David Sowry L’24 was selected for the top prize in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law’s Annual Law Student Writing Competition.
Sowry’s first-place honors for his paper, “Bargaining Rights for Gig Economy Workers,” include $3,000 and publication in the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law. In addition, he was invited to the ABA Annual Section of Labor and Employment Law Conference and the Annual Induction Dinner of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.
The criteria used to judge submissions to the competition included: relevance and usefulness to practitioners, legal analysis, use of authority, writing style, and compliance with rules of writing and bluebook.
The genesis for Sowry’s winning paper was an assignment in a fall 2023 antitrust policy seminar, specifically a list of topics proposed by Herbert Hovencamp, James G. Dinan University Professor. After learning about the writing competition, Sowry revised his class paper and submitted the new work.
Sowry’s interest in the topic grew out of his original motivation for pursuing a career in law, which he sees as one of the few avenues available for workers to pursue fair treatment in an otherwise hugely imbalanced relationship between them and their wealthy employers.
“Workers have a limited ability to negotiate with the big tech companies that run the gig economy,” Sowry said. “In this growing area of law, I see an effort to address these imbalances and even the playing field, at least incrementally.”
While at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, Sowry was an editor for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and a member of the Moot Court Board.
“From day one, the professors all did a great job of bringing the law into the real world, as opposed to just reading old cases, discussing them, and stopping there—which is how legal education usually works,” he said. “They constantly instilled in us the law’s impact and consequences in the world, which gave my studies real purpose, not just for the practice of law, but also how it could make the world a better place.”
Sowry works in the litigation department of a Washington law firm.
Original source can be found here.