Career Development

Writing Your Résumé: Tips from Leading Litigators

Your résumé is often the first point of contact between you and your prospective employer. Writing an effective resume is a challenging task, but it need not be intimidating. We've compiled advice from leaders in the Section of Litigation who have risen through the ranks and have learned a thing or two about effective résumés along the way.

General Tips

• Nothing will hurt your employment chances more than a typographical error in your résumé. Lawyers have to be able to keep track of the little details.
• Be especially careful about your use of plurals and possessive as spellcheck won’t catch improper use.
• Although “memorandums” it not technically incorrect, the common usage in the legal field is “memoranda.”
• Your personal email address says something about you. If it is not a professional choice, such as your name, consider choosing a new email address.
• Being a “member” in an organization may mean nothing more than you were capable of paying an initiation fee. If it is an invitation-only organization, say so. Otherwise, try to highlight a more specific role in the group, such as serving as an officer or project leader.
• If your grades, class rank, etc. from law school and/or college are above average, they should be included. If there is no information, the reader assumes the worst.
• A résumé should include something personal or unique. This provides a better sense of the applicant’s personality and provides a way to break the ice during interviews. This item can be included in a general paragraph of extracurricular activities or a paragraph labeled “interests.”
• Include your anticipated date of graduation.

Prior Work Experience

• Highlight any work you have engaged in during the law school year, including work as a teaching assistant. Such experience shows that you can manage your time effectively and makes your GPA (whatever it is) appear more impressive.
• Explain what responsibilities you had in various jobs. You can get a potential employer’s attention by listing the subject matter of cases or memoranda on which you worked.
• Don’t over-emphasize promotions and awards in non-legal employment settings when applying for legal jobs.
• Don’t sacrifice relevant work experience just to make room for more school activities.
• Facts are persuasive. Explain how many clients you interviewed, the dollar value of the big cases you worked on, etc.
• Use active verbs in describing prior job experiences: managed, drafted, conducted, researched, assisted, prepared, etc.
• Be extremely careful not to overstate any prior responsibilities and duties.
• Make sure to highlight the tasks that are relevant to the current position you are seeking. Law firm hiring partners are looking for different attributes than employers in the areas of business or technology.
• If you did prior work at a law firm, describe yourself as a “clerk,” “intern,” or “summer associate.” The term “associate” only applies after you have graduated from law school.

Honors and Awards

• If it is not obvious from the name of an award, indicate what it represents or what you did to earn the recognition.
• Avoid references to high school honors and awards.

Formatting

• Your name should appear at the top of the résumé. It should be in a larger font than anything else on the page.
• List the organization you worked for first, followed by the position you held (not vice-versa.)
• Include the month and year when you received any degrees.
• Eliminate anything that does not sell you to an employer. White space is valuable.
• You can generally list the name of a previous employer, its location, and the dates of your employment on a single line to save space.
• Try to list the most important thing in a section first.
• Bold or otherwise emphasize the names of schools you attended.
• Spell out abbreviations or acronyms that may not be obvious: ABA Law Student Division rather than ABA LSD.
• Many reviewers prefer résumés to be a single page.
• There is no set way to format, but be consistent throughout with the use of punctuation, manner of capitalization, symbols such as bullet points, and the tense used to describe past endeavors.
• If you include a skills section, put it last. Language skills are generally not as important as publications. Mastery of the necessary computer skills for a legal job is presumed.