Transcript
Description:
Here, Harrison Barnes discusses the reasons why you do not need a summary in your attorney resume. A summary is not required on an attorney's resume; instead, the focus should be on listing accomplishments and qualifications that are important to a potential employer. Here are the reasons why:
- A summary detracts from the main message.
- An overview shows that you try too hard.
- Law firms will know who you are just by looking at the rest of your resume.
- You should be able to prove yourself through your work history and educational background.
- Including a brief professional summary would just clutter up your resume with unneeded information.
Transcript:
Yeah. Katie professional, eight years of experience. Okay. Again, you guys, these, all these things need to come off. They don't I don't think they serve most people I have and I just, there's nothing wrong with it necessarily, but but it's just attraction, the main message and it makes it look like you're trying too hard.
If you notice, like a lot of the bar admission is something that if you're an attorney, it's just assumed. You don't want to ever put your bar admission on there. People also, don't like seeing, you can see here, this is 2014 and the person graduated from law school in 2012.
Regardless of why there's a two year gap, you just don't want to have that. You don't want to show that. So just take off that and put your Bard misses at the end. I think a lot of people are very proud of the bar. So you can see here that this particular attorney that I was a paralegal for several years with put down right at the very top, September 19th, the current Barden mission, because they graduate in 2015, this another one, everyone know they passed the bar or took the bar and maybe they hadn't taken it before.
And so you just, the bar needs to come really towards the bottom. Just, and don't put the dates, just let people assume that don't quit GPA's that are not really high on your resume. And I would combine these, I would just say J D 2012, LLM corporate law, 2013, and just combine these into one.
And then I don't like, I don't think there's an need to put either GPA's and aren't really good. I don't think study abroad is on there. Most of the stuff just has to come off and there's no, it's just, the reason is you've been out of law school for a long time. And I don't even know about the campus. I don't know if it's Western, Michigan. I think Auburn Hills is in Detroit area. So that would be Eastern Michigan. guess it's okay to have Connor another campus.
Again, these you speak Japanese, put that on your resume, but don't talk about all this international study. It's just that the thing is a lot of people can't afford to go overseas and study and stuff. And so they they retired. So it's just something, and it's not anything I care about, but you need to be careful,
see a professional experience, Arab community center for economic and social services.
Okay.
I don't know what these are here are these bar associations up, unless it's something that means something.
That's cool. I shouldn't get a high yoga class and Ray or something last time I was in Michigan. Okay. So this particular resume here this person has been doesn't have a lot of legal experience. I would and having been a legal intern is probably not these illegal internships probably aren't going to help very much.
So you want to put those towards the bottom and yeah. Or not even really list them at all. Cause they were so long ago. I guess you could list them, but you, you pretty much want to talk about your existing and then independent con contractor,
February 17th of July, 2019, you were working in a,
I don't know that you probably don't
two jobs at the same time. I wouldn't, what I would do is I would, basically try to lead with your current job. You can put down this is more I don't know what this is that changed me restoration legal group. But a lot of the stuff that's going on here is you have here, you have, criminal stuff and you have immigration, you have all these volunteer things you've done and then you have all these different affiliations.
And so people need to be guided towards one thing. And I don't know you know what you're doing here. You've been at the same job for a good length of time, like eight years, which is great. So my my advice would be to try to somehow transition doing legal related work, wear your hat at the Arab center for community and economic social service.
It's going to be very difficult for you to transition to a legal job, even having done all this volunteer work, because you're doing something that's unrelated to what you're doing. So you either get someone to hire you as a first-year attorney somewhere or you or you you do something there, you, you're basically, it's very common by the way, for people to get law degrees and not necessarily practiced law.
Think that's, there's nothing wrong with that. And and frankly many people have more Upland, stability are much happier and so forth. Doing that, but and you've stuck with the long enough that people, you can have a very hard time getting people to take a chance on you.
Now, there's one thing I would recommend to you specifically. And and this is something that I don't always say. But I think that if you are interested in starting your own firm that you would be a perfect person to potentially do that you can do consumer bankruptcies, you can do you can also do immigration and I know tons of attorneys that have started their own firms and had a lot of luck doing that.
And and especially older attorneys that have been out of school 10 or 15 years, I've know, younger attorneys that have done it. And and if you really want it badly enough, that would be honestly what I would try to do is fashion Detroit. It's a great market to do it. And it's a growing market.
There's a demand for lots of different types of legal skills, and you're obviously interested in the practice, a law. But the problem is if someone were to hire you they would they would be hiring someone that's that never has really practiced law and and a law firm, all their jobs have been unrelated to it.
And I understand you were doing this independent contractor stuff. So I'm not saying that you haven't done work at that, and you've tried to stay involved, but I honestly think that you'll need to do this on your own, or find someone by the higher year now another option would be to work in a in a small law firm or a small company as their in-house counsel, and really throw yourself into it that way.
And you could. So that would be my advice of, I like your resume. I like the employment stability. I like to drive and your interest in the practice of law and not trying to do it. But your you're longer, you are not actually working full-time in a law firm, the harder things. Okay. Okay.
