There are less than three weeks left in my internship and already other interns in our office are beginning to leave. The school voucher case on which I am working with another intern will be turned over to me solely on Friday, and it is possible that I'll be spending a great portion of my remaining weeks focusing on its legal issues.

Truth be told, the other intern is doing the bulk of the writing on this particular project. While we've both kept up to speed and hold daily meetings about the ongoing research and our informal analysis of the case, we decided she'd write first and I would edit for clarity and polish the memo. My chief concern in the confluence between these job tasks and her departure is getting the memo only partially written. While I have no qualms writing memos or taking over the case, if I have to draft portions of our analysis from scratch, I may have to rewrite the entire memo so the whole thing doesn't look stilted and have two different voices. She and I have very different writing styles and, unless it's blended well during editing, it will show.

A casualty of working on hugely important cases like this one is the general inability to use them as a writing sample. The other intern could readily use this as a writing sample over me, given her effort in drafting the memo from scratch, if not for very specific rules and ethical guidelines over when one can use such a memo as a writing sample and when one cannot. Primarily, this case is unlikely to be resolved until well into next year. And, it's such an important case--dealing with important constitutional issues--that using the document as a writing sample would prematurely publicize the Court's thoughts on the case.

So, I feel bad for my fellow intern. She has worked most of her time here on this one memo and won't be able to use it as a writing sample until well in the future (if at all).

With some guidance from my supervisor, and approval by the Supreme Court, I chose to edit and polish my memo on a first-degree murder case as a writing sample. That case contained a lot of analysis and shows that I had to do independent research to complete that analysis.

These writing samples are so important, and so important right now, because employers want them. They want recent examples of your research and writing skills. I had to submit a writing sample to get this job. More specifically, these samples are so important now because many of us Northeastern Law students are already gearing up to apply to our next internships. Our Winter co-op generally runs from late-November to mid-February, and the deadline for applications is around September 15th. So, we're preparing for that.

Also, many of us are preparing our resumes and writing samples (and more) to participate in "Fall Recruitment," the period during which 2Ls and 3Ls apply for highly competitive summer internships that could lead to offers of employment after graduation. Employers participating in Fall Recruitment do not hire people for the Summer that they're not seriously considering hiring permanently. The first deadline is August 8th.

So, let's review our tally: At the tail end of our current internships, I am applying for my Winter co-op and preparing applications to apply for Summer 2009 co-op (with eyes towards permanent employment), and still awaiting a final word on class registration.

Also, did I mention I have jury duty in Boston a week before classes start?

If I kept a planner...it would soon be bogged down with the weight of ink on my ever-expanding to-do list.

More to come...