Attorney Resume Review Workshop

Transcript

[00:00:00] We're going to get started with the workshop right now there were a couple of things that we received about looks like something like I don't know, 40 resumes to review.

[00:00:09] So I'm going to try to get through all of those resumes today. And and if you do send your resume over during the meeting we will also try to review it as well.  So I wanted to go over a couple of quick things before we start and you guys also can, if you want, you can ask questions.

[00:00:29]During each review, if it's about your resume and I will try to ask them to answer them, or you can hold up your hand and also ask questions. One of the things I want to make sure I cover today is also You know a little bit about w whether or not your resume actually makes you look marketable and who it makes you look marketable too.

[00:00:49] Cause the thing to remember is every resume is markable somewhat, but it depends on who you want to be marketable to. So I'm going to go over that. I'm also going to tell you if I saw the resume coming into our system, [00:01:00] how I would evaluate it. And I've reviewed probably, half a million attorney resumes in my career.

[00:01:04]Or at least that's how many people are in our database that I reviewed.  Have a pretty good sense of how to review people. Who's marketable and who's not marketable.  And that sort of thing. So with that let's get started. And let me just see her. I will pull up the first resume here.

[00:01:22]Okay. So one of the things you need to do, and this is just as a preliminary rule. With the resumes is you want to make sure and this person if you should, I don't know if this is a real person, we changed the names of most people. You want to make sure that you're always using a software that's going to go through and and check your resume for different types of errors.

[00:01:44] And also for punctuation errors for all sorts of things. Because if you're writing a summary like this at the beginning of your resume, like this person is. What you're doing really is  you're showing your ability to  your writing ability you're showing your do you know how [00:02:00] succinct you can, right?

[00:02:01]You're showing your, all these sorts of things. And so doing a paragraph like this at the beginning of the resume is perfectly fine. But if you do this it's probably not a good idea because it's going to  there's probably going to be a lot of errors and you can see here, just this just Grammerly and pro writing aid.

[00:02:18] There's a bunch of other ones like Hemingway and a bunch of. Other company programs that make suggestions the, these that can create problems. I don't like, I don't know what this is up here. I'm assuming this is something you can shoot with your phone and get the resume. I think it's kinda cool, but at the same time I really wouldn't recommend putting something like this at the top of a resume, at least for now until That sort of catches on.

[00:02:41] It's just a little bit too techie and could turn people off, but you can see here just on the right. All of these  grammatical errors and problems and and different things here that really need to be cleaned up. Now, I'm going to talk briefly about putting the summaries of the top of your resume.

[00:02:58] A lot of times when people [00:03:00] do this sorts of things with their resumes, they do these because they've gone to a resume coach who may not be a legal related person. And these  this to me looks like an in-house resume or a small law firm resume, which I guess it is. But you can see here even just this little stuff, just this spacing and stuff, it's just not something that That most firms want to see the better off you can do.

[00:03:22] But when you have a lot of summary like this, and then you have a lot of a lot of texts many times that can hurt you. And the reason it can hurt you is because it gets everything. It makes it look like you're doing a lot of different things and it makes you look like you're not necessarily an expert in anything.

[00:03:39] So this particular resume, if I were to see this. Coming through our company I would look at it and I would I would like things about wills and trust and if the person who's estate planning, if I saw that and probate I probably wouldn't like criminal law because I would think that was too diverse or this person really is a generalist.

[00:03:58] And they do civil [00:04:00] litigation. They do contracts, they do business transaction. So it, because this person is a generalist, all they need to say, you don't really need to have this huge summary. You can just say a legal generalist with experience in most and transactional and litigation practice areas.

[00:04:14]This person even does property. So all of this stuff saying you've done all these different things, the problem with this in terms of its market of ability to Sorry, there's all these errors. The problem with all of this information is you really, you don't need all this information.

[00:04:29] All you need to say is, skilled, legal, generalists, it's done all these different types of things. And then you can say here that you we're a make it obvious things. It's just crazy. You can say that you were doing primarily litigation or medical malpractice, or I dunno all this different stuff, but you don't need all of this information.

[00:04:47] You really need, it needs to be much much more concise. It's just too much information. It makes it a lot of work for the person to read it. And it's annoying. And it's saying that you're a generalist is the same thing as, yes, what's very good about this [00:05:00] resume. They don't want to point out is this person has had their own law firm.

[00:05:04]For five years or six years, which is good. They've also, we're at this firm for three years and they have a lot of employment stability. They haven't had a lot of jobs. So anybody that hires this person can probably be pretty sure that person's going to stick around I don't think I think you, you just, you don't need to have all these all this stuff here an additional skills.

[00:05:24] So what I would recommend probably just putting the admitted, obviously the person's admitted to the Colorado, so all, you just have to say a state, you don't have to say the license number or anything like that. You don't have to say you just have to say the the bar number or the the.

[00:05:40]The the fact that the person submitted now, when I look at this, I say to myself, this person got a job in may and they didn't get admitted until the following year, what were they doing? Were they clerking or did they not pass the bar? So I just, there's no reason to put your graduation data on there.

[00:05:55] There's nothing wrong with not passing the bar. But you don't need to put that there, also need to put you [00:06:00] don't want to put anything about these district and bankruptcy. These are just, you can be admitted to these by motion. So no one really cares about that. That's just, it's not, no, one's going to hire you because of that.

[00:06:09] You're just taking up extra space, the mediation certificate. I don't think unless that's some major school or something I don't know that you really want to leave that on there. That's not that necessary. And you probably don't want to have that on there either. You just want to basically say you're admitted the California, the State bar California.

[00:06:28] And that's it. And then the law school is good. It's good to put that at the end. I don't know some of these things that have been done here aren't really necessary. You don't need to put that you were a member of the moot court, a woman's law member. I women go to law school.

[00:06:43] There's nothing special about being a member of that group. There's nothing special about being a member of the immigration or tax law. And there's nothing special about having been a mentor. And I'm sure there's a lot of resumes we'll talk about today that have a lot of other. Type of information on them [00:07:00] that is relevant, but you don't really need to say very much about that.

[00:07:03] And you don't need to call it a doctor of law. You can just call a JD or whatever. It's not you don't need to make it sound fancy or anything like that. And and then these affiliations, these are fine. I don't have any problem with that. And then these additional skills are not necessary.

[00:07:18]No one is going to hire a 10th year attorney because they know QuickBooks or outlook. That's doesn't mean or PowerPoint you see you take that off. So all in all, this is a good resume. Just needs to be shortened up. That's too long. It needs to be run through professional proofreading programs.

[00:07:34]You don't need the summary at the top. And you also don't need to do anything. You just remove the, I would just, as a general rule, not worry about summaries or any of this person is just a generalist and I wouldn't worry about doing all these bullet points, this person's a generalist and has a general practice.

[00:07:52] What a law firm is concerned about when they're looking at this, by the way, if it's an employer, is there a concern, can this person make me money? So if you've [00:08:00] generated business and this is a successful law firm, and you're the managing partner, you should say something about how much work you know, or how much business you're generated.

[00:08:09] The other thing that I don't like here is this person saying they've the beginning of the comedy process for the North Carolina bar. So people do this all the time. They put stuff on their resume that they are admitted to another bar. If this person's applying for jobs in Calla, Colorado a law firm would be very stupid to try to hire them because it's pretty clear that the person may be interested in leaving or going to work in North Carolina otherwise.

[00:08:34]They wouldn't be doing that. So anytime your looking at a resume you have to ask yourself all these questions and and one of them is, are we guaranteed to make money from the person from a long time? If the person puts something about another bar on their resume that's going to hurt them.

[00:08:51] And the other problem is this person actually has their own law firm. So if they were applying to work in a law firm other law firms are gonna ask why why [00:09:00] are they what are they going to want their own firm again, or what's going on with that? So that is that resume.

[00:09:05] And I move on to the next one. Okay. So when you're applying for legal jobs you don't need to put anything to do about the fact. That your J D or not no one really I just wanna look at this resume. I can no one, everyone expects that you're a JD. If you're applying to big firm you can see here again, there's issues with spacing there's issues with th the way things are done here, there's there's lots of formatting, there's lots of formatting risk.

[00:09:35]This person does the same thing that the person, previous person did, they have a summary at the top of the resume. And then they talk about. All of these different industries and so forth that the person was involved in and and then areas all these different areas of expertise.

[00:09:53] Now having all this information, the problem with this is it, this whole first page [00:10:00] basically says a lot of different things. It says that the person, you don't need to put down your J D you don't need to put down the, your counsel. You and you don't need to put all of these different things on the resume all the, all these different industries and so forth.

[00:10:14]And the reason is because, people are gonna look at what you did and they're going to figure out very quickly your level of expertise. Now, this is actually a very special attorney that we'll talk about in a minute. But this person doesn't need all of this information on this they literally could probably take out this entire first page because it just, it says too much and it's just, there's no reason for it.

[00:10:35] It's confusing. And and and it's just not necessary. All these different banks. Now, the person says they're a partner, counsel and consultant. I would prefer just seeing One title. And if they're a partner now they can put that. Typically, the person may have been a consultant for six months and then they might've been council for a year.

[00:10:54] I don't know. And then they might've been a partner, but all you really need to put here probably [00:11:00] is  here you might not even need a title, to be honest with you. Let's use the person if this is their firm Hogan, and then this is. Okay.  So this person, this is their firms. I'm assuming so you don't really need all this information.

[00:11:13] And again, you need to make sure that all this stuff is well proofed and that you're fixing, you can see all these just tons of small typographical errors. The problem with having a resume that has all these little errors in it is that. A lot of attorneys, the best attorneys are typically a very very aggressive in terms of how they they read information.

[00:11:35] And so if they see errors on this, they're going to assume that you'll make errors with other types of work. And this is the most important types of, type of thing. Now, what I would do here with this says served as either in-house officer under the HLM Barela partner or director of conflict to a number of law firms and companies.

[00:11:51] Okay. So this person basically has gone out and then a contract attorney too. And I like how they've done this by the way. This is actually very cool. [00:12:00] Cause a lot of times people will just say contract attorney and then all these different firms. So this person wow. What a great resume.

[00:12:06]So let me tell you a couple other things here. So this person okay. It's very interesting. This resume, by the way below I'm going to talk more about it. So this is actually a very talented attorney. They graduated from Jade from whatever these firms at some point, and then they actually got a job at a crevasse Swaine and Moore and Sherman and Sterling.

[00:12:25] So they've worked at some really good firms and and  the. The way, this person's career has progressed as they were at this firm for certainly at the time they were at this firm. And then they were at this firm for a long period of time. And so this is a good attorney. This person knows what they're doing.

[00:12:40]What's happened here though is since 2012, it looks like they haven't really been working full time and that's okay. If, a lot of times, if the person stopped working in 2012 and really wasn't doing anything, there's no reason to, they may have had children, they may have done all sorts of things.

[00:12:56] There's no reason to put all this on there.  You can actually go back to [00:13:00] work. It's sometimes better to go back to work full-time and be complete and look like you want to be completely engaged and put on something that you were not engaged for a long time. Cause sometimes being a solo practitioner can actually hurt you a little bit more.

[00:13:13] So this person, it looks to me like what happened with this person is they have a couple of different moves, 2007, 2009. They were a partner and then 2005 to seven, they were a partner. And  they probably, coming out of Cravath. There's a very prestigious thing. It's one of the top firms World and problem, and  they were probably able to walk in as a partner in a couple of different jobs, but what happened is they probably were expected to generate business and they typically give you a couple of years and that just didn't happen.

[00:13:40] And so they moved our series of different firms. So this is a very good attorney.  But the resume really needs to be cleaned up. What I like to do with resumes typically is this person does capital markets, which is basically securities and a few other things. And I think that the resumes should be shortened by, I would [00:14:00] just, it being a career path really says it all.

[00:14:02] You don't need to put a lot of information there. They did the same thing. Okay far, they should probably just put the department. What I don't like about this resume that I would recommend cleaning up is I don't like anytime you take off the graduation date of your resume, that's not a good idea because it looks like you're trying to cover up your age and be deceitful.

[00:14:20] No one cares that the attorney graduated in 1970 from law school. Now they'll figure that they're older, but I'm not talking about the years of this person worked there. And then talking about the years they worked there, it's just it's deceitful. And  no one wants to be deceitful, that, and it presumes there's age discrimination, which there is but I'll just stairs.

[00:14:39]But that all needs to be fixed. So the big takeaways from this I've started quite a bit, but I would you need to be very careful. You want to be very honest on your resume. You want to fix all this stuff. I don't like this actually I do this is all fine. But not much has happened in the past or the, yeah.

[00:14:54] This person is still in the banking law committee. And they've done all these very good committee things here. So that's good. [00:15:00] But in the board member of the spent squat was great school for women in New York city. And yeah this is a very good attorney and but a lot of times the only issue that I have with this attorney is, you have to wonder what they're seeking to do.

[00:15:13] I would think that the particular attorney would be a very good in-house attorney or they would be a very good  corporate attorney for a mid-sized to smaller firm that has a lot of work. But there are things that can be done. I had to clean it up. A lot of times too. One thing I will say that you can do if you're a corporate attorney, or even if you're a litigation attorney, the many times attorneys have a lot of passion for putting down.

[00:15:37] All of the things that they've done on their resume and you don't always need to do that. What you can do is you can have a transaction sheet, so that would be a separate sheet. Excuse me. That will go on the resume. So you would talk about this person could talk about, they might have a 20 page transaction sheet and they could turn that in with a resume as well to show the types of expertise that they have. [00:16:00]

[00:16:00]So that might be what I would do and and how I would do that. And then a lot of this stuff you can shorten and then you can have a transaction sheet from separately. This whole first page really should go. And then the transaction sheet you can.

[00:16:14] Break all that down there. So that's how I would deal with that. So all in all a very talented attorney, but just when attorneys tend to get more senior, they want to add all the things that they've done. And and that can be the some extent can also be a little bit sometimes problematical.

[00:16:30]Okay. And if anybody has any questions about any of this I'm just showing you how I tend to view things and and how other people some other people do it and market too. You can see here again spacing issues all sorts of this is more of a, like a letter this person looks like they're looking for.

[00:16:49] And in-house job. And they've worked in S and they've also worked in Germany that's fine. And that all the stuff here current past duties is probably not necessary. [00:17:00] The best resumes,  we'll come across some examples shortly, but the best resumes are typically going to be much shorter.

[00:17:07] And this particular resume there's just a lot of issues with it. It's just, people don't want to read too much. People just want to read  short amount of information and and get through it. And it's not that they don't care about all this stuff, all that stuff can come later the benefit of this person is they're there.

[00:17:26] An attorney who's who understands things in New York and probably in Germany. And and then there, I don't know if they're admitted and I can't even tell you, see those persons admitted speak three languages. Yeah,  Yeah, so this person, but this person has done a lot of stuff. And most of it is yeah.

[00:17:43] Unrelated to looks like to work in, for example, in a law firm. And and that, let me turn off this karma. This is too much stuff. Totally. Not a lot of it's unrelated to practicing law. They got an MBA, then they they've been out of law school for a long time. They're very I've done a [00:18:00] lot of writing and rewards and it's just way too much.

[00:18:02]People want to see a much shorter resume many times and and leave it at that. I'm going to turn off the scrambling to make this a little bit faster, and then I'm going to make the screen bigger. Let's see here view for this. You guys just see these a little bit more easily.

[00:18:16]Okay. But as I've shown you with a lot of these, you can see better. A lot of these resumes do have a lot of problems with spacing and that sort of thing. So this person Charles, one of thing too, I wanted to say I was just thinking about this previous resume  when you're in different, sometimes when you're in different areas of the country and so forth, like five, five 74 park Avenue, I, we probably put this address on there, but that sounds like a very fancy address.

[00:18:44] And and then you see the person that lived in all these fancy places and associate with these fancy schools and stuff. And so the big thing. Is when the law firms hiring people, they want to make sure that the person can be managed. And a lot of times it's very difficult to manage people that are coming out of [00:19:00] very  wealthy backgrounds, even attorneys.

[00:19:02] And so a lot of times loss law firms don't necessarily want to see that they want people that are continually going to be working in that sort of thing. So you to the extent you can, sometimes you want to tone that stuff down. Okay, Charles Williams. Let's see here. Okay. So this person put their Texas bar number up there.

[00:19:20] They put attorney at lot there. You don't really need that stuff there. I don't know that it's necessary to put your Skype ID and all this sort of thing. I think just putting your name and phone number and email, it's probably enough.  Don't think you need to put a attorney at law. I do  just kinda opening these grammar programs to sometimes take a look at how things are, w what's going on a on a different resume, but you can just see all these things that are being highlighted that need need attention.

[00:19:47] And so you really need to, everyone should always look very closely this sort of overview again again, doesn't really matter people aren't, Vista attorney has time to re, to write a book about the [00:20:00] internet of things that, that doesn't really bode well for the law firm because a law firms going to expect more people to work.

[00:20:06]The NBA is unrelated to getting a law degree. So it, it detracts from the fact that you may want to do the work and then having a software sales and so forth people. Aren't necessarily going to be pressed with that. Now I'm looking at things that are going to be related to someone getting a job premiere in a law firm.

[00:20:28] So that's kinda my concern, but if you're going to be getting a job in a law firm you do need to you want to look like someone that's going to do work in a law firm and not the opposite thing. Okay. So this person has a very resume that's fairly standard for some of that's been a contract attorney.

[00:20:45]I would if this person has been a solo practitioner, I think, I don't know how you want to whatever, but it may make more sense to call yourself. Like solo practitioner and then talk about the different types of things you've [00:21:00] or things you've worked on as a solo. And and that would be  my.

[00:21:05] The way I would approach it the problem with the, with this resume again, and I don't want to be critical because it's not really necessary, but the problem with it is if you've done all this work and you've never had a, kind of a permanent position that the law firm is going to assume that, it may be difficult managing you and so forth.

[00:21:25] So you need to figure out how to massage that. And then that way, and then then this person was in house and then they went and did their own law firm. And then they were an attorney.  You need to do whatever you can to and then they've done all these non-legal jobs, which I don't know how relevant they are.

[00:21:42]I liked it. This person went, got an LLM. I don't like it when people put stuff about how a school ranks in a certain program this person has traditionally been a done all this different work. They may be interested in getting an intellectual property. It looks like they did some of this stuff there.

[00:21:57]But then their solo practice, it looks like they were working on [00:22:00] also similar types of stuff.  Let's see here. So I just here, I would just ruck. I think this whole thing this needs to be cleaned up to some extent. I I just, the th there's just too much going on here.

[00:22:13]You ideally should think about what you can do to make your resume a one page. And then if you really feel like other things are necessary there, that's fine. But this person, the problem I see when I look at a resume like this, and I see that this person went and got an MBA, and then I see that they went to law school and then I see that they decided 18 years later to get an MBA and a master's of law.

[00:22:38] And then I see that they're listing all these, individual honors and so forth. And then I see that they've had all these non-legal jobs and there's nothing wrong with any of this. It's just that the person's got a very active mind and likes new experiences, and those are all good things.

[00:22:52] But the big thing that a law firm and any employer is concerned about is will the person do the job long-term if they hire them and also can they be [00:23:00] managed? And a lot of times, when you, when someone's going in a million different directions th shows that can't be managed. And so this is this, I'm sure that most of the majority of people on this call are probably going to be they're usually our younger attorneys.

[00:23:12] I'm gonna get, hopefully see some younger resumes in a few minutes, but these this resume the person you have to look very focused like law firms. Oh one focus people and the ability to boil down a lot of information  and make it succinct is a lawyer skill. It's a skill for transactions.

[00:23:30] It's a skill for juries. It's a skill for everything. And the problem with this first resume for example, is this person, all this says is I'm a legal generalist. Like the first resume, just I'm a legal generalist and isn't this cute. I know how to put this code on my resume. And then this says I'm a legal generalist, but it says nothing about what the firm's really concerned about is how much businesses has person half.

[00:23:53] And so I think a lot of times when I see resumes of people and this person is, this resume says. [00:24:00] The, I'm just telling you like the message you get from resumes. This says I worked at some awesome law firms. I didn't make, didn't stay a partner, any of them I'm rich and I'm very talented and I'm very connected and know a lot of different stuff, but I've never been able to.

[00:24:16]You don't get a lot of business. That's what that says about this. And I may be, I may have an, and  I'm important and connected and probably, Richard and you, and no more people than, that's where that's, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that.

[00:24:26] And some people want that this resume here says. The only thing it says is I'm an attorney in Germany, in the U S that's pretty much the only message I get out of this. And I knew, I know some of this stuff, but there's just too much on here. There's so much it confuses the reader. This person's resume says I've done a lot of things, but I've just been really doing for the past 17 years.

[00:24:47] I've been just working and  I'm a lot of different things on my own. I have a very active mind. There's all these different things I'd like to do, but there, there's not focus. And so the thing that's missing from all these resumes, and it could be cleaned up with a lot of attention. [00:25:00]

[00:25:00]But what it communicates is the lack of focus and that you may not be doing. Something for a long time. Okay. So here we go. I've gotten through these. I'm not trying to be harsh on these people because these resumes are very common, but each of these resumes I don't think there's anything that I could do for them.

[00:25:15]Because they there's just too much independence coming through. You don't you got to look like you can be managed. You don't want to look too independent. You don't want to look too. Self-focused all this being able to be manage is extremely important. Okay. When I here's a resume, actually that I think is very interesting.

[00:25:32]I like this resume. I don't think this is the person's real name or, and because I don't think there's someone would have a suite for a house, but I like this resume. This person is motivated. Let me see what they've done. Okay. It's a separate resume. Okay. So this resume, let's take a look at this. This resume is one page it's very easy to read. There's still problems with it. It needs to have a lot of things Cleaned up, but honestly, you know exactly what this person does. This person went [00:26:00] to Notre Dame and they got a scholarship, which is nice.

[00:26:03]And which means that they, were probably worked very hard and and high school or however you get a scholarship Notre today. And then and then they went to this Seton hall and they're proud if they were in the top. At the top of their class, they were, they got a scholarship for going there, which means they probably did very well in college.

[00:26:22] And and then and then these other, and then they got the best brief for the best oral argument and metallic advocacy out of 17 people.  That's all right. I would take this out. That's nice to be honest, but I, and I don't know that the problem with I wouldn't put top 22nd percentile.

[00:26:38] I would just put   because then a lot of these firms are going to want. People that did even better than that. But but you can put 22nd percent top of your mind because this person is trying to be landlord tenant attorney, which I love this person is focused and they've been doing the same thing since 2012 with their own law firm, what looks like, but that's okay.

[00:26:58]They know exactly what they're doing. [00:27:00] And exactly who they are. And I like, I love this resume. This is a good resume. I would actually work with this person because and I would probably get them a job because this person knows exactly what they're doing, and this is the kind of stuff that law firms like she knows exactly what she wants to do.

[00:27:15] She's the resume is for the most part fairly well proofed and and then I don't know what this guardian ad litem stuff.  She's actually, I guess you get paid as a guardian ad litem, but that's great too. So she's got this kind of a little business going on the side and she's been doing that since 2017.

[00:27:31] This is a very good resume. I liked this resume, I think. And then not only that, but she's been working doing real estate with this company as assistant general counsel or did it in 2016 when she graduated from Moscow.

[00:27:45]Oh, she did her clerkship for the, in Tanzania. Okay. That's cool. That's interesting. But yeah this was a good resume and she was Elisa managers. Everything about this person is real estate. So the difference between this resume and everything else we've seen, it's this person. [00:28:00] It doesn't matter if you work on your own or how you do it.

[00:28:02] This person settled down, they got their stuff together. They did exactly what they wanted to do. And and they've focused and they've continued doing it and they know who they are, what they're doing. And I liked that. That's actually a good thanks now.  I would take off the languages if she speaks Arabic and French, that's fine.

[00:28:19] You can put that on there. I don't think you want to say that you're beginning Spanish because that just shows you don't have enough work. And I don't know you need to put down that, we're an office, so I would just take all of this out.  And yeah, but this is all and you could maybe put interests learning languages.

[00:28:36] I have a section about that. So this particular person you look at their resume, their focus, you know exactly who they are. They, if they've got an employment stability so you know that the person's got employment stability that they can do the job if it's landlord tenant.

[00:28:50]You don't know if they can be managed. But I sense is that the person does stick to things and if they were hired, they'd probably do the job long-term and and that and if [00:29:00] they were do the job, they want to do the job and then they did this, and then they're doing this guardian ad litem things.

[00:29:04] This is probably a pretty good person too. So I like this person. I think this could be, this is a good resume. And I just want to show you the difference between this resume and all the others we've looked at. It's just the focus and you know exactly who the person is like, legal, like it's it contracts temporary work working for 15 different law firms.

[00:29:23] Here's a summary of who I am, all the stuff I've done. I'm writing a book. I'm. I've got an LLM manager. It's just all these different things going on. You have to think about who would you want if you were an attorney, if you had a landlord tenant problem and you were getting kicked out of your apartment or something, who would you want representing you?

[00:29:39] Would you want this person, or would you want someone that. You don't even know they want to be there. All this stuff, by the way there's a lot of fundamental kind of human needs that people have. And and it comes through in resumes and the resume is a big place where this is all shown and it's actually very interesting.

[00:29:58] And I'm just gonna write it [00:30:00] down here. But and it's sad actually, but one of the most important human needs

[00:30:05]and and so when you look at the, when you look at the resumes that we've looked at so far today this particular person. It looks to me like they get their importance. If you look at this, like they worked on a Rwanda they turn this guardian ad litem. They do all this land, they get their they get their sense of importance based on another learning Spanish and their human rights about helping other people.

[00:30:28] And this is the kind of person you would want helping you. If you're an attorney, just person you want helping you. If you're a law firm this person. Doesn't know what they're doing there.  They get their importance by doing well in school, getting degrees where they can be smart, they can importance by lots of different little jobs and  and there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:30:44] And then they write these summaries and get important, so that, and then this person,  foreign attorney.  I'm not going to talk too much about it gets your importance from other stuff and writes all this stuff. And then this person talks about No.

[00:30:56] I was the sole speaker for 2,400 legal finance professionals. And then, [00:31:00] and it makes this type typo here as well as, foreign and data privacy, and then all these different things of the person's died. And then the association with the Spence school, which is, it's one of the most prestigious Girls' schools in the country.

[00:31:11]Been definitely New York. It's a great school. And then director of the five 70 co-op, which is so that this person's sense of importance and this person has every right to feel important. This person, to get a job at crevasse as a. Lateral attorney in 1995 was next to impossible.

[00:31:26] So this is a very smart person, but now it's like, they're just throwing things here when you're throwing things like this, you're saying what's going to stick, and you're trying to get your sense important. So  your need for important shouldn't come through in your resume, what the resume needs to communicate and what this raise this last resume we did is that I can help.

[00:31:45] With this weather with a specific problem, and I want to help this person wants to help this person has generated it volun this particular resume, this person goes directly for the subject matter. They're interested in it. Maybe they didn't get a job or they're [00:32:00] still doing it themselves.

[00:32:01] And they really like it. And that's cool. I love that. And and they like helping people. They did this.  Thing in Africa, it's just a very interesting resume. Okay. Here's this person legal server training. So I just only thing I want you guys to see that comes through in the SIS.

[00:32:15]I can sense resumes. Instinct instinctually. And you can tell if somebody is interested in something, if it's more about the subject matter or more about them, or, and if they know who they are, if they know what they're doing and what, where they want to be, and all those questions come through in a resume.

[00:32:31] And that's what this person is. It's almost like a little psychological exercise. I don't know what the heck this is. Let's see. Illegal server training. E-discovery skills. Okay. A contract attorney for short period of time. Okay. So these are just very short contract jobs. So what I would do here is I don't know that I would put down that I was a contract attorney with all these different places for this.

[00:32:57]I would just put down that I was a contract attorney and then put [00:33:00] down some of the names of the organizations for the length of time.  I'm not sure. I don't understand why why they have two dates for this?  No, this is a e-discovery attorney basically, which is a skill. And an e-discovery and document review attorney, but this person has had so many short jobs and then they were a property investor.

[00:33:19] And developer, is that before or after law school?  1993. Okay.  Okay. So I, so really what you know, and then all this, you don't need to put all these internships and so forth on your resume when you're that far out of law school, the rule is too, by the way, for your education is pretty much after five or six years.

[00:33:38]You want to put it at the end, it doesn't need to go. Doesn't need to go. Brilliant at the top, but this person has had so many different jobs doing so many different things that this resume by the way, could be a one page. You could just say, I've been a contract I was been doing e-discovery for a variety of firms e-discovery and and contract review [00:34:00] for a variety of firms and outside organizations since since look at many jobs, this person's had, this is amazing. These are just short term jobs, so that's why it's not that the person is like losing jobs left and right since 2015, I've done this. I've done all these different jobs since this period of time. And that's all I need to say. I would take out all this stuff about being a pro private investment advisor.

[00:34:22]This just shows you don't want to practice law. So anybody that puts this stuff on their their resumes, just showing you, you want it, you want to be doing something else. And maybe many people wouldn't want to be doing something else. And then What is this partner general counsel?

[00:34:35] I don't even know who these people are. So if there's no thing there, I would take that out case manager You can put that down there if you want. But what every resume is a show, by the way, on the best resume show is they show a pattern of upward mobility. And so what I would, what this resume would make this resume really good.

[00:34:54] And any buddy who's young care I w will tell you how to do this [00:35:00] the best way to make yourself look really good is take all this information and under your experience. All you would just say is, e-discovery specialist or something like that, you would just say you discovery specialist and a discovery specialist.

[00:35:15]And then you would just say, since, what does the day here? 2015

[00:35:19]works? Can you discovery expert?

[00:35:22]Yeah, several hundred law firms or whatever you want to say. Consulting firms that have been part of some of the largest.

[00:35:31]At the time, at the time probably

[00:35:35]worked for,  something along those lines dates, whatever the dates and then and then, you could just say I worked for, in these, I've worked in these markets and these cities, and then you can take all this information off there. And that's what you have.

[00:35:49] And then someone looks at you and then they say, wow, this person has done all of these different things. And and they know that. And then and then maybe in your business, I don't know a lot about [00:36:00] e-discovery, but these sound like very good skills. And then you could put this move this to the end there.

[00:36:06] And and then you could maybe list, this 10 employer, less 15 employers or something, just to names lawyers.  And then and then put then the stinks and then all of a sudden you have a kick-ass resume that I would probably even work with. Because there's a lot of demand for e-discovery, but, and you don't need to put the bar number and, you just put and you don't need to put this there.

[00:36:27]You just put all this stuff like this and you take the resume e-discovery specialist, and then you put your education. I'm just showing you guys how all this works. Sorry. So much time. I just, I hate seeing resumes like this, and they're so easy to clean up  just show you have a passion for.

[00:36:42] Or the subject matter education. And and look at this, you've done all this stuff. You've done us a great resume actually. It's just it's, it needs to be switched around there. So that you take all this stuff that was there before. And you call yourself a new discovery specialist.

[00:36:58] Now a law firm, a major law [00:37:00] firm in New York, anywhere needing a case, e-discovery specialist you could even do it. You could even do it here. You could say between  I don't know, you could even take this up potentially and have all that. And then all of a sudden you have a very good resume that is going to jump out and employers and people are going to want to hire, instead of all this other stuff, because everyone's asking themselves you just go back to this question.

[00:37:20]They do the job long-term and if you, the way you had it before with all those different employers people are not going to think you're going to do the job. Okay. Assistant general counsel real estate. Okay. So I hope that helps. The resume is that you can actually take up a resume and that's just by making the person, the focus here, you just look completely focused if you put that down instead of what you had there before.

[00:37:44]And then

[00:37:45] Yeah, it's fine.  Okay. Cause in general counsel, real estate.

[00:37:49]Okay, so this is another type this is real estate resume of a in-house attorney. And and  it violates a lot of the rules that I've [00:38:00] talked about so far, but in this particular case, a lot of it is probably the, a lot of things are probably okay. You don't, again, I keep saying this to people, but if you're an attorney someplace, you don't need to constantly put your bar association number up there.

[00:38:13] They didn't, they it's presumed. This person could put there, doing admissions or something on their one-page resume. But you don't need to put your bar association stuff up there. The reason I don't like seeing these summaries at the top of resumes is people there's a lot of consultants out there that charge people to do resumes and and when they do, and I personally have never Me personally, I've never charged people to work on that resume because it's just not it's not a lot of it is the industry.

[00:38:43] I don't like a lot of things about the industry, but these sort of summaries at the top, you can certainly do them, but the reason people do these is there's a long kind of history to them, but people resume writers will. Make their money based on putting together these summaries, when you [00:39:00] do these, it shows that that that you're worried that you won't get hired to some extent when you do these kind of long summaries.

[00:39:05] And so they're not always a good idea, is what I'm saying. And and not only, they're not a good idea, but they can they can really detract people from stuff. And then you can see here, just all these. Kind of small errors it should be, that, that come out there's going to be other issues.

[00:39:22] And so you have to, you just want to be very careful. Anytime you're writing stuff, you can see here, like just all these little things. And and most of these are not that serious. This is this is a good attorney here, but This person, I liked this resume. This person has a lot of PR pretty good employment stability.

[00:39:40]You can see here that they they switched practice areas to some extent. Now they're doing mainly real estate stuff. And then before they were doing something else back in 2000 and actually, no, 2007 to eight, they did do real estate.

[00:39:53] That's where they got interested in it. And then they were doing real estate, 1998. So this is a good attorney and this person has [00:40:00] a lot of good skills. What I would probably recommend for this person would be to have their legal and business consultant means a lot of times that the person was unemployed during those dates.

[00:40:12] And so I would, when you're, anytime you're doing like a contract type job I would be very careful about how you put that down because you, when you, if someone's going to hire you they want to know that you're going to do it, the job long-term, they're also going to want to know whether or not it can be managed and  and so that and people are going to wonder why you've been unemployed for eight years.

[00:40:34] So you have to be careful. But other than that, this is a good, this is a very good resume. I I'm not sure. Let me just see here, but a couple of things with that, but for the most part it's a very good, it's a good resume. I don't I generally, as a general rule do not like these things at the top.

[00:40:51]But. If this person is looking for an in-house job I was actually thinking about this before this webinar, if this person's looking for an in-house job, [00:41:00] in-house people do not necessarily know how to hire attorneys and what to look for. So if they see that the person knows real estate and commercial, they see that they know how to do.

[00:41:10]Debt, equity financing, and corporate governments, and that pops out, it actually might be okay for this resume because this person's looking for an in-house job and probably, and but if they didn't have the, if they didn't want to have that there and they took it off and they cleaned all this up here.

[00:41:26]Then I would work with them for a real estate position in wherever they're looking. So this is another person I would work with if they in Colorado probably. This is going to have to be some questions about what's been going on here with this particular business, this, and if they have any business and if they've been working full time and if not, why not?

[00:41:43]Okay. Let's go to the next one.

[00:41:46] Let's see here. And it looks like there are questions. Let me just hear it. And I will answer everyone's questions. People look like they're showing the resumes and let's see here. Okay. Worst float on[00:42:00]  Okay. And we have changed everyone's names on these. So these are not people see official summary, multifaceted professionals.

[00:42:09]cotton's house is the same thing here. Like you want to proofread everything. You have this summary at the top and this person's at a law firm.  You probably don't want to fix that you probably don't want to let's see person. Geez.  See. Okay anyway, you want to make sure you obviously proofread everything here.

[00:42:27]Other, their law firm. Okay. So this looks like, so this person is working for someone else as a a law firm. And let's see here. So what I would recommend, let me just see elder law firm do state planning title. Okay. Transfer, trust real estate and purchase and sale cause. So they do quite a few things.

[00:42:48] So what I would do with this particular resume a couple of things too, about these candidates, like this person doesn't have anything about where they went to law school. This person also doesn't have anything about where they went to law school. So I [00:43:00] would recommend taking that out in terms of the law school information or making sure you have that stuff here like that.

[00:43:07] I don't. I don't know that any of this matters really in this project because I resume, I don't think you need to have any of this content up here. And I also don't think  you need to say excellent customer service to clientele of all ages. I don't know if that's necessarily that, I don't know if these are accomplishments, I wouldn't call them accomplishments.

[00:43:27] I would just say buys and these different matters and do things that way. So that's how I would do that. This person, by the way, it looks like a trust in the state's attorney. And there, and then now they were doing something. A little different before.  Anytime you're switching practice areas, and there was a period of unemployment, not really a long one, but anytime there's someone to switching practice areas then you need to be a little bit careful about why that happened.

[00:43:54] This person has been in a trust and estates attorney for awhile. And so I would actually [00:44:00] considered them marketable as well. I don't know this particular resume, sorry, just let me fix this here. I don't know that you need to do too much with them here.

[00:44:10] I would also take out this information here, cause it's not really relevant. And to the extent you can, I would try to focus my experience on trusting the state's work in this resume. So you look like you're more focused and then I don't this stuff hear about top producing and stuff is more, that's more kind of sales language.

[00:44:28] You want to be very clear about what you do specifically in terms of your practice here. Okay. Let's see here. Okay. Big four accounting firms, senior associate. And then you obviously need to put your law school on here. You need to put some other stuff on there as well.

[00:44:44]And then

[00:44:44] Yeah. Okay. Now let's do one more and we'll take a quick break and come back and do a bunch more resumes. The big four accounting firm, New York, senior associate and tax services. Okay.  Okay. Paralegal, text department. Okay. That's good. [00:45:00] Okay. Yeah. So this, you can see here, this is actually a very interesting resume.

[00:45:03] So this person it looks like they've had the same job since period of time now they obviously need to Proofread this Mark May have it proofread a little bit more carefully, but they this is actually a good, very good resume. I think what I like about it is it's short.

[00:45:17]I I don't know for mask.

[00:45:20]Alright. This what I like about this resume is that it, it is very short. This was and I liked that person got an LLM and I liked that there's employment stability. So I think that is also very good. And then and I liked the the resist year, the key accomplishments.

[00:45:36] I don't know that I would put that again. Keep people keep saying key accomplishments. I would just say that anytime you're like being a tax attorney or a corporate attorney, you're often better off instead of listing all this stuff, having a transaction sheet. So if you look up a transaction sheet on BCG attorney search what it's going to say is it's going to basically tell you about all the different types of work and so forth that [00:46:00] the immune, all the different transactions you've done.

[00:46:02] So if this person has done a bunch of different types of transactions, the best attorneys will typically list they'll have a, like a separate sheet on their resume. Sometimes it's 10 or 15 pages, but it lists all the types of transactions they've done and it's somewhat anonymous. You can fix things that way, but that's how.

[00:46:18] You want to list a lot of stuff, but this is this is a good attorney. There's a lot of employment, stability. The resume short, the only thing I don't like here is I don't you can put all the bars it would be much easier to just say, here admitted to  state bar, Florida  New York.

[00:46:35] And then you had sips in New York state bars or Florida in New York and Massachusetts. Okay. So I'm going to take a quick break just for two or three minutes. And and then when I come back, we have a bunch more resumes and we will get through, if you did submit your resume, we will get through them today.

[00:46:52] And then we'll also do as many questions as people have. And if you want to ask questions about about resumes. I'm going to look over the questions while we're [00:47:00] taking a break. So the break will be just a couple of minutes. And then when I, when we do come back we will let me just make sure this is a little larger here.

[00:47:08] That's okay. When we do come back we will also, finish all the resumes. So just just a couple of minutes. So we come back in one second.  Great. Thank you. Okay.

[00:47:19]Okay. Yeah.

[00:47:20]Yeah.

[00:47:21]Wow.

[00:47:22]Yes.

[00:47:23]All right. So we're going to get start again, a couple of people. Also ask the question about personalizing resumes based on the type of job you're applying to. And that's actually a very good question  as a general rule if you're applying to a certain type of job, you want your resume to  come out and be very have talk about a particular type of practice area that you're in.

[00:47:49] See seeker and we did change all the names I was just going through and making sure we seem to do a lot of resumes later. So I wanted to make sure all the names were changed. So that's why we took a little bit longer than the break.  So these are not. Real [00:48:00] people's names or employers.   But if you recognize your resume, you're welcome to ask questions.

[00:48:04]So the big thing though, is that this particular person looks like a trust in the state's attorney. Here. Or this particular, last person, I'm sorry, it looks like a trust in the state's attorney here, but then here she starts talking about all these other types of things that she did related to business and contracts and so far.

[00:48:21] So if this resume would be much stronger, if it was just trust in the States and showed a pattern of maybe moving from a smaller law firm to a bigger law firm, doing trust in the States people want to see a focus. So the resumes that have a focus. Are typically the best this person's resume's good because of the type of tax, I don't know what type of taxes person does.

[00:48:40] Exactly. So it would be better like if they did Like I work with different types of tax attorneys and big four accounting firms all the time. And you can, if you have the right experience in the right particular niche, like if it's employee benefits or if it's a state local tax, you can often be employable in a law firm, even if you've only worked in a County firm and you've [00:49:00] worked there for a long time.

[00:49:00] So any type of focus you show us better. And the more focus your resume shows for a particular job and from the better off you're going to be.  Let's see here.

[00:49:12]Okay. So this person is a government attorney working for doing alternative dispute resolution. Now, w a lot of times it's very difficult for people that work for the government and have careers in the government many times to transition into private practice because of the types of resumes.

[00:49:31]And I believe the government must teach this the types of resumes, the government government attorneys tend to. And don't like government resumes as a general rule. I think that they're very difficult to read. There's too much information on them. And I often have a hard time understanding them this particular resume as you can see is very long the resume.

[00:49:51] Is far too long. And and doesn't really tell me very much that tells me that they worked for the government and and and that they it's [00:50:00] just, it says an awful lot, and you can see how long this resume is. All this stuff is really doesn't show anything.

[00:50:07]Other than that this person is overcome unprecedented challenge to both develop and implementing new process because they not that exist for attorneys effective work product oversee the ADR program. It's time consuming should have a Cash after it.   So you can see that it's just this resume as far too long, and it's a narrative and this sort of thing wouldn't even be acceptable, but for a cover letter it's just, it's way too long.

[00:50:31]All you need to say is what the person did there. And then a couple of bullet points about what the experience is this we're talking about a lot of, and these are very common by the way. There's nothing wrong with this resume.  As a government, rather than resume, this is how government attorneys are taught.

[00:50:46] But there's just a lot of problems with this resume. And I hope you can see it. Cause I honestly, I've been reading this for the past few minutes. I read resumes, hundreds of them a day. Am. I still don't understand what this person does. And [00:51:00] and so if it was much shorter what I would like to see is if the person did whistleblower investigations for the government, that's enough, like then I could search for jobs that did t