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When applying to slightly more competitive appellate clerkships (not necessarily feeder judges), what is the best type of writing sample to use? Without going into detail, I'm currently working for a district judge and have a few lengthy orders that I've written that I think would make better writing samples than, say, my Law Review note.

My judge has given me permission to use orders I've written (with redacted identifiers where needed), but no one I've asked seems to know for sure whether it's a faux paus to use an order as a writing sample instead of a memo or a piece of academic writing. The last thing I want to do is offend an appellate judge by submitting the wrong type of writing sample!

Thanks for any advice!

By order "you" have written I assume you mean some sort of rough draft of it prior to the Judge's edits. Don't submit a published order as the clerk/judge is going to (hopefully rightly) assume that this was not your original work and was substantially edited.

Can you reformat a draft order so it looks like a memo you wrote? Also just explain in the cover where it's from, how much feedback you got, permission etc.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:02 am

By order "you" have written I assume you mean some sort of rough draft of it prior to the Judge's edits. Don't submit a published order as the clerk/judge is going to (hopefully rightly) assume that this was not your original work and was substantially edited.

Correct--These were orders that my judge didn't make any edits to and simply told me to file, which is pretty standard in this judge's chambers.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:11 am

Can you reformat a draft order so it looks like a memo you wrote? Also just explain in the cover where it's from, how much feedback you got, permission etc.

That's a good idea. I'll give that a try; thanks for the suggestion!