See 6 Things Attorneys and Law Students Need to Remove from Their Resumes ASAP If They Want to Get Jobs with the Most Prestigious Law Firms for more information.
To review, Attorney Resume columns that have already appeared on the LawCrossing website have covered your profile, accomplishments, formatting, and cover letter. We still have a few more miscellaneous suggestions for you to improve your resume and cover letter. The following are based on errors we often see in the original documents sent to us.
- Don't start sentences repeatedly with "I" or "My." For that matter, search your documents to check for all repeated words or phrases, and then substitute synonymous phrases or words. (served, counseled, directed, managed, acted as)
- Don't use personal pronouns ("My," "I") in your resume. The resume is a somewhat distant reporting document. (These pronouns are perfectly acceptable in cover letters, which can be a bit more personal.)
- Use "more than," not "over." For example, write "Tried more than 1,000 cases," not "Tried over 1,000 cases." (Over is really a location, isn't it?)
- Avoid using "responsible for" because it is obvious that if you claim the task as an experience, it was your responsibility.
- Use those famous action verbs to begin your lists of accomplishments or responsibilities. You can test to see if you used a correct form by imagining an "I" before the first word. If the statement becomes a complete sentence, then you have an action verb. ("I" + "First Chair" doesn't work. "I" + "Served as first chair" does.)
- Avoid capitalizing position names or other titles, unless it is the proper formal name. For example, write neither "Appointed by company President to..." (he/she is simply a president) nor "Headed a Task Force to..." (You simply "Headed a task force to...")
- Italicize titles of books or journals, but do not italicize chapters or articles. (Journal: Harvard Law Review. Article: "Torts for Tots.")
- Be sure you don't use the $ sign with the word dollar(s), as in $2 million dollars. It's redundant, of course. (We prefer $2 million.)
- Use the serial comma before "and" to avoid confusion in your writing. Although the general style now is to avoid a final comma, it serves to clarify with legal resumes and cover letters.
- Use semi-colons to separate related phrases that contain a series of words within them. Describing legal responsibilities can be complicated and detailed.
- GPAs aren't a requirement on your resume, so don't give your GPA for one school if you can't give them for all schools. (Omitting only one of them looks a bit shady, as if the omitted GPA is less than stellar.) Also, take all GPAs to the same number of places: 3.74/4.00 & 3.20/4.00, not 3.74 & 3.2.
The Ask Mother Resume column is transitioning into a Q&A column where you can get answers to your most pressing resume and cover letter questions. Please contact Mother Resume at chalsma@attorneyresume.com with your questions.
