Writing Sample for Finding New Job? Forum

[Anonymous User]

How do people get good writing samples when they're looking to move jobs ? All the writing you'll do at your firm is privileged, and you can't ask to redact without revealing that you're looking to leave.

[timmyd]

I can never find a satisfactory answer to this question. Highly curious myself

[Lacepiece23]

How do people get good writing samples when they're looking to move jobs ? All the writing you'll do at your firm is privileged, and you can't ask to redact without revealing that you're looking to leave.

What about a motion that you drafted? Isn't that public information? I'd have no idea for corporate.

[Anonymous User]

How do people get good writing samples when they're looking to move jobs ? All the writing you'll do at your firm is privileged, and you can't ask to redact without revealing that you're looking to leave.

What about a motion that you drafted? Isn't that public information? I'd have no idea for corporate.

Well in my case I'm not senior enough to have even taken a first run at a full draft of a motion, let alone have drafted a motion in my own words as it went out the door.

I would think most folks would have the public version so heavily edited that it would be useless.

[lolwat]

How do people get good writing samples when they're looking to move jobs ? All the writing you'll do at your firm is privileged, and you can't ask to redact without revealing that you're looking to leave.

What about a motion that you drafted? Isn't that public information? I'd have no idea for corporate.

Well in my case I'm not senior enough to have even taken a first run at a full draft of a motion, let alone have drafted a motion in my own words as it went out the door.

I would think most folks would have the public version so heavily edited that it would be useless.

You might be able to do some light explaining without going into who edited what. E.g., use the part of the motion you drafted and say that was substantially your work.

I think MOST lawyers will understand that unless it's a sole practitioner or something, nothing filed is ever 100% one person's work.

Besides that? No clue sorry...

[dixiecupdrinking]

Best solution I've found is take a pro bono case where you can file briefs that you wrote and represent that they are your work. But yeah, it sucks. There's always writing articles and stuff, where at least your own draft wouldn't be privileged, but it's still iffy whether your firm would be cool with disclosing it, and it's unlikely to be what employers are looking for anyway.

[Lacepiece23]

Best solution I've found is take a pro bono case where you can file briefs that you wrote and represent that they are your work. But yeah, it sucks. There's always writing articles and stuff, where at least your own draft wouldn't be privileged, but it's still iffy whether your firm would be cool with disclosing it, and it's unlikely to be what employers are looking for anyway.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I have a few motions that were definitely my work on billable stuff, but mostly on pro bono.

[Anonymous User]

I help with recruiting at my firm; most of the writing samples we see are publicly available documents. We understand that those go through many rounds of editing, and don't hold it against the applicant.

However, I'm sure this varies firm-to-firm.

[Anonymous User]

Bump


Any help would be much appreciated. All I really have is my academic note, which is the sole sample I used applying for clerkships as well