How Lawyers Need To Write Their CVs For The Perfect Legal Job
Because in a tough legal jobs market, such as the present, you need to focus on some key essentials required in the legal jobs market more than ever. But many lawyers do not.To get a good legal job lawyers also need a good CV or resume. And that comes down to how they write it as much as their career accomplishments.
What should you be doing? More importantly, what should you not be doing?
Remember some of the keys towards putting together a winning CV that will help you land the legal job you’re after. Remember that there are no hard and fast rules, notwithstanding what some people may say, because different law firms and recruitment firms will prefer different styles.
However there are some keys you need to keep in mind while putting the all-important CV together.
Among them:
Many CVs will be quickly scanned (we’re in a tough legal jobs market – there are plenty of good lawyers out there), so you need to ensure your layout is crisp and clear.
Many CVs start with personal profiles, but these are largely involved with several, self-serving statements about your abilities and skills. Your CV needs to be factual and clear, rather than a personal, subject appraisal.
Use a clear, regular font (10-12 point), use ‘white space’ rather than fancy borders and colours. Don"t make it too long - 2-3 pages is fine. No pictures.
Ensure you use good grammar and English. If you’re not sure, then get your document checked and spell-check it. There’s nothing worse than poor grammar and spelling errors in terms of losing your dream law job.
Essentially the law firm is going to be looking for the key information about you – that is, your personal details, your qualifications, your career history to date. And here is where a lot of clients make mistakes. You need to outline what you’ve done, what experience you’ve had (particularly if you’ve worked in a smaller firm or a specialist law practice) because that is what the employer is looking for.
Provide information about the particular cases, deals, transactions and other work in which you’ve been involved, particularly in the past 5-10 years (if that’s applicable). They want to know this. It’s often make-or-break information.
Provide additional information about your other activities with your employers, including event organization, young lawyers’ involvement, pro bono work and similar. This can be key, particularly if you seem to be the sort of person who could help in rain making for the firm.
More experienced lawyers should include client following information, which is an area about which you need to tread carefully and should be discussed with recruiters, but many firms will be acutely interested in clients and billing history. Some details can be provided in the CV.
So far as references are concerned, you can indicate that these are available but you don’t need to include them at this point. The CV itself is designed to ensure your place in scoring the legal job you’re after. So pay close attention to it and keep it updated and relevant.