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I tried searching and didn't see anything on this, so forgive me if I just missed it.

Coming out of a district court clerkship and applying to some federal public defender openings. Trying to decide what to use as a writing sample. I have two orders I drafted in criminal matters that seem like they'd be the best option.

One is an evidentiary issue on a complicated fruit of poisonous tree analysis, and the other is an order on a motion to dismiss in a case where the Government brought some really weird charges in a way that literally we could not find a prior example of (ANYwhere). So both involve a bunch of constitutional and other analysis, and fairly detailed factual sections.

But both are between 30-40 pages as they are. Which portions should be omitted to get down to 10-20 pages? Assume they are both basically broken down into:
General Intro/procedural (2-3 pages)
Background/facts (5 pages)
Standard of review (6-7 pages)
Analysis (20 pages)
Conclusion (1-2 pages)

I excised the intro/conclusion, but it isn't obvious to me which other sections would be more appropriate to use. Thanks for suggestions.

Would it be possible to tee-up one legal issue in the cover letter of the writing sample and then only use the analysis section relevant to that issue? That would probably be my preference.

Fireworks2016 wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:17 am

Would it be possible to tee-up one legal issue in the cover letter of the writing sample and then only use the analysis section relevant to that issue? That would probably be my preference.

That makes sense. One of my samples has a 9-page analysis of one of the issues, so I guess I will use that one and just add a paragraph explaining it. Thanks!