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Nottingham Law School student shortlisted for vLex competition 2023

Glory Uloma Ejike, a Nottingham Law School student has been shortlisted for vLex's International Writing Competition 2023.

The vLex International Writing Competition returned for its sixth consecutive year to invite students from around the world to submit a 1000-word, blog-style article on one of three topic categories. This year the categories were; "Law, Technology and Sports", "Law, Technology and Climate" and "Law, Technology and Crypto".

Glory Uloma Ejike.

Glory, a Nottingham Law School student who is currently studying LLM Sports Law, is the only student representing Nottingham Trent University (NTU) for the vLex competition. She submitted an entry for the "Law, Technology and Sports" category who highlighted and discussed the connection between sports, law and technology in her submission.

The category itself can allow entrants to explore the world of sports and its many legal disputes across countries and cultures, from sports governance, to intellectual property, to taxation, to legal battles involving athletes and teams, amongst others.

The category also provides entrants with a range of areas to focus on such as the development of laws for sport, the role that technology has played in this, the use of laws or previous examples to support the use of technology within a specific game, the concern of human rights in relation to sporting events, or the legal concerns of the wider sporting community and fandom.

Her submission, titled ‘Video Assistant Referee (VAR): The Perfect Imperfection’ looks at football being dubbed ‘the beautiful game’ but its interest in recent years has been watered-down by its many controversial decisions such as disallowed goals, misgiven free-kicks and penalties, harsh red cards, and misjudged offsides.

In her submission, Glory gave a background of some crucial footballing moments that led to the demand for more accuracy in football refereeing, and the eventual introduction of VAR into football where the focus was on the English Premier League. To support the argument that VAR has positively improved the game, statistical evidence was added to show how VAR improved football officiating in the League. On the downside, Glory highlighted that many fans are of the view that VAR constantly reduces the momentum of the game and how it is arguably robbing football of its major selling points which are raw emotion, spontaneity of goal celebrations and high-stakes on-field drama.

Glory concluded by balancing the argument that even though VAR was introduced into football with the intent of perfecting the game by eliminating human errors, we might just be striving for a perfection that is never going to exist.

When asked about the achievement, Glory spoke about how she felt being shortlisted as well as her time at Nottingham Law School and NTU.

I feel very proud to be on the shortlist with other students from institutions across the globe, and to represent NTU as the only student on the shortlist is an honour for me. It is also a testament of the quality of education NTU offers. The competition was an opportunity for me to try a different style of writing, conduct research, and condense my findings and thoughts into a concise piece. Although, I am looking forward to being amongst the winners to be announced in April, I am very delighted for the recognition. I received congratulatory emails from the Nottingham Law School heads, that was very special for me.

We would like to congratulate Glory once again for the achievement and wish her luck in April when the final results will be announced.

The overall winner will receive a grand prize of £1,500. Three runners-up who place best in each of the three categories will receive a cash prize of £250 each. The overall winner, runners-up and notable entries will also have their articles published online and shared with thousands of legal practitioners worldwide.

To find out more about the competition you can visit the vLex competition article.

Published on 16 March 2023
  • Subject area: Law, criminology and justice
  • Category: Nottingham Law School