Lateral Writing Sample Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm applying for a job. The job posting specifically asks for a writing sample. I don't have many writing samples to provide. Here are my options:

1. Selected pages from a paper I wrote in my final year of law school about 2 years ago.
2. An article I recently wrote for a monthly publication that my firm puts out.

As to the latter, the article has me down as a co-author, but I actually wrote it. The other author just made a few edits after the fact. I was thinking I could send them the pre-edited version so it better reflects my work.

What do you guys think?

[ballouttacontrol]

What practice group? Neither of those seem very good to me

[Anonymous User]

What practice group? Neither of those seem very good to me

Well, as I've said, it's these or nothing. Anything else would require my current employer's permission because they are not public filings.

The practice of the target firm is bankruptcy.

[ballouttacontrol]

Idk anything about bankruptcy but couldn't you spend a couple hours and heavily redact something to make the client unidentifiable? Or just write something original?

[Anonymous User]

Idk anything about bankruptcy but couldn't you spend a couple hours and heavily redact something to make the client unidentifiable? Or just write something original?

The target firm is bankruptcy, but my current position is not.

I could easily provide something that doesn't have the client's name anywhere, but the arguments are pretty sensitive and a competitor could use them to siphon business from my current employer. It has happened before, and we have done it ourselves.

What do you mean by something original? A made-up brief or something?

[Anonymous User]

Others may disagree, but I think it's fine to use the article from the monthly publication - and not the pre-edit version. I used a couple of monthly publication articles that I was a "co-author" on for my lateral writing sample, with a brief explanation that everything always has a partner's name on it, although I did the majority of the writing. The lateral firm didn't have a problem with it - they understand how this type of thing works, and know that basically anything you've done as an associate is going to have been edited by someone, whether it's a client piece or a marketing publication.

[Anonymous User]

How common do you think this sort of thing is? I applied to a corp position that required a writing sample and was like wtf? People actually expect this? The vast majority of what I do is just reviewing and commenting on contracts/disclosures, and occasionally I'll write a few paragraphs or a page to answer a semi-complicated legal issue. Full-on memos have been extremely rare.