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3L here. Basically, I want to create a writing sample that is more focused on the sector I want to go into (Energy regulation/law). How should I approach that?

I was thinking picking a topic I am familiar with like Carbon Capture and Storage, and writing up a memo like like 1L LARW(absent a fact pattern). I figure that 5-10 pages of analysis of the legal and regulatory framework for an emerging issue in the energy world be a good writing sample.

Thoughts?

I guess to narrow this down a bit, I'm really asking whether it will matter that the memo is something I did on my own rather than as part of a clerkship.

Has anyone done this, or been told not to do this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I've never heard anyone be told not to do this, but it's just never come up in my experience. I think the biggest problem would be lack of application of law to facts. That's always seemed to me that most significant part of analysis in a traditional legal memo - here's all the legal stuff, but what does it mean for this case specifically?

That said, if you couched it as something that would appear in a bar association publication - maybe as an explanation of the issue to practitioners in field who would need to know about it/understand it for reasons x/y/z - it might work.

I suppose it depends in part of what your alternative writing sample is.

Nony is right, the lack of facts would make it difficult. Maybe find a specific case with positive facts and lift the storyline. I usually redact party names & certain specific facts in my submitted writing samples anyway so it wouldn't be that far a stretch.