What
Employers Expect to See on a Resume
You only have one chance to make a first
impression; your resume is your one opportunity to open
the door to a prospective employer. That is why it is imperative
that your resume represents your professional history in
the best possible light. It needs to market your skills
and abilities and is a reflection of your writing ability.
Your resume should stress your legal skills and accomplishments.
A common mistake that experienced professionals
make is that they try to keep the resume to just one page.
We are told in our undergraduate years that we should keep
the resume to one page because there is no sense in going
into a lot of detail about summer jobs and course work.
Now that you have legal experience, it is important to sell
all of your skills and abilities. Employers respond quickly
to resumes that have a detailed professional history that
matches the requirements of their job specifications - you
must spell it out for them. Be specific about the legal
skills that you have used and/or developed and the accomplishments/contributions
you have made. Don’t assume that you have the legal
skills required for their position. Proofread your resume
before sending it to anyone, grammatical errors or problems
with sentence structure are unacceptable and are deal killers.
Following
is the format for a well written legal resume:
Name
Address
City, State Zip
Phone Number
E-mail Address
IT
EXPERIENCE
Current
Employment, City, State Start Date – End
Date
Title (?th year), Department & Practice Group(s)
**If summer associate of same firm, denote here
Title in (insert department) Dates
Overview of the work that you have done while with the firm,
in that specific capacity. Make sure to highlight any particular
cases/transactions worthy of highlighting. Be as specific
as possible as to the work that you performed – mention
the type of client, i.e., Fortune 100 company, $100M private
company, leading hedge fund, top financial institution,
REIT, CEO of Fortune 500 company, etc. and make sure you
demonstrate results that were specifically generated by
you.
**List
all positions separately
***List
all previous positions in the same format, in reverse chronological
order. Be sure that the current position lists activities
in present tense, and past positions in past tense.
****Do not list irrelevant positions that just clutter the
resume. Make sure that you are selling yourself for the
opportunity you are applying for. Don’t simply list
your skills, illuminate your key attributes and let them
know how you will be an asset to their team.
EDUCATION
Engineering School, City, State
Degree
Month Year
Extracurricular Activities (i.e. Clubs, Law Reviews, etc.),
Honors
Other Graduate School(s), City, State
Degree
Month Year
Extracurricular Activities Degree, Honors
Undergraduate Institution, City, State
Major
Month Year
Extracurricular Activities Degree, Honors
ACTIVITIES
Committees
Volunteer Work
LANGUAGES
Fluent
in X Languages
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