The winner will receive £2,000 and a one-to-one meeting with Ayesha Vardag, the high-profile founder and president of the firm. £1,000 and £500 will be offered to second and third place, respectively, and the top five entrants will be offered fast-track interviews for Vardag’s graduate trainee recruitment scheme.
The firm specialises in high net worth, international, complex cases.
Ayesha Vardag said: ‘We need people with brilliant minds and no set ideas, so they can bring us original thinking.
‘This is why we train our own graduates, from their first day out of university sometimes, and get them to bring all their ideas and challenges and reinventing of the wheel to our established law firm. So we can train the wild, brilliant minds of today to know the systems, the tactics, the rules we have learned or indeed made—so they can evaluate them and smash them up if they're past their time.
‘So we've set up this essay prize, to cut through people's CVs, where they went to university, all of that. To look at what they have to say, and how succinctly, incisively and persuasively they say it. We're blind marking, so we have nothing but the words, the ideas, to go on, with no baggage. We want to find the absolute best in the country without any limitations at all.’
Essays should be no longer than 3,000 words, on a contemporary topic related to family law in England and Wales. Submit entries by 31 January 2024. View the submission criteria at https://vardags.com/careers/university-essay-competition.
The best essays will be published on Vardags’ website, and can be shared and reposted by students across their social channels.
