Those of you who are either struggling with the essay portion or hoping to increase your score will be happy to learn that I have some fresh examples. Nope, I'm not gonna give you another one of those yawn-inducing dreck that scored a 12/12 on the SAT simply by merit of sheer length and grammatical correctness. Instead, I'm going to give you (1) a piece of yawn-inducing dreck that I wrote a year ago while interning at a Taiwanese law firm and (2) a much more exciting piece of awesomeness that I wrote for the same firm. Now, please follow these instructions.
1. While reading essay (1), yawn if you need to.
2. While reading essay (2), keep your eyes peeled for for the following statements:
It may be safe to conclude, then, that Walmex is doubly bad: first, it committed bribery, and then it had the balls to (unsuccessfully) “hush up” allegations.and
Wal-Mart’s semi-apologetic comments reek of hogwash."Hehehe! Raymond used the word 'balls'," you giggle. Well, yes. I emailed the apparently ballsy paper to the attorney who was "mentoring" me, and she replied--stiffly and fallaciously--as follows:
Raymond,
Business people are not interested in knowing how corrupt you think Walmart may be.
If your point of the article is that, in your opinion, Walmart is morally corrupted, then I think the message is loud and clear. However, I requested a professional business oriented legal article that is supposed to analyze a legal issue or topic, using Walmart Mexico as an example, not a mere description of the story from a point of view of a whistle blower, and using unprofessional and emotional charged language such as "...had the balls to (unsuccessfully) 'hush up' allegations" or "Wal-Mart’s semi-apologetic comments reek of hogwash." Furthermore, I also requested something that is not a summary of the New York Times article.
Please rewrite and submit a new article on Monday. Let me know which legal issue you would like to discuss in the article in advance for my approval before you resubmit. For example, corporate governance, anti-corruption law, or white collar crime, as long as it is a legal issue or topic.
Also, although I am not expecting you to work the typical law department office hours of 9am to 7pm, as a reminder, our normal office hours are from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Furthermore, in a professional office environment, if you would like to change your schedule, work from home, or take the afternoon off, the standard procedure is to put in a request to your supervisor to obtain prior approval. If you have any question on this issue, we can discuss it further on Monday.
Best Regards,
[Name of Attorney]
I promptly replied as follows:
Hi Wendy,
I am assuming there has been an error in communication between us, and I sincerely apologize.
The general impression that I received from you was that the topic of the article should be related to the Walmart scandal. We did not discuss whether the article should sound "professional" or include emotionally charged language, nor do I remember receiving instructions about whether the article should be a summary of the incident or a legal analysis. As far as the audience goes, I was under the impression that the business people (e.g., unsecured creditors) audience would be reading my previous articles on bankruptcy, and not on my other papers.
Just to be sure, the language of the article was deliberately casual at times for style and voice. The phrases "...had the balls to (unsuccessfully) 'hush up' allegations" and "Wal-Mart's semi-apologetic comments reek of hogwash" are juxtaposed against more formal language for irony, but I agree that my style may not resonate with everyone. I will change the word "balls" to "temerity", and rephrase the latter sentence as "Wal-Mart's comments seem disingenuous for the following reasons".
With regard to the schedule, I do remember you telling me in our first meeting that my schedule is not only flexible, but that you are amenable to my working from home. I am sorry for having mistaken these instructions as well. Just to make sure, the following is what we have agreed on: (1) One 2-page paper each Friday by the end of the day, free of grammatical errors. (2) Work on Mondays and Fridays, whether it is at home or in the office, and not necessarily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (3) Irregularities are fine as long as the 2-page paper is turned in some time on Friday.
Following the above instructions, I had planned my summer accordingly and left just enough room for other activities. For this reason, I will not be able to turn in a paper on Monday, but I will be able to turn in one on Friday.
As my aunt will attest to, for the last two weeks, my family has been going through multiple major crises, one of which is the death of a family member. For these reasons, I had to leave early last time at the office. I had hoped not to talk about my personal and familial issues and do not want to disclose any details without my family's permission, but I do hope it will be all right if my schedule is somewhat more erratic these days. I will notify you 24 hours in advance if I will have to work from home. Thank you so much for your understanding and I look forward to writing my next paper.
Sincerely,
Raymond
She never replied.
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