Why Over 85% of Attorney Resumes Are Failing—and How to Fix Yours Now

 

Law Firms Are Looking for One Thing: Specialists

If you look at almost any attorney job opening—on a firm’s website or a legal job board—the firm is looking for someone to do one specific thing:

• A corporate M&A attorney
• A commercial litigator
• A real estate leasing attorney

Law firm jobs are like this because their clients need attorneys with specific experience. The law firm’s job is to hire people who can immediately handle that type of work. Clients want specialists, not generalists.

Why Being a Generalist Hurts You

Specialists are more efficient. If you work for one year doing three different practice areas, that’s like working only four months in each. So if you're a third-year associate and have worked in three practice areas for three years, you really only have one year of experience in the area the firm is hiring for.

You’re not as efficient as someone who has done only that one practice area for three full years. More importantly, your resume makes you look like you're not committed. If a law firm has an opening for a third-year real estate attorney, they’re going to choose the person with three years of real estate experience—not someone who split their time across unrelated practice areas.
 

Irrelevant Details Can Destroy Your Chances

Most attorneys don’t understand this and fill their resumes with information that distracts from their core message:

• Multiple, unrelated practice areas
• Law school clubs or organizations unrelated to their current focus
• Top grades in courses that have nothing to do with the job they’re applying for
• Jobs they held before law school that aren’t relevant
• Information about their race, religion, political views, or sexual orientation

These details do nothing to help you. In fact, they hurt you. When you include polarizing or unrelated information, you turn firms off. Law firms care about whether you can do the job. Period. They don’t care about your pro bono work, your involvement in political causes, or the unrelated journals you've written for. The more irrelevant content you include, the more likely you are to get passed over.
 

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See Related Articles:

• Harrison Barnes’s 29 Rules to Make Your Resume More Marketable
• How Attorneys and Law Students Should Write a Legal Resume
• A Resume Must Tell the Whole Story
• Five Immediate Changes You Can Make to Your Legal Resume to Get More Interviews

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I Know What Works—And What Doesn’t

When I represent a candidate, I often spend thousands of dollars helping them get hired. I know how law firms think. They are looking for people who appear to be experts in their practice area. That’s it.

Let me give you two recent examples that show just how much your resume matters.
 

Example 1: The Yale Law Grad Who Got No Interviews

I worked with an unemployed attorney in New York City. He had gone to Yale Law School and landed a prestigious litigation job out of law school. But somewhere along the way, he lost his job and was struggling to get interviews.

His resume mentioned his sexual orientation over 20 times—through articles, associations, and pro bono work. None of this had anything to do with litigation. He could have listed 20 items about immigration rights or women’s rights—it wouldn’t have mattered. When law firms see this kind of content, it distracts from the message that you’re focused on your practice area.

He got zero interviews. Had he followed my advice and removed the unrelated content, he could have been hired anywhere. But he didn’t. And no firm was willing to take a chance.
 

Example 2: The Unaccredited Law School Grad Who Got Multiple Offers

In contrast, I recently worked with a trust and estates attorney in Orange County, California. He had graduated from an unaccredited law school. In law school, he joined all sorts of organizations. After graduating, he held several jobs in insurance defense, criminal law, workers’ compensation—and even worked as a real estate agent. Before law school, he had been an accountant.

His current job was as a trust and estates associate at a small firm, where he’d been for two years. Prior to that, he was a solo practitioner doing a bit of everything: personal injury, workers' comp, and trust and estates.

He had been applying to jobs for over a year with no luck.

I gave him one simple piece of advice: make the resume only about trust and estates.

• Emphasize his current trust and estates experience in a long, detailed paragraph
• Reframe his solo practice to focus solely on trust and estates
• Remove all mentions of workers’ comp and personal injury
• Eliminate references to being a real estate agent, accountant, or anything pre-law
• Leave off all law school activities unrelated to trust and estates

Once he made these changes, everything shifted. Suddenly, he was getting multiple interviews—from quality firms. Why? Because his resume looked like that of a trust and estates attorney. Nothing else.
 

Your Resume Must Deliver One Clear Message

Your resume should make it obvious that you are committed to—and trained in—one practice area. It should minimize everything else that has nothing to do with that area. When a law firm reads your resume, they should say: “This looks like an employment defense attorney.”

If they’re thinking about your other interests or unrelated experience, you’re losing them.
 

Think About It Like Hiring a Doctor

If you had brain cancer, would you want a doctor who also did general cancer, nephrology (kidneys), and sprinkled in personal information about their political views or religion? No—you’d want a brain cancer specialist.

You’d want someone who had:

• Focused on brain cancer since medical school
• Belonged to brain-focused professional groups
• Written papers and done research in that specific area

Law firms are no different. Their clients want experts. Law firms want to hire people who live and breathe their practice area.

Your Resume Should Smell Like the Practice Area

When someone reads your resume, they should immediately get the “scent” that you belong to that practice area.

If you want them to think you’re a corporate attorney, everything in your resume must reinforce that. If you want to be an employment lawyer, the resume needs to scream that from start to finish.
 

What to Include—and What to Cut

 

College

List your college and any significant academic honors (like Phi Beta Kappa). Don’t list unrelated clubs unless they’re aligned with your practice area (e.g., business society for corporate law). You can mention athletics to show teamwork.

But don’t list:

• The environmental club if you want to be a corporate lawyer
• Any political or polarizing organizations
• Detailed extracurriculars that don’t support your legal focus

Law School

Only include:

• Your school
• Graduation year
• Prestigious honors (Law Review, Order of the Coif)
• Societies related to your practice area

Avoid:

• Listing mediocre grades
• Top grades in classes that don’t matter
• Unrelated societies or political clubs

Work Experience

Focus only on experience related to the job you're applying for.

If you’re applying for an employment law position, only describe your employment law experience. If a past job involved multiple practice areas, just talk about the relevant one. For unrelated jobs, don’t include detailed descriptions—just list the employer and title if needed.

Jobs before law school? Only include them if they directly support your current practice area (e.g., former engineer doing patent law, former nurse doing healthcare law). Otherwise, cut them.

Employers Want Clarity

Imagine you’re a law firm reviewing dozens of resumes for one open role. You see resumes filled with irrelevant experience, scattered interests, and personal details.
Then one stands out. It’s clear. Focused. Relevant. You interview that person. That’s how hiring decisions are made.

The Nanny Test

Think about hiring a nanny for your five-year-old daughter.

Nanny 1:

• Studied early childhood development
• Six years’ experience as a nanny
• Resume shows nothing else

Nanny 2:

• Studied math
• Works part-time as a nanny and in an accountant’s office
• Lists political affiliations and motocross as hobbies

Who would you hire?

Nanny 1. Obviously.
But most attorneys write resumes like Nanny 2—scattered, distracted, and filled with unrelated noise. Nanny 2 could fix her resume simply by focusing only on her nanny work. The same goes for you.

Yes, you must list prior jobs since law school, but emphasize only what’s relevant to your target practice area.
 

Your Resume Is Your Sales Pitch

Think of your resume as your packaging. If you're selling a luxury car, the ad doesn’t highlight that it also works great for pizza delivery. It highlights luxury. Precision. Performance. That’s what law firms are looking for in your resume—proof that you’re built for their needs.

They don’t want to dig through unrelated experience to figure out if you might be a fit. They want to see—immediately—that you’re the exact person for the job. You can only accomplish this if your resume is laser-focused on the role you’re applying for.

 

Tailor Your Resume for Every Application

The most successful candidates customize their resume for each job they apply to. This doesn't mean lying or creating an entirely new resume from scratch each time—but it does mean:

• Highlighting relevant experience at the top
• Adjusting bullet points to align with the firm's needs
• Removing distractions or unrelated content
• Using terminology that matches the firm's job posting

If a firm is looking for a “commercial real estate leasing attorney,” and your resume uses “transactional work” as a vague label, you're missing the opportunity to connect clearly with what they want.

 

Your Resume Should Answer One Question:

“Does this person have a clear track record of success doing the exact thing we need done?”

If the answer isn’t an immediate “yes,” you’ll be overlooked—no matter how smart or qualified you are.

 

You’re Not Hiding the Truth—You’re Highlighting the Right One

Some attorneys worry that focusing too much on one area means they’re hiding parts of their background. That’s the wrong mindset.

You're not hiding anything. You're telling the story that is most relevant to your audience. Every great marketer knows this: it's not about saying everything—it's about saying what matters.

 

Your Next Steps

If your resume currently reads like a generalist, or includes too many personal details, or tries to “prove” how smart and interesting you are—you’re making the same mistake over 85% of attorneys make.

Fix it.

• Pick your practice area.
• Cut everything unrelated.
• Expand only on what aligns with the job.
• Drop your ego.
• Write like you're applying to that job and no other.

If you do this, you’ll immediately stand out—and law firms will start calling.

Final Thoughts: You’re a Product—Market Yourself Accordingly

This may sound blunt, but it’s the truth: You are a product, and law firms are deciding whether you meet the specifications they’re hiring for.
If you don’t look like a commercial litigator—or a real estate attorney, or a trust and estates lawyer—you won’t get the job, no matter how impressive your background may seem on paper.

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About Harrison Barnes

No legal recruiter in the United States has placed more attorneys at top law firms across every practice area than Harrison Barnes. His unmatched expertise, industry connections, and proven placement strategies have made him the most influential legal career advisor for attorneys seeking success in Big Law, elite boutiques, mid-sized firms, small firms, firms in the largest and smallest markets, and in over 350 separate practice areas.

A Reach Unlike Any Other Legal Recruiter

Most legal recruiters focus only on placing attorneys in large markets or specific practice areas, but Harrison places attorneys at all levels, in all practice areas, and in all locations-from the most prestigious firms in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., to small and mid-sized firms in rural markets. Every week, he successfully places attorneys not only in high-demand practice areas like corporate and litigation but also in niche and less commonly recruited areas such as:

• Immigration Law
• Workers Compensation
• Insurance
• Family Law
• Trust and Estate
• Municipal law
• And many more...

This breadth of placements is unheard of in the legal recruiting industry and is a testament to his extraordinary ability to connect attorneys with the right firms, regardless of market size or practice area.

Proven Success at All Levels

With over 25 years of experience, Harrison has successfully placed attorneys at over 1,000 law firms, including:

• Top Am Law 100 firms such including Sullivan and Cromwell, and almost every AmLaw 100 and AmLaw 200 law firm.
• Elite boutique firms with specialized practices
• Mid-sized firms looking to expand their practice areas
• Growing firms in small and rural markets

He has also placed hundreds of law firm partners and has worked on firm and practice area mergers, helping law firms strategically grow their teams.

Unmatched Commitment to Attorney Success - The Story of BCG Attorney Search

Harrison Barnes is not just the most effective legal recruiter in the country, he is also the founder of BCG Attorney Search, a recruiting powerhouse that has helped thousands of attorneys transform their careers. His vision for BCG goes beyond just job placement; it is built on a mission to provide attorneys with opportunities they would never have access to otherwise. Unlike traditional recruiting firms, BCG Attorney Search operates as a career partner, not just a placement service. The firm's unparalleled resources, including a team of over 150 employees, enable it to offer customized job searches, direct outreach to firms, and market intelligence that no other legal recruiting service provides. Attorneys working with Harrison and BCG gain access to hidden opportunities, real-time insights on firm hiring trends, and guidance from a team that truly understands the legal market. You can read more about how BCG Attorney Search revolutionizes legal recruiting here: The Story of BCG Attorney Search and What We Do for You.

The Most Trusted Career Advisor for Attorneys

Harrison's legal career insights are the most widely followed in the profession.

• His articles on BCG Search alone are read by over 150,000 attorneys per month, making his guidance the most sought-after in the legal field. Read his latest insights here.
• He has conducted hundreds of hours of career development webinars, available here: Harrison Barnes Webinar Replays.
• His placement success is unmatched-see examples here: Harrison Barnes' Attorney Placements.
• He has created numerous comprehensive career development courses, including BigLaw Breakthrough, designed to help attorneys land positions at elite law firms.

Submit Your Resume to Work with Harrison Barnes

If you are serious about advancing your legal career and want access to the most sought-after law firm opportunities, Harrison Barnes is the most powerful recruiter to have on your side.

Submit your resume today to start working with him: Submit Resume Here

With an unmatched track record of success, a vast team of over 150 dedicated employees, and a reach into every market and practice area, Harrison Barnes is the recruiter who makes career transformations happen and has the talent and resources behind him to make this happen.

A Relentless Commitment to Attorney Success

Unlike most recruiters who work with only a narrow subset of attorneys, Harrison Barnes works with lawyers at all stages of their careers, from junior associates to senior partners, in every practice area imaginable. His placements are not limited to only those with "elite" credentials-he has helped thousands of attorneys, including those who thought it was impossible to move firms, find their next great opportunity.

Harrison's work is backed by a team of over 150 professionals who work around the clock to uncover hidden job opportunities at law firms across the country. His team:

• Finds and creates job openings that aren't publicly listed, giving attorneys access to exclusive opportunities.
• Works closely with candidates to ensure their resumes and applications stand out.
• Provides ongoing guidance and career coaching to help attorneys navigate interviews, negotiations, and transitions successfully.

This level of dedicated support is unmatched in the legal recruiting industry.

A Legal Recruiter Who Changes Lives

Harrison believes that every attorney-no matter their background, law school, or previous experience-has the potential to find success in the right law firm environment. Many attorneys come to him feeling stuck in their careers, underpaid, or unsure of their next steps. Through his unique ability to identify the right opportunities, he helps attorneys transform their careers in ways they never thought possible.

He has worked with:

• Attorneys making below-market salaries who went on to double or triple their earnings at new firms.
• Senior attorneys who believed they were "too experienced" to make a move and found better roles with firms eager for their expertise.
• Attorneys in small or remote markets who assumed they had no options-only to be placed at strong firms they never knew existed.
• Partners looking for a better platform or more autonomy who successfully transitioned to firms where they could grow their practice.

For attorneys who think their options are limited, Harrison Barnes has proven time and time again that opportunities exist-often in places they never expected.

Submit Your Resume Today - Start Your Career Transformation

If you want to explore new career opportunities, Harrison Barnes and BCG Attorney Search are your best resources. Whether you are looking for a BigLaw position, a boutique firm, or a move to a better work environment, Harrison's expertise will help you take control of your future.

Submit Your Resume Here to get started with Harrison Barnes today.

Harrison's reach, experience, and proven results make him the best legal recruiter in the industry. Don't settle for an average recruiter-work with the one who has changed the careers of thousands of attorneys and can do the same for you.

About BCG Attorney Search

BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive, while achieving results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.