Introducing Pierce Smith, this year’s winner of Gard co-sponsored Writing Competition

The competition is open to all U.S. law school students and receives entries from all over the United States. The contest offers a cash prize to the winner, as well as an expenses-paid visit to Gard’s New York office, where the winning student learns about the work of Gard, as well as the opportunity to present their paper and explain it further. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the travel portion of the prize has been postponed.

For the last five years, Gard has participated in the final article review and the judging of the top entries submitted in the competition. We have been impressed by the contestants’ creativity in topic selection and the quality of their legal research. We are proud to introduce this year’s winner – Pierce Smith, who is a graduating from the University of Texas School of Law.

His winning article is titled “Steering Through the Coronavirus Crisis”, and concerns potential issues regarding maritime liens in the setting of cruise-lines. The article describes the intersection of two arcane and distinctive branches of United States federal law – admiralty and bankruptcy.

We congratulate Mr. Smith on his winning article, and we look forward to his visit to our New York office, hopefully, in the not so distant future.  

The topic and views expressed in the article are solely those of the author, and not of the Association. You can read the winning article here.