I am currently clerking for a federal magistrate judge and hope to obtain a district court clerkship. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on what I should submit for a writing sample this time around? It will of course be something I have written during my clerkship, but beyond that I am not sure what would be best. Civil vs. criminal sample, R&R vs. order, academic vs. solid application of established law . . .what do you think?

with your judge before submitting anything. I'm a DCT clerk and will be applying for a CTA clerkship. I'm not allowed to use ANYTHING I've written for my judge as a writing sample. (I'm planning to use a seminar paper and maybe an appellate brief I wrote in a law school clinic.)

Yes, you should check with your judge AND think long and hard before using something you wrote for the judge as a sample. At the very least, if you use a sample from your chambers work, you will need to indicate that you have your judge's permission. Even with this permission, many judges will frown upon this use of chambers work-product. There is an etiquette that the mystique of the law clerk-judge relationship must be preserved (i.e., even though we know you wrote the opinion, you have to preserve the fiction that the judge wrote it). For more on these finer points in the selection of a writing sample, see chapter seven of Behind the Bench.