than 1,000 words and must be received by midday on Monday, 17 February 2025. There are more than £10,000 of prizes on offer to the six finalists, whose entries will be read by a judging panel of senior figures, including a justice of the Supreme Court, and Daniel Toledano KC and Sonia Tolaney KC from One Essex Court. The awards will be presented at a dinner ceremony at the Guildhall in the City of London in May this year. Full rules and entry details can be found below.

The closing date for entries will be Monday, 17 February 2025 at midday. 

Entries should be typed with double spacing and sent by e-mail in Microsoft Word format to: tla@oeclaw.co.uk

or clearly handwritten and posted to: The Times Law Awards c/o One Essex Court, Temple, London EC4Y 9AR

When sending in your essay, in the covering e-mail please include your name, address, contact telephone number and details of the educational institution, barristers chambers or firm of solicitors that you belong to.  Please do not include that information in the essay itself. 

The winners will hear by mid-April 2025 and the awards dinner will be held in May 2025.

Please contact Jackie Ginty (jginty@oeclaw.co.uk), Jack Miller (jmiller@oeclaw.co.uk) or Conor Mullane (cmullane@oeclaw.co.uk) if you have any queries.