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3 November 2023
News | Gide/Gray's Inn | Essay Prize 2023
Gide is very pleased to have collaborated once again with the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn ("Gray's Inn") on the French-English Law Essay Prize 2023.
For this year's prize candidates were asked to consider the differences between the French and English legal systems with respect to arbitration, and whether one or other of the systems is perhaps better.
We are now happy to be able to announce the two people judged to have answered this question most successfully i.e. the winner and the runner-up:
Our winner is Adnan Khaliq. A graduate of the universities of Reading and Cambridge, Adnan spent the academic year 2022/23 in Canada on a scholarship for students called the Harold G Fox Scholarship. He will receive a prize of £1,500 plus a two-week paid internship with Gide's London office. Congratulations also to our runner-up, Charmaine Chang who is currently a final year LLB student at UCL. Charmaine will receive a prize of £1,000. Well done to Adnan and Charmaine on their impressive achievements.
On their participation in the essay prize, Adnan and Charmaine commented:
Adnan: "I am delighted to have been selected by the panel of judges, chaired by Coulson LJ, as the winner of this year's Gide/Gray's Inn French-English Law Essay Prize. This year's question was particularly interesting as it focused on arbitration. I enjoyed learning how the key differences between the two systems are not attributable to the civil/common law divide but instead relate to a more fundamental disagreement as to the nature of international arbitration and its relationship with a state's legal order."
Charmaine: '"’m honoured to receive this generous prize. I had a chance to delve into the sturdy legal frameworks within the French and English arbitral systems from a comparative law perspective. This has offered me valuable insight into the legal and cultural nuances of the two systems and international commercial arbitration generally, which I hope to further explore in practice."
Well done and thank you to everyone who submitted an essay for the prize this year. The judges were extremely impressed by the standard of the entries, and we wish you all the best for your future studies and careers. Please do look out for future essay prizes and try again if you are still eligible. You may also be interested to learn more about Gide London's training programme, or more generally a career at Gide. Further information on this can be found in the Careers section of our website.
Last but not least, thank you also to our esteemed judging panel who gave up their time to dedicate to the judging process. The judging panel was chaired by Appeal Court judge and Vice Treasurer of Gray's Inn, The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Coulson. Lord Justice Coulson was joined by Estelle Cros, French Liaison Judge at the Embassy of France in the UK; Duncan Fairgrieve, Professor of Comparative law at Paris-Dauphine University; Michael Butcher, co-founder and Past President of the Franco-British Lawyers Society; and Gide partners Saadia Bhatty, Margaret Boswell and Rupert Reece.
The achievements of the winner and runner-up will be celebrated at a prize-giving reception later this month.
About Gray's Inn
Gray’s Inn is one of the four Inns of Court which have the exclusive right to call individuals drawn from all sectors of the community to the Bar of England and Wales.
The Inn exists to support, educate and develop both its aspiring and practising barrister Members in accordance with its historic traditions. With an active Membership of around five and a half thousand, including around three hundred student Members at any one time, its Members’ talent, dedication and bravery has shaped, and continues to shape, the evolution of the rule of law.
