Legal Writing Resources for Students

Guide to Creating an Effective Writing Sample for Law Students

At some point during the application and interview process, most employers will ask for a writing sample. This guide, along with appointments with Writing Fellows, can be used to help you with your submission.

Purpose:

• A writing sample showcases your analytical, research, and writing abilities.
• It provides a real-world example of your skills and professionalism.

Choosing the Right Sample:

• Relevance:
  • Use memos or briefs from your lawyering seminars. Employers prefer clear and effective legal writing and analysis.
  • An objective interoffice memo or persuasive brief are both ideal choices.
• Recency:
  • Your sample should reflect your most recent and best skills.
  • Avoid using older pieces, like a 1L lawyering brief if you’re a 3L, as it raises questions about your more recent capabilities.

Making Your Sample Reader-Friendly:

• Cover Memo:
  • Attach a cover memo that provides context:
    • The course it was written for.
    • Overview of the simulation and your role.
    • Assignment details: objective memo or persuasive brief.
    • Summary of the fact scenario, legal issue(s), and doctrine.
    • Details on feedback from the drafting process.
• Length:
  • Keep it between 8-12 pages; most employers prefer a concise sample.
  • Consider omitting sections to maintain this length, but ensure your omissions don’t dilute the sample’s quality.
• Formatting:
  • Use a readable font like Times New Roman, 12-point size.
  • Double-space with one-inch margins.
  • Create a header with your name, “Writing Sample,” and the date.
  • Number the pages and, if providing a hard copy, staple in the upper left corner.
  • Use tools like Adobe’s accessibility scanner to ensure your sample is readable and accessible to everyone.

Polishing Your Sample:

• Feedback Incorporation:
  • Incorporate feedback from your professor or superiors.
  • Continually revise to reflect your growth as a writer.
• Use of Legal Terminology:
  • Use legal phrases and terms accurately; remember, a practicing lawyer will be reading your sample.
• Error-Free:
  • Ensure your writing sample is free from any grammar, punctuation, or citation errors. Proofread multiple times.

Special Considerations:

• Confidentiality: If using documents from a clinic or law office, remember to account for confidentiality and attorney-client privilege.
• Co-Written Documents: Avoid samples co-written with peers to ensure the work represents only your skills.

Submission Tip:

• Send your writing sample as a PDF to avoid formatting issues. Utilize tools like Symplicity to convert documents to PDF.

Additional Resources:

The Writing Fellows at the Legal Writing Center can assist with revising, editing, and enhancing your writing samples. Schedule individual appointments through the CUNY Legal Writing Center TWEN site.

Understanding the Essence of Citing Authority

• Definitions:
  • Citing: Quoting, naming, adducing as proof, or summoning for attention
  • Authority: The legal power, weight of testimony, rooted from the term author, the original writer or creator
• When to Cite:
  • To back a legal assertion
  • To pinpoint a specifically described authority, like a judicial opinion
  • To trace the source of a direct quote
  • To attribute the origin of an idea

Sources of Legal Authority & Their Hierarchies

Primary Authority:

• Constitution
• Statutes
• Treaties
• Judicial decisions
• Administrative regulations
• Administrative agency decisions

Secondary Authority:

• Restatements
• Treatises
• Law reviews
• American Law Reports annotations
• Encyclopedias
• Dictionaries

Hierarchies Among Authorities

• Federal and State Hierarchy I: Constitutions, Legislation, Administrative agency regulations
• Federal vs. State Hierarchy:
  • Federal statutes take precedence over state statutes in case of conflict
  • U.S. Supreme Court decisions supersede state court decisions for federal law questions
• Within a Single Jurisdiction (Federal and State Hierarchy IV): Order of importance: Court of last resort, Intermediate appellate court, Trial court
• Authority Weightage (Federal and State Hierarchy V):
  • Mandatory (binding) Authority: Controls within its jurisdiction and is limited to primary authority
  • Persuasive (non-binding) Authority: Not mandatory within a jurisdiction but serves as a guiding principle

Factors Affecting Authority Weight

• Case Law Considerations:
  • Recency
  • Strength of reasoning
  • Court or judge reputation
  • Citation approval by subsequent courts
  • Degree of judicial agreement: Unanimous vs. Divided court decisions
  • Attributes of judicial authorship: En banc vs. Panel, Per curiam, Memorandum, Unpublished opinion
  • Type of court statement: holding vs. dicta, explicit vs. implicit holding

• Secondary Authority Weight:
• • Restatements’ reflection of majority jurisdiction enhances persuasiveness
  • Analytic commentaries (like those in treatises) carry more weight than plain descriptions, e.g., in encyclopedias

The Bluebook: A Guide to Citation

• Usage:
  • Citation rules for law review footnotes — no citations in main text of law review
  • Specific rules for court documents and legal memos
• Key Features:
  • Quick Reference inside back cover
  • Extensive index at back
  • Blue-colored Practitioners’ Notes (for court documents and legal memoranda) and Tables for easy referencing

Citation in Court Documents and Legal Memoranda

• Authorities that support or contradict entire sentences in text are given in separate citation sentences that begin with a capital letter and end with a period
• Authorities supporting or contradicting only part of a sentence are cited in clauses, set off by commas, immediately following the proposition they refer to (P.2)

The Structure of a Full Form Citation

ex: Szekeres v. Schaeffer, 304 F. Supp. 2d 296 (D. Conn. 2004)

• Case name (Rule 10.2)
• Reporter name, volume, and page (Rule 10.3, 3.2, 3.3)
• Parenthetical with name of court rendering opinion and jurisdiction, if not clear from reporter (Rule 10.4), and date (Rule 10.5)

Szekeres v. Schaeffer, 304 F. Supp. 2d 296 (D. Conn. 2004)

• Omit given names or initials of individual litigants (Rule 10.2.1 (g))
• If the case is a consolidation of two or more actions, cite only the first one listed (Rule 10.2.1 (a))
• Omit all parties other than first listed on each side, and omit words indicating multiple parties, such as “et al.” (Rule 10.2.1 (a))

Szekeres v. Schaeffer, 304 F. Supp. 2d 296(D. Conn. 2004)

• Citation to a reporter designates the volume number (Rules 10.3.2, 3.2))
• Citation includes abbreviated name of the reporter (Table 1)
• Insert a space between “Supp.” and ordinal “2d” but no space if reporter abbreviation is a single capital, e.g., F.3d (Rule 6.1(a))
• Citation includes page on which the report begins (Rules 10.3.2, 3.3(a))

Szekeres v. Schaeffer, 304 F. Supp. 2d 296 (D. Conn. 2004)

• Parenthetical indicates year of a reported decision (Rule 10.5 (a))
• If not clear from reporter, include deciding court and geographic jurisdiction according to abbreviations listed in tables T.1 and T.2 (Rule 10.4)

The Structure of a Short Form Citation