The official award ceremony for the CERHA HEMPEL Best Thesis Award – the LAWard 2021, which this time had a total prize fund of EUR 4,500 – was held on Tuesday 18 January 2022 in the conference rooms of CERHA HEMPEL with a limited number of people in attendance. As in 2020, this year the award ceremony could be watched online via a live stream.
As an international corporate law firm, CERHA HEMPEL aims to support high-quality education and practical legal training and to support those students and graduates who have shown themselves to be particularly gifted and talented individuals. The winners of this year's LAWard were selected by a panel of judges headed by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Kodek, LL.M. (Civil and Civil Procedural Law, Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Dr. Clemens Hasenauer, LL.M./MBA (CERHA HEMPEL Managing Partner) together with Univ.-Prof. Dr. Erich Vranes, LL.M. and Univ.-Prof. DDr. Peter Lewisch (attorney at CERHA HEMPEL).
The winners of the LAWard 2021 are: Isabelle Vonkilch and Dr. Patrick Nutz in the PhD thesis category, Peter Bachmair, LL.M., MSc, MIM (CEMS) for his Master's thesis, and Jan Kvasnicka in the undergraduate dissertation category. "This year, the jury was once again extremely impressed by the broad range of subjects tackled by the papers submitted. Also of considerable note was the high quality of all the entries and the way in which the subjects were treated. Over the past 13 years, approximately 500 papers have been submitted for the LAWard and in total we have awarded prizes in recognition of more than 50 submissions. A record we're very proud of", said Managing Partner Dr. Clemens Hasenauer who heads the Corporate Transactions Department at CERHA HEMPEL.