AttorneyMentoring.com Employment Matters

Resume Content and Organization

Every resume should include the following information:

Name
Your name should appear at the top of each page along
with the page number for pages two onward.
Address, phone number(s), and email address
List only phone numbers that you can access and make
it a point of answering the phone in a professional
manner. (Avoid using home numbers if your children
have a habit of answering the phone and have not been
instructed on how to take messages.) A private cell
phone or other number with a professional voice mail
message is generally your best bet. List only one phone
number and one personal e-mail address that you
check regularly.

Objective
A well-worded, specific objective sentence or paragraph
can strengthen your resume. It should answer the
question, "What does this person want to do?"
Obviously, tie the objective in with the position that you
are applying for or, if you are sending your resume to a
headhunter, make it broad enough to capture their
attention for more than one position.

Qualifications or Profile
This optional category is usually used on more
experienced resumes, where the person has achieved
some degree of experience in one or more legal areas
or in the number of years practiced. A well-written
Qualifications/Profiles section can focus the reader's
attention to your skills especially if your list of employers
is not self-explanatory. Make sure that the objective ties
in with the Qualifications/Profile. It isn’t as easy as you
think so take your time on this one.

Experience
In this section, do not assume that listing your employer,
the number of years employed and a sentence or two is
sufficient to convince the reviewer about your skills and
experience. (Use a consistent format on dates, city and
state of employment, and years of employment.)
Whether you use sentences or bullets, make sure you
describe your employer, their specialty (if any), your
practice group (if any), your level of experience and
sample assignments. Some practice areas require a
transaction list but do not offer this unless requested.
Use a summary of the types of legal work. Do not use
more than a paragraph or two per employer. Try and
use active, not passive, verbs to lead into the sentences.
Use the same tense for all of your descriptions.

Professional Memberships/Pro Bono Activities/Civic
Activities
List your Bar memberships and any other relevant
professional organization membership, such as
committee work in professional organizations. Also
include any pro bono or civic activities.

Publications/Presentations/Honors, Awards, and
Activities
List any articles, presentations, speeches in
bibliographic format.

Education
In reverse chronological order, list all your post-
doctorate degrees (if any), your law degree(s), your
college education, with the name of the institution, and
date they were awarded. List the date you expect to
receive your degree if you have not completed the work.
For each institution and degree, include any special
areas of academic concentration. You should also list
any law review or other publishing activities, any moot
court or similar activity. Include any academic honors,
awards or activities in the Education section if they relate
to that period. Commonly known honors (Phi Beta
Kappa) need no explanation, but other awards can be
briefly explained.

Format
Stick to a simple format since most resumes are
submitted and circulated in electronic format even if they
are first received in hard copy and then scanned. Use a
standard font and make sure you highlight or underline
your headings or relevant bullet points since most
interviewers browse the resume before they actually
read it, if they get that far. Place dates on the right-hand
margin so that you can save the left-hand margin for
more relevant content, such as the name of your current
and former employers and law school.

Resume & Cover Letter Tips

Match the selection criteria. Take the time to
match your skill sets with the requirements listed
for the job position you are seeking or applying
for. Take an inventory of your skills, attributes,
experiences and knowledge to find examples of
how you meet the selection criteria. Make a list of
examples for each of the listed criteria. Don't be
selective at first - make a note of everything you
can think of. If you are having difficulty, think of
specific assignments that you worked on and list
the documents or actions you took/participated in
as part of that assignment. Then select those
examples from the list that would be most
significant to this target employer.

Use descriptive terminology to describe clients
and deals or law suits you worked on. Never
disclose client relationships or client advice.

Get feedback from trusted friends and peers.

One Page Rule

Recently a friend who
tested our Resume
Review feature asked
us "... I was always
under the impression
that it was fairly
important to try to limit
the resume to 1 page."

The answer varies but
the one page resume
rule, in our opinion,
represents a good
guideline for junior
attorneys. As a
mid-level and senior
attorney, you should
feel perfectly
comfortable using a
page and half up to two
pages for more senior
lawyers. And, in
certain instances, such
as if you are applying
for a law firm position,
you may benefit from
adding a transaction
sheet to the resume.
The transaction sheet
should describe in
generic terms sample
types of matters
worked on without
revealing client names,
merely type of work,
size of deal or
judgment, type of
client, your
involvement. (You will
have to reveal client
names for conflicts
checks but that should
be left to the end of the
job negotiation
process.)

Try not to let page
guidelines stop you
from adding
appropriate job
descriptive detail,
especially if you are
seeking to make a
transition into another
practice area or type of
employer. You cannot
assume that the new
work situation/
industry/type of
employer will
understand your
shorthand description,
or for that matter, will
assume you have the
necessary skills they
need beyond what you
have written down.

The bottom line is that
your resume needs to
reflect your level of
experience

Free Resume Review

AttorneyMentoring.com provides a free resume review
service to its visitors. We will accept 4 resumes to
review for free each month at our discretion. You can
submit your resume by completing the form below. If
you wish to exclude all personal identifying information,
then we suggest you use descriptive terms such as
Large Law Firm, NY, NY or Solo Practice, Chicago, IL.
We will do our best to provide you with our comments
but we will not re-write the resume for you. Tell us a bit
about your goals so that we can better analyze the
effectiveness of the resume's format and content.
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