While there are no hard and fast rules, it might be helpful to think of the structure of the C.V. as having four components: personal details; educational qualifications; work experience and skills acquired; and social and leisure interests. Normally, you would give personal details at the outset.
These are, as a minimum, name, address, and contact telephone number. Beyond that, attitudes vary on the relevance of disclosing information regarding marital status, disability, gender and ethnic origin. Sometimes these details are requested-one hopes for the best of intentions, namely to monitor that equal opportunities are being upheld. Some organizations go to great lengths to ensure a level playing field at the application stage by having personal details divulged on a separate form that is not considered until selection for interview has been completed.
After the personal details there should be a section on education, relevant work experience including skills acquired, and then a little on leisure interests. If you have won any awards, prizes or competitions then these should be mentioned under the appropriate section. The C.V. should be concise. Of course opinions and advice will differ on how brief is brief but please keep in mind the reader of your C.V. He or she is unlikely to have the time to read eight pages of close-set type on everything you have done since leaving primary school. Principally, what they will wish to know is why they should employ you. For that purpose they are most likely to be interested in the skills that you have acquired and the personal qualities which you have developed which would make you a prime choice for their vacancy. It is not possible to be prescriptive about how many pages a C.V. should be, but in general, none would not wish to read one which is more than three or four pages long, and ideally only two pages. Everyone would prefer to read one which is well-presented with line spacing at one and a half to double spacing, headings in bold or otherwise made prominent, and the key points of the C.V. brought out. Unless you are specifically requested not to do so, it would always be recommended that a C.V. be accompanied by a covering letter of no more than a single A4 sized page which answers the specific advert. However, if you are sending a C.V. "on spec", the covering letter needs to explain why you have chosen to write to that firm. Again, the covering letter needs to say enough to make the recipient read further but not so much that they switch off or, worse, consign it to the bin.
Content of the C.V.
The content of your C.V. is probably its single most important aspect. It needs to encapsulate you and it needs to convince the employer that they should at least interview you, if not employ you. It therefore needs to say enough to meet the recruiting needs of the firm and present you in the best possible light. In order to be effectively informative you need to know what the recruiting needs of the firm are. In the case of a law practice advertising for a trainee, you may think it is simply that they require a trainee, any trainee. In the highly competitive market for trainees which has developed since the late 1980s regrettably no firm will be satisfied with "any trainee"-instead, they will want the best possible trainee for their needs. Every firm will be different, and one of the reasons why you are perhaps unsuccessful at an interview with one firm but successful with the next is simply because the skills and attributes that you have to offer suit the latter firm better than the first. This is not necessarily a reflection on you, but a reflection on the firm which you are seeking to join. This need to match your skills and attributes with the recruiting needs of the firm is one of the reasons that is not recommended is that you adopt a practice when seeking a job, of sending a standard covering letter and C.V. to every firm or organization you can think of. It is always possible that such an indiscriminate strategy will strike lucky, but experience indicates that the students who adopt a more focused approach ultimately have more success in securing the job they wish. They target the firms where ideally they would like to work, finding out as much as they can about those firms and then tailoring their application form or C.V. appropriately. Employers of law graduates are fairly shrewd people and can detect with some ease those who have done their homework and those who have not. Preparation always pays off and you are urged to do as much as possible. Hone the important factors about you which need to be brought to the attention of that employer.
Gone are the days when the acquisition of a law degree in itself was a passport to an apprenticeship or traineeship or any other kind of job. You now need to acknowledge the competitive market with which you are faced, and make the most of the skills which will be unique to you and which will be attractive to employers. If you are unsure about the attributes you have, or the skills which you will have acquired during your university years both within the academic environment and outside it, then you should take advantage of the services offered by your university's Careers Advisory Service. Even if you feel confident enough about producing your own C.V., there is no harm in seeking advice from the professionals in the careers office, who will be able to offer a dispassionate and objective view of your documentation. They will also be able to offer a whole range of other services which will be of assistance, such as mock interviews and access to current information about the availability of jobs and other career opportunities.
In today's world a key emphasis on being informative is that you should be able to translate the knowledge and experience which you have acquired into skills. In the rapidly changing employment environment in the last decade there has been much debate over "graduateness" and "transferable skills". Employers want transferable skills, graduates need transferable skills and universities aim to teach transferable skills. In the case of law graduates, these skills comprise a variety of forms. There are specific "lawyering" skills- practical legal skills-such as advocacy and problem solving. There are then non-specific skills such as I.T. competence, people handling, and oral and written communication abilities. Despite the description of non-specific, these latter skills too are essential for the law graduate.
Many of these skills-even the practical legal skills-are generic skills, i.e. they are ones all employers now seek in their graduate employees. Graduates are expected to be confident communicators, well practiced in information presentation, both orally and verbally, in a coherent, clear and concise form. They will also be expected to be able to manage their time and workload efficiently and to be able to prioritize both.
Aside from your experience undertaking the degree, if you have done any extra-curricular activities or have any work experience then it is most likely you will have developed skills which, properly packaged, will be of interest to employers. For example, it is unfortunately the case that due to lack of grant funding, many full-time students also have to undertake part-time paid employment during their undergraduate years. Although adding to the strain of tertiary education, such part-time employment experience can yield much benefit in developing future transferable skills. But you must market this experience to your advantage. So, rather than simply noting on a C.V. that for two years you worked as a checkout assistant with a supermarket, draw out the relevancy of that work experience. This could be the fact that you developed better organizational skills, cash handling, dealing with people, dispute resolution and team work. These are five of the inevitable skills that would develop from such a job, even on a part-time basis.
This might suggest to you the value of gaining a wider experience of part-time jobs during your vacation years, because each will, in its own way, provide you with additional or different skills to present in your C.V. Highlight any areas of your extra-curricular voluntary, charitable or paid work which indicates that you have held positions of responsibility, whether for other people or for cash, that you have experience of client care (almost any service industry requires this), and that you are able to demonstrate punctuality and reliability (every job requires this) and stamina. If you are doing part-time work while undertaking a full-time degree then inevitably you can claim that you have this last quality- stamina-in addition to commitment, dedication and motivation. You could not be doing a full-time degree and part-time work otherwise. Make the most of it. The chances are that your employers will not have faced that experience as most law undergraduates, until recently, had the benefit of a much more substantial funding system which alleviated the need to undertake paid work during term time or incur student loans.
