Melissa Heames Weresh, a Professor of Law and Director of Legal Writing at Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa, has been selected by a distinguished panel of academics to receive the 2009 Warren E. Burger Writing Competition Prize. The award will be presented at the American Inns of Court’s Celebration of Excellence, hosted by Justice Antonin G. Scalia at the United States Supreme Court, on October 17, 2009.
The Warren E. Burger Writing Anonymous Competition is designed to encourage outstanding scholarship that “promotes the ideals of excellence, civility, ethics and professionalism within the legal profession,” the core mission of the American Inns of Court. The competition is open to original, unpublished essays of 10,000 to 25,000 words. In addition to a cash prize, the author will have the winning essay published in the South Carolina Law Review.
The judges for the competition are Professor Stephen Gillers, Chair, Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law; Professor Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Trustee Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Professor Nancy J. Moore, Boston University School of Law; and, Professor Robert M. Wilcox, Director of the Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough Center on Professionalism at the University of South Carolina School of Law.
Professor Weresh is a graduate with High Distinction of the University of Iowa College of Law, where she served as the Senior Note & Comment Editor of the Iowa Law Review. She received her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University. Before joining the faculty at Drake, she was an associate with Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs in Akron, Ohio, where she concentrated on environmental compliance and corporate transactional issues. Professor Weresh has authored several books and numerous articles on legal writing, environmental law, and ethics and professionalism.
Weresh’s winning essay, entitled “I’ll Start Walking Your Way, You Start Walking Mine: Sociological Perspectives on Professional Identity Development and Influence of Generational Differences,” examines the professional identity of novice lawyers. She begins with an examination of the concept of professionalism - what distinguishes lawyers as a profession as opposed to an occupation and what values and practices comprise the professional identity of members of the group. Her essay then explores sociological perspectives on professional identity development. She writes that novices experience several non-linear stages of professional identity development, consisting of core elements including knowledge acquisition, investment, and involvement. The essay concludes with an examination of initiatives in legal education and law practice that employ the core elements of professional identity development suggested by sociologists while taking into account sources of generational conflict that have the potential to impede the professional identity development of the novice.
The American Inns of Court Foundation is America’s oldest, largest and fastest growing legal mentoring organization. More information may be found at www.innsofcourt.org.
Contacts:
American Inns of Court
David P. Carey
Executive Director
703-684-3590
dcarey@innsofcourt.org