2025 Legal Research & Communication Scholarship Grants

2025 Legal Research & Communication
Scholarship Grants

Sponsored by LWI, ALWD, and LexisNexis
 

Call for Grant Applications

The Legal Writing Institute (LWI), the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD), and LexisNexis are pleased to announce the 2025 Legal Writing Scholarship Grants for professors of legal research and communication. These grants reflect the three organizations’ commitment to the professional development of legal research and communication educators.

Each year, LWI, ALWD, and LexisNexis award several scholarship/research grants to legal research and communication professors. These scholarship/research grants enable gifted educators to spend their summers exploring scholarly ideas and producing scholarship that will assist others in the field of legal research and communication. While preference is given to proposals in the field of legal research and communication, consideration will be given to all proposals from legal research and communication professionals. The scholarship grants provide evidence of the three organizations’ support for the scholarly pursuits of legal research and communication professionals.

In the past, the awarded scholarship grants have varied from $2,000 to $10,000. All grant recipients will receive the same amount, and the number of grants awarded will depend on the quality of the applications and the funds available. 

Below is a list of past LWI-ALWD-LexisNexis Scholarship Grant award recipients who have agreed to serve as mentors to new LWI-ALWD-LexisNexis Scholarship Grant applicants. Please feel free to reach out to one of them if you would like guidance as you prepare your proposal.

Application Process

1. Eligibility: The scholarship grants are open to both full-time and adjunct professors of legal research and communication who are members of LWI and ALWD at the time of application. Professors who have previously received an LWI-ALWD-LexisNexis Scholarship Grant are ineligible to apply for three years after they received the grant. LWI and ALWD Board members, officers, and members of the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Committee or the LWI Scholarship Development Committee are ineligible to apply until they have been out of those positions for a full academic year. LWI, ALWD, and LexisNexis encourage proposals from both veteran professionals and those new to the field.

2. Application Deadline: Applications must be received by 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Friday, March 14, 2025. Please email the application as one Word document to wendy.humphrey@ttu.edu.

3. Application Materials: The Application is a separate Word document accompanying this Call for Applications. If you are missing the Application, please check the announcements on the LWI ListServ or the DIRCON listserv, or email rachelle.west@utk.edu.

4. Review/Scoring Process: Voting members of the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Grants Committee will review Part 2 of the Application. To maintain anonymity, no personal information will be included. Voting members will rank/score the applications using the following criteria:

  • Is the proposed work related to legal research and/or communication? If not, why not?
  • Is the topic one that has previously been covered in the relevant literature? If so, does the proposed work add something substantive to the discussion?
  • Is the proposed well thought-out and realistic in scope?
  • Is the work likely to be published?
  • Is the topic interesting, and likely to appeal to targeted readers?
  • Is the applicant targeting appropriate research sources?
  • Are the research methods (empirical research, multi-disciplinary research, statistical analysis, traditional legal research) chosen likely to result in a good quality written product?

ALWD and LWI recognize the historical inequalities that pervade the legal profession and the legal academy and affirm their commitment to contributing to a legal research and communication discipline that is equitable and inclusive. ALWD and LWI further recognize that increasing diversity brings added intellectual, scholarly, cultural, social, and economic benefits to the academic and lawyering communities. ALWD and LWI, therefore, encourage proposals by faculty from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups and from those who have not, for example, received grants, presented on panels, or published in Legal Writing: JLWI or Legal Communication and Rhetoric: JALWD in the past.

Once the Voters have scored and ranked the anonymous applications and have made their recommendations, the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Grants Committee will forward those recommendations to the LWI and ALWD Boards of Directors, who will make the final decisions. The Boards will, at the time they make their selections, have access to the information on the application forms in order to balance substantive review of the projects with due consideration for need (as reflected by eligibility for scholarship/research grants or stipends at one’s own institution).

The Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Grants Committee will prioritize applicants who are not eligible for funding from their own school, but access to other sources of funding will not preclude consideration for a scholarship grant. The Committee recognizes that funding provided by applicants’ home institutions may not be sufficient to enable legal research and communication professors to dedicate the necessary time to scholarly projects. Applicants should disclose the required information about access to other sources of funding (or lack thereof) to enable the Committee to award scholarship/research grants equitably.

5. Selection date and grant disbursement: The committee will announce recipients of the scholarship grants in early May 2025. At the time of selection, 40% of the grant award will be paid to each grant recipient. The grant recipient will receive the remaining 60% of the award when the article has been accepted for publication. Grant recipients should submit the completed article to the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Grants Committee along with a copy of the acceptance for publication.

6. Scholarly Work Mentors: At the time that the awards are announced, each grant recipient will be assigned a mentor by the Joint Committee. This mentor, chosen based upon the topic of the proposed scholarly work or any other criteria mutually agreed upon by the applicant and the Committee, will provide the recipient with guidance and assistance in developing the project through to completion and placing it for publication.

7. Thank You Formalities: Grant winners should thank both LWI & ALWD for the Scholarship Grant in the footnotes of the scholarly work. Recipients of the LexisNexis funding should thank that organization.

8. Publication Rights: Grant winners should negotiate permission from the publisher to post the scholarly work on the LWI & ALWD websites. This requirement can be waived if it would prevent placing the scholarly work in a well-regarded publication or require that the author purchase rights.

9. Progress Report Requirement: Every June 1 and December 1, until the grant recipient publishes the scholarly work, the grant recipient will submit a written progress report to the Co-Chairs of the Joint LWI-ALWD Scholarship Grants Committee.

10. Time Limit for Completing the Scholarly Work: The time limit for completing the scholarly work for which the recipient is awarded a grant is three years from the award of the grant. If the scholarly work is not completed within three years from the award of the grant, the grant will terminate without payment of the remaining portion of the award. For the purposes of the grant, the term “completed” means that the scholarly work has been accepted for publication.

Download a PDF Call for Applications.