The below announcement is reproduced from the AALS’s Property Law Digest:

Albany Law School and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University are pleased to announce their jointly sponsored competition for the inaugural Trusts & Estates Emerging Scholar Award. This paper competition is open to all who are teaching an ABA-accredited law school and have five (5) or fewer years of full-time law teaching experience as of September 30, 2027. The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2027.

The purpose of the award is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship in the field of trusts and estates, broadly understood. This includes, but is not limited to, work concerning wills and revocable and irrevocable trusts; probate; trust, guardianship and conservatorship administration; transfer taxation planning and administration (including estate, gift, inheritance and generation-skipping taxes); asset protection planning; fiduciary income taxation; incapacity planning; elder law; employee benefit planning; donative planning; charitable planning; exempt organizations; and probate, trust and protective proceedings and litigation. The work chosen for the Albany-Pace Critical Trusts & Estates Emerging Scholar Award should make a substantial contribution to legal literature and reflect original research and/or major developments in previously reported research.

Papers will be reviewed on a blind basis by a committee comprised of members of the Albany Law School and Haub Law full-time faculty with expertise in this area, and one other full-time faculty member teaching at an ABA-accredited law school. The winner of the competition will be announced and honored at the Critical Trusts and Estates Conference to be held at the University of Richmond School of Law on October 9-10, 2026. The winner is not required to be in attendance at the conference.

ELIGIBILITY:

· All persons who have held full-time teaching positions for five (5) or fewer full academic years as of September 30, 2026 are eligible for consideration. One does not have to be on the tenure-track or tenured to be eligible. Time as a VAP or Fellow does not “count against” the five (5) year clock.
· Only those currently teaching at an ABA-accredited law school are eligible to submit.
· There is no subject-matter limitation for submissions, as long as the paper relates in some way to trusts and estates, broadly understood.
· Jointly authored papers are accepted as long as each author independently meets the eligibility requirements.

PUBLICATION COMMITMENTS/LIMITATIONS:

· There is no publication commitment associated with the competition.
· There is no financial award or support provided in connection with the award.
· Papers are eligible regardless of whether they were published prior to submission date, are scheduled to be published after the submission date, or are not yet under submission.
· Each applicant is limited to one (1) entry.
· Papers considered in prior years’ competitions are eligible for resubmission, but ordinarily the selection committee will prefer papers that have been or will be published within twelve (12) months of the submission date.
· There are no page-length or word-count limitations.
· All publications (including scholarly articles, book chapters, legal briefs and other writings) are eligible for consideration.

SUBMISSION:

· We will accept submissions for the Emerging Scholar Award from September 1, 2026, through September 30, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. The winner will be announced at the conference.
· To participate, please email your work, redacted as necessary to preserve anonymity (for the blind judging process), as a portable data file (PDF) to Judy Jaeger, Senior Staff Associate, at jjaeger@law.pace.edu with the subject line “T&E Emerging Scholar Award.”
· Please include in the body of the email your name, institutional affiliation and confirmation that you meet the eligibility requirements.
· Unredacted or late papers will not be considered.

Information on Emerging Scholar Award, Albany Law School, and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law
Albany Law School and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law are pleased to host this paper competition for the Trusts & Estates Emerging Scholar Award. Both law schools have strong traditions of training students for careers in estates planning and are proud of their faculty, students, and alumni with expertise in this area.

Photo of Gerry W. Beyer Gerry W. Beyer

Dr. Gerry W. Beyer joined the faculty of the Texas Tech University School of Law in June 2005 as the first holder of the Governor Preston E. Smith Regents Professorship. Previously, Prof. Beyer taught as a professor or visiting professor at several other…

Dr. Gerry W. Beyer joined the faculty of the Texas Tech University School of Law in June 2005 as the first holder of the Governor Preston E. Smith Regents Professorship. Previously, Prof. Beyer taught as a professor or visiting professor at several other law schools including Boston College, Boston University, The Ohio State University, Southern Methodist University, the University of New Mexico, Santa Clara University, St. Mary’s University, and La Trobe University in Australia.

Prof. Beyer is admitted to practice in Texas, Illinois (inactive), Ohio (inactive) and before the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Prof. Beyer is the recipient of dozens of outstanding and distinguished faculty awards from three law schools including the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the most prestigious university-wide teaching award at Texas Tech, the 2015 President’s Academic Achievement Award, and the Outstanding (Law) Researcher Award in 2013 and 2017.

As a state and nationally recognized expert in estate planning, Prof. Beyer is a highly sought after lecturer. He presents dozens of continuing legal education presentations each year for many national, state, and local bar associations, universities, and civic groups. In recognition of his expertise and contributions to the legal profession, the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils inducted him into the Estate Planning Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2022, Prof. Beyer was awarded the Distinguished Probate Attorney Lifetime Achievement Award by the Real Estate, Probate, and Trust Law Section of State Bar of Texas.

Prof. Beyer is the editor of the most popular estate planning blawg in the nation which after being named for five consecutive years to the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100 was awarded Hall of Fame status in 2015.

Prof. Beyer is the author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles focusing on various aspects of estate planning, including a two-volume treatise on Texas wills law, an estate planning law school casebook, and the Wills, Trusts, and Estates volume of the Examples & Explanations series. He has four times won awards from the American Bar Association’s Probate & Property magazine for his writing. He is one of the most often downloaded law authors on the Social Science Research Network with a ranking in the top .001%.  Prof. Beyer is the Editor-in-Chief of the REPTL Reporter, the official journal of the largest section of the State Bar of Texas, the Real Estate, Probate and Trust Law Section.

Prof. Beyer serves as a mentor to many students and various law school organizations as well participating regularly in pro bono activities. He is the advisor for the Estate Planning and Community Property Law Journal and its annual seminar, the Black Law Students Association, and the Estate and Property Law Society.

Prof. Beyer received his J.D. from the Ohio State University (summa cum laude) and his LL.M. and J.SD. degrees from the University of Illinois. He is a member of the Order of the Coif, an Academic Fellow and former Regent of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, a member of the American Law Institute, and was appointed by the Uniform Law Commission as the Reporter for the Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act and the Integration of Probate and Non-Probate Transfers Study Committee.

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