You’ve got a gift. You can tell a great story. Start writing it down now. You’ve got 2,000 words to state your case. There can be only one winner. Will it be you?

Submit your manuscript to the Texas Bar Journal Short Story Contest by 5 p.m. March 1, 2023.

To be eligible, you must be a lawyer admitted to practice and a member of the State Bar of Texas in good standing. Members of the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors and the Texas Bar Journal Board of Editors are not eligible. All stories should be unpublished and must deal with or be related to the law or lawyers in some fashion. One entry per person is accepted and manuscripts should not exceed 2,000 words.

The top three winning entries as selected by an independent panel of judges will be featured in the June 2023 issue of the Texas Bar Journal. For more information, go here.

2022 Texas Bar Journal Short Story Winners

Thank you to the 14 writers who submitted entries to the Texas Bar Journal Short Story contest this year.

Author names were removed from entries before being submitted to judges in order to keep the contest fair and impartial. Two panels of judges faced the challenging task of selecting winners, and for each round, the same evaluation form was used for consistency. Five entries advanced to the final round, which was judged by Pamela Buchmeyer, of Dallas and Jupiter, Fla.; Mike Farris, of Dallas; and last year’s winner, Mark Ratway, of Dallas.

The winner, “The New Client,” by Jeff Kramer, earned the highest number of points.

Thank you to the 14 writers who submitted entries to the Texas Bar Journal Short Story contest this year.

The winner, “The New Client,” by Jeff Kramer, earned the highest number of points.
We hope you enjoy these creative short stories as much as we did.

FINALISTS
Please congratulate these attorney-authors for making it through the competitive first round of judging to the finals.

• “THE NEW CLIENT,” by Jeff Kramer (First Place)

• “THE GUARDIAN,” by Carly Gallagher Murray (Second Place)

• “THE SAME DIFFERENCE,” by Victor Segura (Third Place)

Here’s an excerpt from “The New Client”:

Molly was calling me “mister,” which must mean there’s somebody in the office who wants to talk to me. I closed the browser window from the article I was reading. According to the Extraordinary Humans section of the Dallas Morning News (the politically correct media avoided using the terms “Superhero” and “Supervillain” these days), there had been a break-in at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant and two pounds of enriched uranium was missing. The FBI suspected The AtomSmasher was behind the heist, but nobody has claimed responsibility yet.

“What is it, Molly?”

She opened and closed her mouth several times before speaking. “There’s a gentleman here, he says he wants to hire you.” She looked pale and unsteady on her feet.

The entire story, along with the second-place and third-place entries, were published in the June issue of the Texas Bar Journal.