Transcript
Description:
In this video, Harrison Barnes points out that you do not need to put a lot of information on your resume. The employer will be more interested to see if you want to be completely engaged. Here are some of the tips that Barnes shares:
- Keep the details short and straightforward.
- Avoid putting a lot of information that is not necessary.
- Showcase the experience that shows your level of expertise and commitment.
Transcript:
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.
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.
Now having all this information, the problem with this is it, this whole first page 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.
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.
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.
I don't know. And then they might've been a partner, but all you really need to put here probably 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
There's no reason to put all this on there. You can actually go back to 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.
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.
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 just, it being a career path really says it all.
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.
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.
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.
This person is still in the banking law committee. And they've done all these very good committee things here. So that's good. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
