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I worked for a Judge this summer (1L summer) who mostly focuses on criminal cases. As a result, most of my memos (and by far, best writing samples) are in criminal law. However, I plan on working in biglaw and have OCI next month. Is it okay to give these employers a memo on a criminal case or is it better to use my not nearly as good memo on a civil case. Thank you.

Assuming you got permission from the judge, use the criminal one. Lots of big firms still do white collar crim work and even if they don't, they'll be looking at the writing sample solely for evidence of how well you cite things and how clear/well-structured your writing is, not for knowledge of any particular area of law.

Your writing sample is damn near irrelevant, and the subject matter of your writing matter is all the way to irrelevant. This won't matter at all. A pile of people will be using something from legal research anyway.

disco_barred wrote:Your writing sample is damn near irrelevant, and the subject matter of your writing matter is all the way to irrelevant. This won't matter at all. A pile of people will be using something from legal research anyway.

Agreed. I get the impression that most firms don't really read or care about it. The majority don't both to even request it. Smart on their part, it is not as if one can really tell a person's legal writing ability based on one year of legal writing where they wrote maybe 3 papers.

spanktheduck wrote:

disco_barred wrote:Your writing sample is damn near irrelevant, and the subject matter of your writing matter is all the way to irrelevant. This won't matter at all. A pile of people will be using something from legal research anyway.

Agreed. I get the impression that most firms don't really read or care about it. The majority don't both to even request it. Smart on their part, it is not as if one can really tell a person's legal writing ability based on one year of legal writing where they wrote maybe 3 papers.

Would you guys suggest using the long memo written for LRW or shorter memos written in the course of legal employment. I am leaning towards my well edited LRW memo, but, I think that providing a shorter memo might be to my benefit...