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Hi All,

I'm getting ready to apply for some state supreme court clerkships and I would like to hear ya'lls perspective surrounding write samples. In terms of what I'm choosing from, I have my brief from my 1L writing class, a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc from my 1L summer internship, and a case note I wrote for my my law review write-on competition.

I'm wondering if it's okay to use a petition for rehearing/rehearing en banc and/or a case note from a law review write-on competition as a writing sample? I usually hear about people using regular briefs or law review notes. I don't really want to use my 1L brief because I don't think it's as well written as the other pieces, but I also don't know if the other pieces would be a red flag.

Thanks in advance.

The petition for rehearing will be fine. It’s best to use 1) your strongest piece of writing and 2) something written for a job rather than school.

Also, proofread it again. And have someone else proofread it too.

I'm astonished at the number of writing samples I see with silly mistakes, as if you cannot make edits after the piece was used for its originally intended purpose.

albanach wrote:Also, proofread it again. And have someone else proofread it too.

I'm astonished at the number of writing samples I see with silly mistakes, as if you cannot make edits after the piece was used for its originally intended purpose.

Some people think it's unethical to make edits to a writing sample after it was submitted for its original purpose. I'm not one of them, but just putting that out there.

Anonymous User wrote:
Some people think it's unethical to make edits to a writing sample after it was submitted for its original purpose. I'm not one of them, but just putting that out there.

Those people should pick a writing sample without typos, non-cited quotations, or fundamental Bluebook errors.

In all seriousness, if someone wants to be a lawyer, then they should be able to frame the paragraph introducing their writing sample in such a way as to indicate that it includes minor stylistic and formatting edits made to facilitate its use as a writing sample.

No one will ding you from hiring because of a statement like that, whereas they certainly will for a writing sample containing stupid mistakes.

I’ve never heard that it’s unethical to edit a piece after it was originally used. For someone else to edit it, sure.

Thanks for the responses! I will definitely make sure to proofread. So it sounds like a petition for rehearing is fine, what about the case note from my write-on competition?

Again, whatever you think represents your best writing. A lot of write-on competition pieces are kind of weird/artificial from having a closed-universe of sources, and not really appropriate. If yours really was a casenote that's the same format as any published casenote, sure, it would be fine, but most people don't really spend enough time on a write-on for me to think it would be your best option (like how long was your write-on and how long did you spend working on this?).

I spent about a week on it and it's 13 pages when formatted to standard 12 point/times new roman font. I think it's well written, but my concern is exactly what you mentioned, that the reader might be turned off by the closed universe and limited time I had to work on it.

If it's closed-universe, I definitely wouldn't use it. It's too artificial and doesn't really reflect what you'd do in a clerkship - it could give rise to questioning your research ability.

Okay, I'll stick to the petition then. Thanks for all of your advice!