Join Harrison Barnes in a comprehensive resume workshop on BCG Attorney Search, titled "The Art of Writing a Perfect Attorney Resume." In this video, Harrison Barnes shares expert tips and strategies for crafting a standout attorney resume. Learn how to highlight your skills, experience, and achievements effectively to capture the attention of hiring managers and secure your dream job. Don't miss this valuable session designed to help you perfect your legal resume and advance your career.
Transcript:
Today we're doing a resume workshop. We have a lot of resumes to review and we will definitely get through if you sent your resume. We'll do our best to get through today and it's not. But it was a way to the streets, but we will be I'm here as long as it takes. This is a these, we do give these workshops quarterly and they're very educational, I think, from a, whether or not you're watching this live right now, or are you watching in the future?
We'll definitely cover a lot of things to make your resume very strong and stand out. And a lot of common mistakes that people are making on an ongoing basis with their resumes. And so this can be a really good exercise. And I think that several people that have attended this in the future really have passed that these workshops have helped them to get positions and all sorts of things.
I've seen lots of attorneys in the past screw up the resumes with mistakes that, frankly, could often be very easily avoided and hopefully we'll catch a lot of those types of mistakes today. And I would say you're asking, who's reviewing your resume and who will be talking about it.
Personally, I reviewed well over 500,000 resumes. I review hundreds of them per day. I've been doing this for over 20 years and have gotten people by redoing the resume and by spotting good resumes of kind of people, jobs and pretty much every definitely every large law firm in the country, but also thousands of other firms and pretty much I get someone a job almost every day of the week.
So hopefully I will be able to give you good advice today. And I'm about ready to show you some of the stuff I know. So let me stop this real quickly and I'll pull up some resumes here and we'll get started. Yes. First one here. And let me just share this screen. So as I talk today, I'm going to share with you guys also a bunch of rules and things that people do that can be problematic in the resume.
This first one may not be the best example to share with everyone, but it's one of the ones that was sent in. This is a resume of someone that got a LLM in the United States and then a degree in a foreign country. One of the first things, I would say, just as a general rule and for these resumes, by the way we did take off we tried to clean them up, so we don't give away who you are and so forth to other people.
So there's some privacy here. This particular person is an LLM and hopefully would like to get a job in the United States. So one of the things is in the United States typically you don't want to use different colors on your resume. You typically want to make it just one color. People are looking for just a short amount of they don't want to have kind of all these colors that it's difficult when you're getting an outlet many times to get a job in the U S I typically, this is just for people that are our lambs.
I do recommend getting a JD if you do want to work in the U S and then most of this expense, these experiences here are fine. They're they're related to what you're doing research work is very heavy here. I don't know you probably, and the certifications and so forth. So for the most part, this is not a a us resume. It's more of a, it's more of a foreign resume. One of the things that I always do, and I I wanna let me just see here a second here. I do need to open Grammarly. Let me see her document. So let me just save all these. Give me one second here. Okay.
Should work now. So I'm everybody too, by the way I would highly, you recommend especially resumes installing things like Grammarly and so forth on them. What most good attorneys will do anytime they review a resume is they're going to look for things like spacing, commas. I, you can see here they're spacing issues.
Sometimes there's you can see here where it's saying, remove the space, add article at comma. So this stuff is extremely important. If someone sees these kinds of errors in a resume, typically it makes it very difficult for them to take you seriously as an attorney, because the job of an attorney is to avoid these sort of mistakes.
And then even things like this, like honorable Delhi, high court, you can see how that's spelled and the communism and so forth. One of the problems, a lot of times people have a foreign countries when they do resumes is making sure that they're not that they're following these these formatting issues.
So I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this because I'm a specialist in US-based resumes, but these that's one of the things that I would definitely recommend for this particular resumes, proofread internet. And it's very difficult as an LLM to get a position in the United States, unless you have a experience that's going to be very directly something that can help us law firms our us legal employers.
And the only way to really make sure that you're doing that is to try to make your experience look like it's direct. It's going to be relevant to what a us law firm is doing. Okay. So let's see this client. Okay. So this is a another resume here. And of course the name and so forth has taken off.
You can see here again, there's a lot of typos, I don't know our spacing issues so you need to go through and fix all those. So this is something by the way that you know, that, you need to like your resume is a very important thing from the standpoint of the proofreading.
And and how quickly you can give through ideas and how quickly you can do you know, you can present things. I don't know if these are these typos, we converted it for you. I don't think they are beaten to make sure that is so this particular resume, I want to talk a little bit about it and some of the issues that I'm seeing with that right now.
So typically let's see here w when you're four years less or more out of law school what you want to do as you want to put your education first. And then your emissions typically go beneath all of that information, you would put that at the end or something. And and you also want to try to be very clear with your with your language, but I'll talk about that in a second.
But this particular resume right here there there's a bunch of things I'd like to talk about. So the first is this person is now working in a in white Plains doing it looks working, in-house doing a for doing real estate related things. And they've been doing that for the past year. Prior to that it looks like they were a law clerk, that's protect, that's fine. But 20 to graduate in 2018, may of 2018. So that would be November, 2018. So they were a law clerk after graduating.
Okay. And then they've been doing this since June. Okay. So the pro some of the problems with this resume this is actually a very interesting resume because this person is making a lot of very typical type of mistakes that people make. And so I'd like, really to hone in on that.
There's a couple of problems. The first thing is there, there are some kind of employment gaps here, which
I, which make me a little bit nervous. So there's an employment gap. From the time this person got out of law school tell they got this job as a law clerk, and then they were only there for a month, and then they were gone for six months and then they took this job here.
And and so I don't like that. And I don't, I would like some sort of explanation for that. And then you can see here, like they were a legal intern during law school. The description of what the person did is a legal intern is much longer than than the description of even what they're doing now.
And the same thing is happening with this other in-house the internship. And then it's also called corporate and commercial experience. So really what this person needs to do in this resume, by the way needs a lot of work you would have experienced here. You probably you don't, I don't even know that this particular this is it's only one month, so I don't know if this is necessary to have that position if it was only for a month.
Certainly and then this particular one was for three months, it was during school I don't know how relevant that position is. It's why only three months, would be the question. So there's a lot of, short jobs on here. And and then this one was a person was in-house.
Law school. So that, that would be another question as well is this legal internship, is that really, necessary. So I might even I might even put these internships down and try to make that something that, that you don't draw as much attention to that.
And you just put that down that this is your current position right now. And then of course fixing all of these spacing and other issues. I would be a good idea as well. And then I'm just going to go through this and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but these internships, you have too much stuff here.
Now, the thing I don't like about this resume and if you want to work in a law firm, don't want to work in a law firm or you don't want to work for a company. Then this is actually a very good resume. But the problem with is that you're saying everything, but work in a law firm on here.
You're seeing corporate experience, you're seeing public interest experience you're saying all these different things. Whereas really what's going on here and this is a summer internship, so that's okay. You need to these, you shouldn't be separating them because you're really saying, I prefer to do all of these other things that are related to government and public interest.
And that's a problem. And a lot of times people, if you want to work in a law firm they may not like that because it seems like this is where your interests lie. And so that might be this is a good resume if you want to do public interests and then you deemphasize this, but all this stuff really you have litigation, you have loans you have it's just the resumes all over the place.
So it needs to be more focused. Also you're working in New York, but you've only taken the New Jersey bar. So people are gonna wonder about that. Being fluent and all of these foreign languages may actually detract from and there's nothing wrong with being fluent in these languages.
You could think that's going to help you get a job, but it may actually detract from the message that, whatever you want to do. If you want to be a public interest attorney and work for an Islamic company or these different groups and so forth that's fine.
Here, I don't know what this is but this group, youth group founder, but this seems to be where your interests lay. So your interests are really in things related to whatever, volunteering and helping people and doing that sort of thing and being part of these religious and other types of groups, which is fine, but it doesn't read like a law resume.
So it doesn't read like somebody that wants to work in a law firm reads like somebody that wants to do something else. And and then and then, the question people are going to wonder if he took the New York bar and what happened with that. And then you have oh, this stuff here.
This concentration stuff, doesn't matter you none of this really matters these are not honors
activities and things that you did. These, none of this stuff maybe the secretary of the Muslim students association is an honor. I don't know how big that group is or but anything that points out things to do with religious affiliation and so forth, there's often problematical than some resume.
If someone's the secretary of the Christian students association or the. The Protestant association of the Catholic students association, I don't know that they would put that on their resume. Certainly there's a demand for diversity in law firms and so forth, but but really what law firms want is they want to see in most organizations is they want to see some sort of focus.
So this resume is very common that a lot of people do and this sort of resume will hurt you because what you're doing here is you're showing that if you want to work in a law firm, everything about this resume is showing that you have an interest in doing things really that aren't related to the type of work that law firms do.
That your interest are things that are different and that, and that you have there's nothing wrong with any of this, here you're doing intellectual and sports law, but then, the only experience has been and all these other things and then emphasizing these other languages is good if you believe that's going to help you.
But I do think that a lot of times and then this is all related to, loans and so forth, but then this is a completely different, these are completely different types of jobs. So I'm just, I'm left very confused because there's just a lot of things going on here. If you want to clean this up, and then the next time we do a resume review, I'd love to look at it.
I do think this resume does need some work. And it's just that the issue is here. It's just not focused enough. Okay. And this resume, it looks like I'm like this better. And as we go through these you guys will get a lot better understanding of kind of what makes a good resume and what doesn't.
And I know we always see people with resumes that are from younger people and then from older people. So this is a good resume as well. Okay. So this person is in New Jersey. I don't know that, the licensing in New Jersey at the top is really relevant. You can put that At the bottom when you're trying to work in a law firm and I'm assuming that this would, this person is doing and and you certainly can get a position in a law firm of the stuff, by the way everyone asked to, you want to
You always want to take a look at your language and to the extent you can and make it as a course humans are prosecutors and defense attorneys and just think about, from and most of the stuff, by the way, people know what a law clerk does. So I don't even really think he needed to have a description of it.
I just think everyone knows what a law clerk does. And then same thing here, so people know what what clerks do. A lot of times it's not this is, and this is fine that you were a law clerk here, but when you start talking about using words like personal injury, automobile Oxys, and construction defect what this does, anytime people do this sort of things, you need to lead people down a road.
So the road the road, you lead people down with your resume. It's basically, you need to show people that that you're that you're exactly right. Th the you're motivated to be in a law firm. And and that's what you want to do. And in that you're, you have the kind of values and things that, that the people do.
So let me just show you some dumb problems, things I don't necessarily like about this resume and that are that are detracting from the message. So doing all this community service is good, but at the same time, people are going to wonder, what kind of grades did you get if you were doing all this Publix, cause grades are the most important thing in law school.
So that is important. The senior member of the honors college is okay, but you got which is great. I don't know about departmental honors people. Aren't gonna know what that is. And it's, it is good, but saying all this stuff about community service is can be it can detract from your message, unless you want to do community service and work for the government.
In which case, then this is good. But if you want to work in a law firm you want to lead people down a path. So the path this is leading people to right now is you could be a family law attorney. You can be a litigation attorney, you can be a personal injury attorney or a construction defect type of attorney.
And so anything that the tracks from that is going to hurt you, so bankruptcy will hurt you. All this community service stuff will hurt you. You can put the fact that you like doing community service and other, enjoy doing community service, but you don't want to make that the emphasis of everything.
Because if people see that they're going to think that maybe you're not going to want to look in a law firm, if you don't mind, that's what I counsel people on. So most of the stuff I think it's good that you did all this community service, but at the same time, you have to remember that the people that are trying to hire you are businesses and a business is going to be more interested in your ability to.
To do the work and to even to be a little bit one dimensional about it then they are about all these other things you've done now. I'm not saying that I don't like these. And I think these are emotions, and you don't even have to say that, but if you start using words in your resume that have nothing to do with the kind of work you're applying for, which is personal injury and slip and fall as automobile accidents.
So as it stands now this is a good resume as with this experience that you have you could go out and get a job in a good law firm as an, as a litigator or as a family law attorney and and do all those things. If you start using words like personal injury on there that's gonna hurt you because it's just, it looks like even though you didn't do it very long actually did do it for a while.
But there's probably nothing, no reason to put all this on there. It's just, you're a law clerk during for quite a while actually looks like, but you just, you don't want to and I don't think you litigated when maybe you did litigate but a lot of the stuff when you're doing an internship and stuff, you have to remember that there's something called the Sen.
So the resume, every resume has a scent. And the scent you want is you want to put people on the scent to to reach a conclusion about what you are. And if they reach a conclusion about what you are then that, that conclusion is basically w if you take all this stuff out, it's basically going to save this person is a litigator NFS, what you want to do.
If you want to do public interest stuff, then you can leave all this stuff on there. But if you take most of this stuff out, it's going to be a better restaurant. I hate to say that, cause I know you're proud of everything you've done and everybody is, but all lock clerks do pretty much the same thing.
It's within reason. And and then these are, these are no, this was a job you had while I think you were in school, so you don't want to have that on there. But other than that, I liked this resume a lot. I think this is a great improvement, the last two episodes. Okay. So this person graduated from nine in 1989, And then I became a member of the New Jersey bar in 1990.
Okay. I, so I don't know why that's necessary. If you graduated in 1989 theoretically you should have taken the bar, when you graduated, passed the bar right away in particular later, that means you did a clerkship or just didn't pass the bar. So there's no reason to draw attention to that.
The education for someone that's been out of law school that long should be should come later. You should put that at the end of your resume. And then
Okay. So this was the leader. So your first job was as a legal compliance associate. Okay. Then 1995 and then you've been working isn't it working? The state. Okay. That's great. And then this is a board membership, so I don't think this would go that would be other and then everything would go like that. And then so resume, I would think, you want to move this to the end. You want to have a little bit if you've been doing the same job for the past, if you did been doing this job for 26 years I would probably put a little bit more just more of a description on here and and do what you can on there.
And then no and then just again, I saw that up. Okay. Okay. Just one second. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Sorry about that. Okay. So the next one let's see. Oh, I'm an international maritime law firm. Swan of C university international trade. Okay. Ready kingdom. J D PS. Okay. I think what I'm going to want to do in the future when I do these reviews is the formatting looks a little off.
Yeah. Cause some copy from a PDF. We should probably look at the PDF separately and then we'll do it. Okay. Then let's see here. Okay. This particular resume though is interesting. It has there's a couple of there's a lot of things going on here. Let's see here person graduate in 2017.
So it's probably okay to have that on there. This particular resume is I like this resume. I just don't understand what the person is necessarily trying to do. This is probably a very good resume for someone trying to do maritime related work. But for the most part Chief investigator. Yeah, there's too much going on here. So there's like an eye. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but again, you have to, when I look at this I see someone that it looks like you've worked overseas a lot. You've worked in you've done a lot of different things and then you've done maybe you're interested in maritime and natural resources.
Whenever the focus of this resume is, and this is just a problem that a lot of resumes have is people need to believe there's a lot of things people need to believe with their resume. But, and I'll show you this real quickly. I'm just gonna open up a new blank document, but people want to know if
Can you be managed w do we like you as, or here's another one?
And so this person they've never really worked in a law firm. So as a as a resume for someone that maybe wants to do work in inside of a inside of a, public interest organization or something, this is good, but at the same time we don't know, this, you major in international relations, but then you did natural resources.
And then and then now you're interested in Syria community development trademarks, international law natural resources. So there needs, every international trade amorality law. So there needs to be a there needs to be with every resume needs to have a theme. So like the theme needs to be that that you can do a certain type of work.
And I don't know necessarily what the theme is here. What is this person trying to do? And you need to be able to do our resume is not, so this is a big lesson, so a resume and I hope you guys can understand this already is not to list everything you've ever done.
Just to show an employer, you are a good fit. If you're not a good fit, not figure out
there has to be. There has to be consistency in what you're doing. And there's environmental on here. I like that. But then, then there's public interest and there's, fishery technician, which looks interesting. There's international relations. So the rest of this resume needs to be focused.
And so I see a lot of resumes like this. And the problem is if someone looks at this in a law firm and frankly, most organizations, they're not going to know what to do with it, they're going to not to know what those person stands for. They're just going to say they have all these interests, where's the focus, what are they trying to do?
And that's an issue. So you don't list a resume doesn't list. Everything you've ever done, a resume, all it needs to do is list, list a few things and and and then point people in the right direction. And and here this person has been a went to teach.
So as a teacher, this looks like a good resume. I like this as a teacher, I liked this resume for a lot of things. But I'm not sure about a lot from unless it's more focused. Okay. Next slide. Next one. Okay. So the first thing is with people like to put their salaries and their resume. And I would love to get more input on this resume.
Sometimes I'm on these resume reviews and I see a resume like this, and I'm going to ask people to review it if you want to resend it. And we can maybe do a, another resume a workshop, but it needs to be focused on whatever you want to do. And you don't need to talk about all these different things you did because there's no, there has to be focused.
It has to be focused on something. Okay. So this person is so the first thing is you don't list your salary on your resume. If you list your salary, when an employer wants to know your salary, they want to know your salary so they can pay you a little bit more, a little bit less than you're making.
That is just not smart. You, someone I've taken people that are making $8,000 a year and gotten them jobs for, two or three times, I do it all the time. So you need to
But I'd like there's a lot of things I like about this resume. You don't, and you don't put the phone in on here. No one you don't need to do that. That's not necessary. People will ask for that later, so you don't need to do that. He brought in business, you can put that. But I don't know that's necessary.
This person graduated. So remember when you've been out of school for less than four years, you put your education at the top.
No need to draw attention to the fact that you're an evening law student
no need to draw fact that you got a certificate in compliance like that other, you can put that maybe. And I wouldn't even call this honors. I would just put whatever this does he go Scouts. Good. Guys, don't need to put all these local bar associations. Anybody can join the American bar association. That's got a checkbook same thing with the prince George's our association these getting admitted to federal district courts and stuff. Anybody can do a motion, so you don't need to do that.
None of that is that necessary? I think here just this wasn't a very long internship, probably don't need a lot of information here about it. You can, if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it. I don't think about the stuff about saying you were unpaid as necessary.
You have all the stuff in here about money. These are the same dates, so I don't really get that
maybe that states are messed up. It says approximately $15 hours. Yeah. So just take kickoff, your salaries on there. Tick off the some paid stuff. No one cares. And then most people aren't really spending a lot of time doing stuff. This is a good resume. The resume is good because you look well positioned to be worked in a as an employment attorney, but, let's take off all this stuff that has nothing to do, where you being an employment attorney, let's take out all this stuff about you being having supervisors and It's basically, if you're trying to do something and I'm assuming you're trying to do more employment, which you, I hope so because you've been doing that for almost a year and that's how you will get a job.
This, you can get a job in lots of employment firms, but you need to really make it look like you're an employment attorney and take all this stuff out to tracks from it. And these, by the way, when anybody, when you put extra language and so forth on your resume it just confuses people.
And it gives them much more stuff to read. And people don't necessarily like spending a lot of time reading things. They just, it's just annoying and you don't need to tell people you make less money than you may, or you're more money or less money. No one cares. It's not. You just don't put it on there and you don't put information.
That's unnecessary. Like it's not, you don't need to put on that. You got admitted on motion to the federal district court or the, or a member of the American bar association. No one cares. I wouldn't even say professional associations or bar admissions. I would actually, these are just these are just a professional associations too.
So I would just, you don't even need to call Bard missions. You just, just make things easy for people to read. And people should be able to look here at resume. If I send this resume and I was looking for an employment attorney and I saw this stuff, I would get confused. But if I saw just this at the top, I would be happy.
Now, if you don't want to be an employment attorney, do you want to do something else? That's a whole separate discussion, but as it is now this resumes in good shape to be an employment attorney would have see what this person is doing.
So this is another foreign resume. And I apologize, but I'm not an expert. I'm an expert in us resumes. I don't know that I can get into too much detail with this particular one. I think a lot of the same things that I say are the same for this resumes for others. I think you want to be very careful about anything that deals with things that aren't related to practicing law.
So a lot of times people do this they're very happy about things that they do that are unrelated. And so here you took the CFA exam, you did know, pitched to do something else. And and now you're an accountant. This is yeah, so I don't know that I can get much help with this particular okay. Another one, this person.
Okay, so this is let's see here is a oh, I'm golden KL. I'm Stetson university of London with her son, a lot of master of arts, Harvard BA from Harvard or from Howard. Okay. So this particular resume this is a it's a it's an older attorney and there's some issues here, but I don't people put on the thing, the idea that they're able to use, Westlaw, things like that are just assumed the I like this thing, some things I like about this resume is I like the employment stability here.
I like that. I like
if I'm not, I don't necessarily like having volunteer jobs in the middle of the. A resume. And these are just the ideas when you're working in a place you want to pretty much have a lot of stability doing that. You also need to make sure you have the addresses and are the, the locations where you're working.
And I, again, I don't know I guess this internship that's in the spine
Yeah, so this isn't, this is a us resume with an adult alum. I don't know if that even qualifies you to work in a law firm, but this person doesn't have the bar, so I'm not going to spend too much time on this resume. But I would emphasize that anything that you've done that's legal related.
Okay. This person, this is a real legal resume. This person's worked from Drake university school of law,
plus Frank top 25% Drake law review. Okay.
Okay. Let's talk about class rank. So with class rank it's useful to put on your resume but you were Jewish ranked with high honors. So high honors been implied better than top 25%. So I would just take that off. And then I would say that you're on the track law review. And I wouldn't even call yourself the online editor.
I would just say editors fine, but if it's online editor, that's fine. And that looks better. Top 25% is okay. It's very good actually, and you should be proud of it, but it's, Drake is not like a top 20 law school or anything. It's not a, so just saying you graduated with high honors and it's enough, it looks better than 24.
You were obviously very good student there. Okay. Let's see. Now you graduated in 2019, and then in 2019, you were a summer associate at this firm. Great. If you received an offer you always want to say that if you received an offer from the firm you worked at in the summer, if you didn't receive an offer, that's perfectly fine.
I liked this resume. I like. That you went and did a clerkship. And then I also liked that now you're doing Medicare related work. So this is a very good resume actually. And the person that's done this resume has done a good job it's is and I apologize our next resume review meeting, we will make sure that these PDFs are done better.
And actually if Michael's listening maybe he can send me the PDF since we have to take the names office and problem. So I guess we do put them in this. But yeah, so I like that this is a good resume. So I liked the the the military stuff. I think this is fine. I don't know.
Yeah, this is I th I, and I'm actually fine with this description here and I'm fine with this. I'm fine with the clerkship I don't know. You need to say during the COVID ethic
so just think about, how necessary all of this stuff is. Most Glock Clark's, like I sent you the same stuff. And then Yeah, but this is a good recipe, especially if you under anything related to Medicare operations and so forth. This is perfectly fine. If you were trying to do just general commercial litigation or something that you would probably want to talk more about not use words like Medicare and stuff in the resume, but this is a good resume.
There's no, this resume will, so whoever's resume. This says we'll get a job. Everything's being done, and you can compare it to some of the other resumes we've seen, which, I actually commend anyone that's sent their resume in because a lot of these resumes do have issues. And so you can see the difference between some of the ones we've looked at so far and this particular resume just in terms of the focus.
And I can look at this resume and say, this person can do Medicare work. They've got a lot of history of having good jobs. They've done litigation, they can do Medicare litigation and they would get a job. And wow, look at this. And they're also how about this leadership experience from the Navy?
And then they are the, that was the Navy and have good things going on. And then same thing with this person. And you can look at this resume after this is cleaned up and say, wow, this could be a great employment attorney, but that what everyone here is doing. And I hope you guys can see the w what's going on is most people in their resumes are putting things on the resume that detracts from the main message of what they do.
Okay. This person graduated in 2018 and says they're a certified and experienced mediator. I don't know that a couple of years out of law school, you can be a really good mediator. I'm not saying that in a and in a negative way. I'm just saying that that that may not be trying to, have bravado and stuff when even Mo most older attorneys, by the way, even the ones that are the, that are 30, 40 years out, they always deemphasized there.
No, they're their achievements a lot of times. And but this stuff, by the way, the Bard missions and certifications you don't need to call a Bard mission, just, obviously, you're admitted to the bar, people, you should have that on there. You worked for four months at Axiom.
I suppose you can put that on there. I don't know that basically means that you were a contract attorney and couldn't get a job for some reason, but now you have this job with a mayor, which is awesome. I think th this is very good experience.
And even though this experience after you graduated I have no problem with it. I think it's okay to put it on there and start with that. I did for five months
Again, I'm not sure you can, I don't know. And St it's associated with your law school. I don't know. I guess that's okay. Jackson corporate law office. So a lot of these things that you did while you were in law school are probably okay. Put on there, but I liked this experience right here.
I don't know what you want to do. If you want to work in another government office or something, but again, you want to put people off the scent, if you do, what you want to do is work is in a government office. Then you need to give people the idea that's really what you wanna do.
And again, a lot of these descriptions and stuff aren't that necessary, and this actually is not a bad resume. I like this neat, the Bart missions and stuff should disco at the end. You don't need to put November, you can just put 2018 which is great. That means you passed the bar.
Not right away. It was perfect. I don't know what all this stuff is. But if you want to be a trial attorney, then that's probably good, but no, I don't have any idea what this is. It's attraction and everything. I also would just I would put I don't know if you want to put your minor in paralegal studies and management.
If you put your minor in parallel major in paralegal studies, it makes it look like you want to be a paralegal and would just go to, I just don't think that's a good idea. You want to look like an attorney? Cause you're an attorney. So anything that says something different is not a good idea. You're underselling yourself, just put natural science and then the date and you don't need to put what the degree is and then you can just stay you were pre-law or paralegal, or, if they ask, I don't know, but you have to be honest, but I wouldn't really get too far into it.
Anything that, national, transactional law, meat, finance, FINRA, securities dispute, resolution, triathlon, like this is a very strong resume for, doing policy, doing things inside of the company, but a lot of the stuff anything that tracks from the message of what you want to look like you're doing is never a good idea.
So you just need to be very careful with that. I like this as a, is a government resume. There's a lot of things I like about it. But then now here you're doing corporate. Then you're doing compliance and doing trademark, just, you can't have all this stuff going on. There are people having lots of different types of experience.
Then now you're doing collections. Having all this different types of experience people think it's a benefit. Like it's great that I got experienced doing this stuff. That's for you. It's not for the employers because the employers are not going to say, oh, we're going to hire this person for a trademark job because they did trademark for a job to go for two weeks and they don't care what it makes it look like, cause you're not focused.
And so people want to hire people that have focus and that's one of the biggest resume or, things you guys can learn and just, people firms, organizations, and other want more than anything.
Okay. You have to have a focus and so anything you do that detraction that is kinda hurt you. And this just this, this resume is a good resume, but it's bouncing all over the place. Here's another one. Okay. So this is actually a an interesting resume. This is resumes.
I look at all day this is a a good resume and there's a lot of very good things about it. It's copied from a PDF, but this particular person is working at a very good firm. Again, the colors you need to be careful about that you just you don't really need a say professional work experience.
Again, any less, it's always better with resumes because you make the eyes work less hard. And this person has been at this particular firm for for all, it looks like a couple of years, which is great for no year 20 and 20 year. But anyway, this is a good firm. A million to be.
Thanks, man. Yeah. So just make sure you guys always use responded to responded. It's just, you guys, you have to be extremely careful with this stuff. If you get busted and someone sees this in a in an interview like this kind of mistake I mean it literally could cost you a job.
I, I had a, I had an issue once where I was interviewing with a firm and they would just cooperate and and I had a date wrong by a month. Like it was something like, I'd worked in the affirm and I put in and look at that suits involving, this is just unacceptable. So I'm hoping communication.
Wow. And so this you, everyone needs to make sure that they do a good job of that. So this particular person has gotten a great job and I'm not even sure this is the real firm and may have just put this in here as a filler. But the this is person they graduated in 2007, so everything was done correctly here.
That I, again, I don't like the colors. The Supreme court, I guess it's not easy to get them in as credit is not easiest thing. And publications yeah, this is a very and so you can see here additional training, that was interesting, like how this person did that.
So I like I'd like that. And I think this is the way you do this, instead of listing all these other things that you've done. This person did a very good job putting this at the end. And then also there's publications and academic work. Like I look at this resume and I know exactly who this person is.
I can tell this person went to college. They worked very hard. They did well, they went to law school, then they got out of law school and they got a job. And then they went into the Marines. It looks like, which is admirable and and that's great. And I think that this resume should be tone down in terms of all the experience in the Marines and are those that the Marines, the Navy but I think that you don't need all this information, but very few resumes by the way, are people that are in.
And again, there's rules about when you when you spell out numbers and posts that when you say them. Here, you can see that again. You need to make sure you're running your things through your proofing things because that can really get you. And I'm assuming that a lot of these errors are because this just didn't.
Translate where we cut and paste the PDF, but this is a great resume. I don't really have a lot of problems with it. I think that you want to tone down all this military stuff. Most military resumes are exceptionally difficult to read because there's so much information, but this is, very interesting.
And so what probably happened at this firm is someone that, saw this resume come and and picked it up because they had liked all those experience and gave the person a chance. And and the person had worked in the last terms in Omaha, Northern New York city. There's a lot of great things about the spreads of me and what I like about it also, there's a real pattern of upward mobility and and this person clearly probably could have gotten, it was an associate and then decided to go and get involved in the military because they were passionate about it.
So this, there's something there's, this is a very positive resume. There's a lot of very good things about it. A lot of people make them feel strong, like the military, and but it's at the same time it got someone's attention and it's very difficult to transition from the military to a major law firm, especially when your last experience with it was in a small law firm.
And this person's on the way up and they went and got a master's a lot, a better school. They did very well as an undergrad. I liked this resume. So this person's motivated they've shown focused, have shown the ability to stick with something in terms of their work and Marines and so forth.
And so this is a good resume, and this is and they're doing PR pretty much engaged in criminal related stuff. So there's a lot of focus and a lot of motivation. Everything. There's whatever this person does they, it looks like they commit to which is good.
So I, I like this. And then, try liars college, this person tries hard. They're committed. There's just a lot of things you can tell from the resume. Okay. This looks like another interesting resume. Okay. So this resume by the way is is typically when I see a military resume and by the way, I think they're horrible, but this one I would probably take dumbed down a lot of this experience, but at the same time there's a lot of good things, but he wrote out on Supreme court
Kristen graduated in 2020. Good. Okay. Remember the LGBT Alliance by Amanda? Hell no. Tend to turn from blind Pacific university. Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about this today and and the whole idea is diversity and diversity affiliations and all that sort of thing.
This is a big this sort of stuff, anything to do with affiliations means the race, religion, race, religion, politics. What else?
Okay. I don't know, sex, maybe. I dunno. Sex or sexual orientation? Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Whatever. All of these things are our sense of affiliation. So I don't have a problem with any type of affiliation, to be honest with you. I it doesn't matter to me what your politics are, doesn't matter what your religion is, what your races, sexual orientation, how you feel about this.
I've learned long ago that, I just, it's better not to have any opinion. I really didn't get involved in this stuff, so I'm not but my job is to get people jobs. What I do know is every time I read the news that people or fighting about one or the other things, so people are always fighting about that stuff.
And I do know that that the people want to advance people of other races. And I do know that they want to have religious diversity, and I know, but I do know that certain people, if you'd bring that to their attention are going to immediately find reasons disability or other ones.
All I know, and I'm not even gonna talk about any of these specifically, but I do know that when in the most part when people have diversity and when they don't put that stuff on the resume, they're more likely in my experience and much more likely to interviews and to get hired when no one's making an issue out of it when, unless it is an issue.
So I think that that this stuff you need to be very careful about it. I don't think, someone should put down, anything to do with a lot of the stuff on their resume, because it can it offends people get offended. Catholics used to be offended by Protestants and Protestants used to be offended by Catholics.
And there's just, in, in Judaism, there's different branches of Judaism. Conservative Jews are offended by it. Very liberal Jews are very conservative or very Orthodox. So it's just being careful with this stuff is it's just something that I would recommend.
No, I'm not going to tell anybody what to do. I'm certainly pro diversity there, but books about it and the problems and how to integrate, but we have to be careful about that stuff. And I just, because the problem is if a lot of people's experience most of the country now is very open to people from different backgrounds and they want to have people in different backgrounds.
But the problem is when you make an issue out of that if someone's reviewing your resume, that's uncomfortable, but that diversity then that's a problem. And you just you want to get in and be and because of your your achievement and people liking you, and they'll be able to understand if you're diverse right away.
And but they want us, they, you don't want to make an issue out of it upfront as well. That's what I'm trying to say. And that's my advice I'm telling you what worked and what I've seen work versus what doesn't, it doesn't mean I'm anti diversity or anything like that. It just means I would be careful.
Okay. So this particular resume let's see. So additional law clerk for the Rhode Island Supreme court, which is very impressive. And I like this description. I also like this description, I think this is good. And I don't know what FM global is. The person was a litigation intern and graduated in 2020.
So typically a lot of times you don't want to have as much description about this sort of thing. A lot of times is as you may have, unless you want to work in a doing something related to insurance or whatever you're doing. So maybe just say in your litigation, into.
And then saying you are a writing fellow it's probably enough this is a good description, but you probably don't want to do a lot there. Same thing here are, you probably don't need as much description. And then same thing here as well. And then let's see here and then lock clerk.
Okay. That's fine. Massachusets, obviously disability.
Hello? I see. Okay. Okay. I don't know. I would be careful about that as well, like a lot of that experience I would be careful about, okay, so this is, so this, again, this is about diversity and inclusivity which is fine. But again the problem is when the law firms firing people.
So they, so you are this person is an advocate, which is good. And and it looks like here they were an advocate here. Like they'd like to help. And they'd like to get involved in helping people and doing positive things. And this person's also an athlete which is cool and and like outside and so you can get a real sense of this person based on the things that they're talking about.
But the problem is a lot of times the job of an attorney is, to, when you go into a law firm, like you have to take the side, you may one day have to defend if you're taking a job as a and I don't know what kind of work you want to do, but if you're taking a job inside of a law firm, you may have to defend companies, accused of discrimination or, and you may not want that type of job, but or you may have to accuse, so when you start putting all this stuff in there, you start taking sides with this sort of thing, which is fine, but you have to be very careful about anything.
That kind of advertises your political and your beliefs. And and there's nothing wrong with any of this this, these are all very positive things, but you just need to be careful in terms of the type of law firm you want to work in based on that because that will come across as is something that will either get you included or not included.
So you just have, everyone has to be careful. So you're actually, what's ironic about all this is, you're trying to be included in everything, but you may have things and you're trying to include other people, but you have to be careful about, what kind of message your resumes are sending, because the idea is that again, I talked about this earlier is law firms want people that can be managed.
And so what they're very nervous about is they're very nervous about and they want people that can do the job long-term so you can definitely do most litigation jobs, but, can you be managed means, are you going to be, looking w what are you what's going to happen when you get in a law firm?
Are you gonna want to do it longterm? Are you going to do, are you going to want to stay there? And then is everyone that looks at your resume going to like you, and you have to be careful about that. Looking like you want to do something long-term is important. A lot of times, and I'm not saying that everything I'm saying is fair.
For example, bill Clinton brought like a lot of very famous people that graduated from law school. Great law schools didn't work in law firms because, frankly, both of those two people probably wouldn't have and happy and may not have been even accepted in the long term because of because of Barack Obama's interest in community organizing and doing all those things and, bill Clinton sustained interest.
So you just have to choose your battles. And, if you want to work in a law firm your resume has to come across as someone that, that looks like that man looks the part. And again, things are changing. They're not always going to be like that, but but that's been my experience and it's still a valuable, it's still that way today.
Okay. Let's see. How do you skill bullying, bilingual professional, seven years of experience providing effective legal stuff. Okay. So what happens a lot of times with resumes is that people will want to put a summary at the top and they will they will get they will have someone write the resumes for them professionally.
And a lot of times they'll put this sort of stuff up here and this is something that people do in the corporate world. A lot of times it isn't really necessary in the, in for a resume that you may be trying to do. And and this licensure is fine. But I would put this at the end right here and and then American bar association active member of 20, 21 international.
So share it again. You don't need that. This is all just kind of fluff. Okay.
I'm associates transactions. Okay. So just the sort of thing is fine analyze and analysis that's probably a me. Okay. And then yeah, so this is actually a good resume for what you're trying to do. I think
I think that right here you're doing a certain type of work which is this and and now you're doing something a little bit different, so you want to be probably a little bit careful about having things that are competing. So most of the time when someone's looking at your resume, they're going to want to see you.
Something that is related to what you're doing right now. So a lot of this other stuff probably isn't going to be that helpful. Mexico. Okay. Yeah. So again, another foreign resume, but you can but I would, if you're trying to work in the United States, I wouldn't emphasize your U S experience.
And then once you get admitted in I don't know why you be getting admitted in California if you're working in Miami, but the system, but it's a good resume and there's there's definitely a market for the type of work that you do. And I even know people that do the kind of work you do.
So I do think you could, you shouldn't have too much of a problem getting a job if you look for something very oppressive. Okay. This is a good resume. So let's see here.
Okay. Yeah, like on a study abroad. Okay. I don't the study abroad stuff are you're certainly welcome to put it on there. But typically study abroad, just, it's not something that always gets law firms excited. It just shows, you had the money to travel internationally and go learn somewhere else.
And it doesn't, it's not necessarily that great, the public service award is probably good. I think that Magna cum laude would go first up. That's really the most important thing. And then some of these clients this other stuff, like the legislative and policy analysts clinics, these are okay.
They're not great. But this is fine. G okay. I like all this. And again these are this public interest this volunteer stuff. And again, I think there's volunteering. Stuff's great. I'm not putting it down at all and I'm not even, I certainly spend time on my free time Volunteering.
And there's actually a great cycle volunteer match where you go find things to do with them that you want to work in a hospice or, help kids and things. And these are all good, but you don't want to detract too much from the message of that you're good at working for a law firm.
So this person worked in medical malpractice firm. And this is a great resume. And you got an offer if you want to work in a in a medical malpractice from your next summer or when you graduate, then you can, if you don't, I would just take off the fourth medical malpractice group with your performance and law school, with your having gone to Berkeley and everything and and everything else that's going on here you, you should have no problem getting a good job.
One of the things I like about this resume is that everything is very short. So you can see here that this person has done just one line a small one line descriptions of what they did in the summers and so forth. And and then their jobs, they don't go into a lot of detail about it.
And that's good. The job of an attorney is to be very direct and to communicate thing, communicate things in a way that doesn't confuse people and makes it very easy for people to understand what's going on. And so that is great. So this is a good resume. This person will get jobs compared to this resume, by the way, which is, it's just difficult to understand, cause it's like Mexico and all these different things.
And and then this resume, you can see here where you have all these lines of things describing the experience and, ironically, I'm not trying to be rude here. This person did okay in school but this person again is Magna cum laude and so forth.
And the way that they're gonna it from the best students and the best lawyers are able to communicate succinctly and directly, especially with the resumes. And you can see here also, my my nothing's lighting up nothing in terms of my my grammar, nothing's lighten up on this resume.
So this is a good resume. There's nothing really that this needs I've, this is actually, I like this person energy due to her, a lot of times people will get will be there's nothing on here that shows you anything about this person's politics, their anything you just this is who they are.
And and this makes it look like this person could show up at your firm and and do the job and do the job well and be managed and and all that sort of, so that's good. Okay. Let's to Bowie state university, minor criminal justice is not only a resume. I apologize. Okay.
So this particular resume is of a of a senior
That's been in house. So this looks also so there's good things about it and there's just things that aren't good. So a lot of times, so what older attorneys always do is they take off their graduation date, which is fine. You can do that or not. And honestly, like if you put down your graduate from law school in 1969 or something, then that probably would hurt you.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't hurt me, but if a lot of employers would be turned off by it, but I think this has confined this person is obviously licensed to practice law in Wisconsin. For those of you that don't know if you go to law school in Wisconsin, you're automatically admitted in Wisconsin.
So that's fine. There's no reason to put down that you know, how to use zoom or Dropbox but again, for older people like us, that's probably a an achievement, but you don't need to put it down. And conversational Spanish is probably not even really that necessary, but I guess you could put that if you want.
Okay. This resume I is something that has been done professionally probably by an outside service. It may have been done by they, this, it looks my guess is that this person was sent to the Gunderson tri hospital and clinics. They sent them there to a professional resume company or something.
I don't know the, these sort of statements core competencies and things. These are made a lot of times because people assume that there's going to be a a search engine, someone that's going to be searching for these terms using automated software and so forth.
And and to some extent that's true. But at the same time this it's only for the largest companies and so forth. So all these things that the person is saying here are, this is really an in-house resume. It's not a a law firm resume. And again, I do law firm placements.
This all these things here I, if from my standpoint, I wouldn't put all this here. These a lot of work goes into this and I, I'm not angry about it, or I'm not saying it's bad, but that honestly this person's, this is an HR resume. This is great. I don't know.
I don't know that, going talking about how you found someone stealing this, that's probably pretty scary to let Hillary now. And yeah, this was good. This was a good HR resume. I don't know. This is a real. A legal resume and a lot of respect, but it's a very good resume for for an HR person.
And it actually may be a good resume for in-house too. It just, there's some issues with it for 2014 is 17 professional counsel. Yeah. So this person's been in house a lot, so I like this resume. I don't have any issues with it. Hi. But it's more of an I think that in terms of this resume, it's a very good HR resume.
And it could actually be a good resume for a law firm job for an in-house job as well. I don't think it would be a good resume for a a job in that a lot from that
and this is a foreign resume again, I am going to yeah, I think I've made a lot of comments about foreign resumes already. So I think I'm going to maybe move on in a little bit from this the idea if you're trying to make a resume that it's US-based, yeah. I think the people that have foreign resumes, I would recommend that you concentrate on what I'm talking about with the U resumes because your goal really is to take them out of the format that people are doing here with the foreign resume that, you may have been taught as useful leader with your resume and put them into an American format.
This is another great resume. There's a lot of things been done very well with this this person yeah I love the description of what the person did in law school. I don't know that saying that paralegal certificate is really necessary.
I think it's okay. Like a lot of these, like when the problem with when when you start putting A lot of this stuff on your resume, and again, I'm certainly not taking sides here by any stretch of the imagination, but when, Okay.
I like this I'll talk about some of this other stuff a little bit. I like this stuff here. The summer associate job should be, you should basically combine it up here, so you would stay September. So he would basically put your summer associate jobs here and then take this out. And you don't really talk about what you did as a summer associate, and then you would just put this out.
This is a good resume, by the way. There's a lot of great things about this. And then and then put that here and then you don't need to put this there, then you can just, so you don't have two lines about that. You were a legal intern for three months law school.
