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I'm using a draft of a judicial opinion I drafted during my internship as my writing sample. Should I leave the caption in? Eliminating it would sure save me some space (having trouble getting it down to 10 pages), but it don't look as judge-y, in my opinion. If I leave the full, formatted caption out, should I have a shorter one, like a heading, or just let the cover page sort things out?

I'm also thinking about changing all the underlines to italics. Thoughts? If I do that, should I change the headings to italics too?

Is [brackets] the best way to signify leaving whole sections out? Thanks!

Anonymous User wrote:I'm using a draft of a judicial opinion I drafted during my internship as my writing sample. Should I leave the caption in? Eliminating it would sure save me some space (having trouble getting it down to 10 pages), but it don't look as judge-y, in my opinion. If I leave the full, formatted caption out, should I have a shorter one, like a heading, or just let the cover page sort things out?

I'm also thinking about changing all the underlines to italics. Thoughts? If I do that, should I change the headings to italics too?

Is [brackets] the best way to signify leaving whole sections out? Thanks!

Has your judge OK'ed this? The judges I worked for were very clear that I couldn't use anything I wrote for the internship for a writing sample. Also, generally opinions you wrote aren't "your opinion;" they are the judge's, despite the obvious reality of the situation.

Yup, he was fine with it. He gave us the guidelines before we even started the internship. My judge was basically the best. The best.

Did I say it was "my opinion"? If so, I didn't mean to. I make it pretty clear (in my cover page) that it's just a draft of an opinion I wrote under the guidance of the judge and his clerk.

Anonymous User wrote:Yup, he was fine with it. He gave us the guidelines before we even started the internship. My judge was basically the best. The best.

Did I say it was "my opinion"? If so, I didn't mean to. I make it pretty clear (in my cover page) that it's just a draft of an opinion I wrote under the guidance of the judge and his clerk.

Cool, cool, I figured this had come up, but I just thought I would say something...better safe than sorry. And no, you didn't say it was your opinion—the quotes were mine. Apologies if it wasn't clear.

As far as your questions (and this is entirely my own opinion with no real firsthand knowledge): I would probably take the caption out...maybe add in a heading similar to memo format or just have a cover page with page of explanation of the writing sample and then just jump in.

I think the italics stuff is all personal preference. I personally prefer italics because it looks cleaner to me, but I don't see a way that an employer would penalize you for changing it. Similarly, I think headings should be underlined and not italicized, but again it is personal preference. As far as omissions, I would do something like with a heading: A. [Sentencing Analysis Omitted].

Cool, thanks man.

I ended up going with italics for case names, etc. (BB be damned) and bold + underlines for titles. I can't imagine any employer would intend to penalize someone for underlining vs. italics, but subliminally if I was an employer, I would probably penalize a writing sample that hurt my eyes with underlines.

Left the caption in. It just looks too slick to leave out.