Transcript
Description:
Here, Harrison Barnes explains what makes a good legal resume and what makes a bad one. In this video, he advises focusing on one direction to make it easier for readers to reach a conclusion of what you are. Here are best practices for a great resume:
- Properly place information in your resume. (Licensing information should be at the bottom.)
- The objective of your resume is to show the reader how motivated you are to be in a law firm.
- Too much information to showcase your experience is not necessary.
- Give a summary of what kind of attorney you want to be in a law firm by focusing on one path.
Transcript:
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 the the, 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 and make it as a of 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 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.