[00:00:00] I was planning on using a memo I wrote to one of the judge's clerks I interned with last summer as my writing sample. My school of clerkship office suggested this would be frowned upon by judges. Is that true?
Maybe, but at the same time if I don't know if you're writing for a judge. If it's just about some sort of legal issue and so forth, it's not going to be frowned upon. You can just put, 'The contents of a memo I did last summer. '.
It doesn't have to be to the judge or whoever. I don't think that it's going to be frowned upon by judges but again, only use this memo.
You can see all these kinds of problems here. Problems with not providing the writing samples with the right example. If you provide one you wrote to the clerks, see any reason why that wouldn't be permissible. You're just analyzing the law and I don't see anything wrong with that. And you're probably not divulging confidential information because the information is already in front of the court in terms of memos and briefs and stuff.
I wouldn't worry too much about that at all. I'm applying to regional firms after two years in. I had a few writing opportunities to junior associate in and came out of it without a writing sample. My current writing sample options are internship, I wrote three years or excerpting from a law review article I published during my first [00:01:00] year in my law firm. I'm aware either of these is ideal advice if it was me I would probably just, and again, this is not necessarily the coolest thing, but if we did publish a law firm, a law review article during your first year, I think that's great. I would just turn that in.
And then if they say, oh, no, we want, this I would turn in, you've got to have a memo or something that you can do or something clerkship. You may have written, I'm sure you wrote some opinions when you clerked that probably didn't get marked up very much by the judge or anything that you can turn in, but, I think you'll be okay, especially if you're applying to regional firms. I think that most of them aren't going to be that interesting. I like your honesty here. If you tell this to the law firm, just ask them, what I should do and tell them what you have. Don't be a pain in the ass about it, but just be nice about it. They're going to respect you for being honest and forthright and so forth with them. But would turn in the law review article you published your first year was what I would probably do.
I think that's very impressive. It's not ideal. I probably wouldn't do a memo from your - internship because you have so much more experience and you're probably wouldn't want to anyway, because you're like 10 times better writer now after all [00:02:00] this experience. That's what I would do.
And, if you have, I'm sure you must've written some memos or something, and two years in, I would see if you have something along those lines that you can do would be how I would approach that.
This last question is a great question. I like it. But I would look to make sure you have something. You have to have something or you can be honest with them, but I would look for you cause you had to find some writing three years, including a purchase, and I'm sure you've got opinions and all sorts of things that you may still have including maybe published opinions. You may publish opinions or law review articles. I would look into that.
