Pitt Law grad's tale of 2 lawyers with burnout wins 2026 ABA Journal Ross Writing Contest
Imagine that you are sitting for the bar exam when suddenly you get a phone call from an unfamiliar phone number that registers as spam. Only later do you find out that it was a call to let you know you won the ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
What may sound like a fictional storyline happened to Daniel J. Joyce, who won this year’s contest for his work, titled “The Pour.” And yes, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law grad was in the process of taking the bar when he got the news.
“I thought, ‘Oh, wow,’” Joyce says. “I had totally forgotten about the contest. It was a surprise. I was sitting in a room for eight hours, so it was a nice counterbalance to that.”
Joyce graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law this year and studied environmental law and civil law. The fact that he has not yet entered practice makes the storyline of his submission somewhat surprising: It’s not about one but two lawyers dealing with professional burnout.
Daniel J. Joyce.His unnamed protagonist is a 41-year-old lawyer who one day “closed out his old life” by quitting his job, selling his home and buying a one-way ticket to Curacao, an island in the Caribbean. There, he becomes a hotel bartender, contentedly pouring libations into glasses for sun-soaked tourists. One day, an exhausted attorney walks into the bar, and the story unfolds.
“Any lawyers who I talk to say that burnout it relatively common,” Joyce points out when asked why he chose the topic of his story. “It’s sort of a fantasy to leave it all behind. I wanted to write a story that would be a vignette of sorts of what that would look like. Not with any message to it but trying to capture the mood about law, which is this really challenging profession for people who are in it.”
Joyce says the reason that he didn’t give the bartender a name in the story was to symbolize that he left behind his old identity. And while he has never been to Curacao, where his fictional lawyer lands, he’s been to the Caribbean, which he observes can feel like you are in an entirely different universe.
Last year’s Ross essay winner also was from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and that story was about an associate struggling to maintain sobriety while attending a law firm event where alcohol was being served. Both Joyce and last year’s winner, Murphy DePompei, took a persuasive writing course in which students were encouraged to write a story about the law and to be creative in their process.
Joyce, who received his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh, says he found the law school experience challenging. He freely admits that he had no plans to enter the writing competition and had never submitted his writing into a contest before. After class one day, his professor pulled him aside and suggested that he enter.
His advice to future Ross essay winner hopefuls: “Don’t be afraid to submit your story,” he says. And don’t be afraid to have others critique your work.
He laughs when asked whether he will buy his professor a drink when he gets back to the states. Joyce and his wife will be traveling in China during the month of August.
The $5,000 prize money will help the couple see the world. For Joyce, it’s perhaps the ultimate cherry on top, especially after going full throttle for three and a half years of law school and, of course, the bar.
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