How to write a lawyer resume?

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Good lawyers know the law, great lawyers know the judge. .
and fantastic lawyers know how to get shortlisted for the legal job everyone's after!!

You've probably done a great job at representing people in courtrooms, cracked the toughest of cases, and maybe, even taken up a lot of pro-bono projects. And now, you want to work for the most badass legal firm in town.

What do you do?

While your professional experience and past association with reputed firms look fantastic on a resume, that's not the only thing you will need to get the coveted job in the prestigious law firm that you have been dreaming to go to.

You will need to communicate the right things in your legal resume. You'll need to show the promise of showmanship. You'll need to demonstrate that you fit right in.

And to do this, you will need a highly relevant, well-written resume that hits the right notes.

Here, you will be able to write entry-level attorney resumes, attorney resumes, law school resumes - basically, you will be able to write legal resumes irrespective of the career stage you are in.

That's not all.

You will also learn:

• How to write a perfect summary of your attorney resume.
• How write professional experience to make an articulate lawyer resume?
• How to add personal information in a legal resume cover letter?
• Should you discuss your legal resume bar admission?

. . . All so you can get shortlisted for the legal job of your dreams.

Read on to uncover the top legal resume tips to help you write the best legal resume.

Watch out for the 10+ legal resume samples and legal resume examples to get a better idea of how each section is to be perfected.

What is a Legal Resume & why do you need it?

A legal resume is a resume that is designed for to-be-lawyers and lawyers in all stages of their career such as:

• An advocate resume is a legal resume for advocates.
• A law student resume is a legal resume for law students.
• A general counsel resume is a legal resume for general counselors.
• An entry-level attorney resume is a legal resume for entry-level attorneys.

They are all legal resumes for different legal professionals.

You need a legal resume to get shortlisted for your dream job. But given the onset of the ATS (applicant tracking system) and it’s rampant use across most industries and companies for hiring, the need of the day is to make an ATS-targeted or ATS-compliant resume.

This means:

• Your advocate resume should be ATS-compliant.
• Your law student resume should be ATS-compliant.
• Your general counsel resume should be ATS-compliant.
• Your entry-level attorney resume should be ATS-compliant.

Doing this will ensure that your legal resume will have a higher scope of getting shortlisted because it will rank well in the ATS.

Legal Sample Resume

Before we begin, take a look at our legal resume sample to know what an ideal resume should look like:

How to write a Legal Resume

Writing the perfect legal resume demands that you follow the 3 stages of resume writing that we have mentioned below:

• Stage 1: Master Legal Resume
• Stage 2: First Draft of Legal Resume
• Stage 3: Final Draft of Legal Resume

Master Legal Resume

In this stage, you have to compile all your information in one place. Doing this guarantees a reserve of information with you at all times.

Be it your educational background, the certifications you have done, the professional expertise that you have amassed, etc. - put them all in one place.

That's step 1.

This helps in the twin process of resume writing in the present & resume update in the future as the need to fish for information gets removed.

All you have to do is pick the relevant information and write or update your resume accordingly.

First Draft of Legal Resume

The second stage of resume writing involves composing the following sections:

• Header
• Personal Information
• Profile Title
• Professional Experience
• Education
• Certifications (if any)
• Awards & Recognition (if any)
• Additional Information (if any)

Final Draft of Legal Resume

In the final stage of resume-writing, your job is to conclude your legal resume.

As part of this conclusion stage, you have to compose two sections i.e. the 'key skills' section and the 'summary/objective' section.

Both these sections are composed towards the end as it becomes easy to identify your core skills and career highlights, which makes drafting these sections extremely easy.

It also saves you the much-needed time as the scope of revisiting some sections of your resume just to compose these sections gets eliminated.

Legal Resume Sections

Knowing what to put in your resume is winning half the battle. Knowing how to present this information is what helps you hit the right notes with the ATS.

The ATS often scans your resume, and when information is presented haphazardly, it reduces the ATS-compatibility of your legal resume.

Thus, as a general rule you should always arrange your information under the resume sections that we have mentioned below:

• Header
• Personal Information
• Profile Title
• Summary/Objective
• Key Skills
• Professional Experience
• Education

Additionally, you can also put in the extra information regarding your work life under the below-mentioned sections:

• Certifications (if any)
• Awards & Recognition (if any)
• Additional Information (if any)

Legal Resume: Professional Experience

Most people will tell you that the shortest route to an impeccable resume is a highly informative professional experience section. And they're right.

It is only after thoughtful evaluation of this section that a recruiter gets the best idea of your professional caliber and work history.

But, that's not the only thing.

How you present information also matters.

So here's what you can do to effectively present the details of your work experience in your sample attorney resume:

• Frame points
• Use the STAR format
• Use Bucketing & Bolding

Framing Points

Do you know that using paragraphs is counter-productive in a law student resume?

Do you know what you can do to reverse it?

One-liner points. This is the answer to all your problems.

Let us elaborate further through the legal resume examples that we have outlined below. All you have to do is observe them closely:

Framing Points: Analysis

The legal resume examples that we have given above brings us to the following conclusions:

• Both attorney resume examples are communicating the same message.
• While Law Resume Example 1 uses one long bulky paragraph to talk about the applicant's roles & responsibilities, Law Resume Example 2 uses one crisp one-liner point which helps demonstrate the applicant's work experience optimally.
• Law Resume Example 2, which uses one-liner points, also has the added advantage of being reader-friendly. It is both easy to read & comprehend vis-a-vis Law Resume Example 1 which uses paragraphs.
• It also uses action verbs which give your sample lawyer resume the much-needed tone of assertiveness & professionalism.
• Our advice? You should use one-liner points instead of paragraphs to communicate the details of your work experience.

STAR Format

Next up is the STAR format.

What is its importance? Let's find out!

But before we do, here's what the STAR stands for:

• The Situation or context of your contributions.
• The Task you were assigned in the given situation at work.
• The Action or strategy you have deployed to execute the assigned task.
• The Result or outcome of your work or actions using performance figures.

Performance figures are numbers using which you can showcase the extent of your contributions in your workplace. It helps you show the importance of your professional skills in your chosen industry.

It helps you demonstrate how your efforts helped scale a business.

Thus, adding numbers make your actions more meaningful and relevant. It helps a recruiter understand your professional abilities which enhance your shortlist chances.

Bucketing & Bolding

Now that you know how to enhance the readability and effectiveness of your sample attorney resume, the next thing in your to-do-list is to ensure that your work experience details get read.

This is where the bucketing & bolding comes handy.

Mentioned below are two lawyer resume examples showcasing how bucketing & bolding helps you enhance the visibility of your sample attorney resume:

Bucketing & Bolding : Analysis

The above-mentioned legal resume examples present us with the following information:

• Law Resume Example 1 uses one-liner points to communicate the details of your work experience using points. It is extremely readable but it doesn't do enough to get your law resume get read.
• Law Resume Example 2 uses bucketing & bolding to organize each one-liner point by organizing similar points under relevant subheadings & marking the important career highlights in bold.
• By using bucketing & bolding, you can easily divert the recruiter's attention to your key responsibilities and skills as it becomes next to impossible to ignore them.
• Thus, you should use bucketing & bolding alongside one-liner points to ensure that your resume projects your career highlights effectively.

Legal Resume Sample for Professional Experience

It is embedded with experienced attorney resume samples to help you effectively illustrate your professional caliber in the professional experience section of your resume.

Moreover, make a healthy habit of picking the right resume format for your lawyer resume. The legal resume format you choose will significantly impact the receptiveness of your resume as it prioritizes the elements in your resume for maximum effectiveness.

The reverse chronological resume format is the industry choice for drafting attorney resumes. Use this format as it is both ATS-compliant & recruiter-friendly resume (a win-win!).

The lawyer resume sample that we have attached below shows you what this section should ideally look like once you follow the legal resume tips that we have explained for this section:

Legal Resume: Key Skills

The whole point of writing a lawyer resume is to demonstrate your professional skills. To do this, make a separate 'key skills' section highlighting your core skills.

Add your 'technical skills' if you are writing a resume for a technical profile.

Since a lawyer resume does not fit into this category, you don't have to make a separate 'technical skills' section.

For best results, compose this section only after you have concluded the professional experience section. Doing this helps you curate an impeccable 'key skills' section without missing out on an important point.

Here's a sample law resume showcasing what the skills section should ideally look like in your legal resumes.

Legal Resume Summary or Objective?

Whether you write a legal resume summary or a legal resume objective depends on the number of work experience with you. If your work experience transcends 3 years, write a summary, and if you have less than 3 years of work experience, write an objective.

Both ways, the goal of both is to endorse your skills to ensure that you get shortlisted for a job in the legal industry. It has to be impactful and highly effective.

Here's a list of what you should do to write impactful summaries & objectives:

• When you compose your resume summary/objective after concluding the rest of your resume, it helps you write effective summaries and objectives as you simply have to pick the highlights of your career and present them here.
• The idea is to endorse your legal resume skills in the most pro-active way.
• Unnecessarily bulking up your resume summary or objective would be counterproductive. So as a general rule of thumb, try to keep your legal resume summary/objective limited to a 3-5 lines paragraph.

Here's a lawyer resume sample showcasing what an ideally composed summary for your lawyer resume should look like.

Legal Resume: Header

Your lawyer resume header needs to be composed while keeping in mind its importance. Its goal is to give your resume an individual identity of its own.

This is why writing 'CV' or 'Resume' is frowned upon because it is obvious that you are submitting a resume.

You don't have to announce such obvious facts to the world.

This is why you should personalize this space and make a habit of writing your real full name as the resume header.

Do this and position it at the extreme top part of your lawyer resume and write it in the largest font size of 16-20 points to enhance its visibility. Doing this will tell the recruiter that this resume belongs to you.

We have attached a legal resume sample below. It illustrates what the perfect resume header should look like:

Legal Resume: Personal Information

This section of your lawyer resume should communicate important contact-specific information about you such as:

• Your mobile number
• Your Email ID
• Your Location

Mobile Number

Are you writing your contact information correctly on your law resume?

Have you been composing it the wrong way this whole time?

Read on to find out:

• Use your country’s ISD code as a prefix before your mobile number.
• Put a plus sign (+) before the ISD code.
• Eg: +1 37648 21511.

E-mail ID

Your email ID is just as important as the mobile number in your law resume as it is the official mode of communication between two professionals - the recruiter and the applicant.

Thus, you mustn't use childish email IDs that spell unprofessional.

All you have to do is write your name followed by the domain name i.e. name@xyz.com. Example: 'melissa.anderson@xyz.com'.

Location

Your location is another important element of your law resume. It gives the recruiter a fair idea of the place of your residence, which further helps him/her identify if you would be up for a job-switch in another city or state.

Point is, locations are important.

Do yourself a favor and don't excessively complicate it.

Simply mention your city & state if you're applying for jobs in the country you are based in. For job applications in other countries, simply mention the city & country of your residence.

Legal Resume Sample for Personal Information

To know what an ideal personal information section should ideally look like, take a look at the sample attorney resume below.

Legal Resume: Profile Title

Your profile title is important as it communicates important career-relevant details about you.

Be it your functional industry, your seniority level in it, or your job title; your profile title says it all!

This is why it is important to illustrate them in your law resume with maximum visibility.

Here's what you should do to enhance the visibility of your law resume:

• Write it in the second-largest text in your sample legal resume.
• Write it in the font range of 14-16 points.

Given below is a lawyer resume sample illustrating the perfect profile title for your law resume.

The key is to truthfully present this information without exaggeration.

Legal Resume: Education

Most people tend to overlook this section.

This is where they are making a grave mistake. The education section of your resume is a must-include-section and should not be missed.

Your educational details are important. Thus, you must make a separate 'Education' section in your law school resumes.

It should have the below-mentioned information:

• The schools or universities you went to.
• The courses you pursued in the universities you went to.
• Location of your school/university.
• Detailed information of your enrolment & graduation in month & year format.

Here's a sample legal resume showcasing what this section should look like once you have followed the legal resume tips for the 'Education' section.

Legal Resume: Certifications

Is your lawyer resume up to mark? If it isn't, follow the legal resume tips we have mentioned below:

• Make a certifications section in your lawyer resume.
• Furnish it with important certification-centric information.
• Put down the certification name, certificate-issuing body, location of the institute and enrolment & completion date in month & year format.

After you do this, arrange these points horizontally in the below-mentioned format:

{Name of Certification} | {Affiliating Institution} | {Location} | {Date} (month & year format)

Legal Resume Bar Admission

Your legal resume bar admission is important and should find a place in your resume.

Not only does it tell a recruiter that you are educationally equipped, but it also shows that you have stepped it up a notch and passed the bar exam.

Showcasing this in your resume helps you demonstrate that you are qualified to practice law.

Here's a lawyer resume sample demonstrating how you should inculcate your legal resume bar admission details in your resume:

Legal Resume: Additional Information

If you have extra information that you'd like to put in your lawyer resume, but don't know where to put them, list them down in the 'Additional Information' section of your resume.

But while we say this, make sure that you make this section only if it helps you advance your job application in any way.

The sample law school resume that we have attached below perfectly demonstrates what this section should look like in your law student resume:

Key Takeaways

• Keep your lawyer resume simple and informative. Stick to a one-page resume if your work experience is limited to 10 years.
• Write a legal resume summary only if you have a minimum work experience of 3 years. If you don't, write a legal resume objective.
• Make a 'key skills' section to talk about your legal resume skills. Doing this will help a recruiter identify your proficiency areas in one go.
• Instead of blatantly stating that you're skilled in this and that, show the visible extent of your contributions using numbers. For eg:' Conducted legal research to resolve 10+ cases in one week'.
• Don't use paragraphs in your lawyer resume. Instead, use crisp one-liner points to communicate your roles & responsibilities.
• Use action verbs to begin each point in your professional experience section. Doing this gives your resume a tone of confidence & professionalism.
• Use the month & year format for dates across all sections of your lawyer resume.
• Use the city/state code format if you are looking for job applications in the country of your residence. If you're looking for opportunities outside your home country, use the city/country code format.

You can either follow these steps or use Hiration's Career Building Platform to frame a professional legal resume. This AI-powered platform comes with 24/7 chat support to provide you a smooth user experience. Additionally, you can also discuss your career related issues with our experts at support@hiration.com.