Legal Resumes

The first hurdle of any Legal career is the training. Years are spent training up to get qualified and if you’ve come that far then you should be saluted. It would be a shame, though, to get so far and to let yourself down with a poor Legal Resume and cover letter. Use these tips and you will give yourself a great opportunity to present your skills and qualifications to the best of your abilities.

Start off with your Legal cover letter. Your letter should always start with your name, address and contact details at the top of the page in large font. Follow this with the usual date and address of the addressee in the top left hand corner of the page. It’s important to get these formalities correct, particularly if you are looking for a position within a legal team, because the devil is in the detail!

You need to start your Legal cover letter with a positive statement about the ways in which you can contribute to your potential employer. Explain that you can help to further their company and go on to list the reasons for this fact. Mention both public and private sector work if you can, and try to highlight any landmark cases that you have been involved in. You don’t want to go into too much detail at this stage, and make sure you reference your Legal Resume for more detail.

You should sign off your Legal cover letter with a polite sentence reiterating your desire to be chosen for interview and I would always recommend telling the reader that you will be contacting them to chase up your application at a certain time in the next few days to a week.

Your Legal Resume must show that you can be responsible for important information and important cases. Your resume needs to highlight the fact that you are able to deal with these pressure situations and you need to try and highlight that through your experience.

Your Legal Resume should start off with an Objective which will show your career ambitions. It’s important that your ambitions fit in with the ethos if the company that you are applying for so make sure you read up on the Legal company you are hoping to join.

Follow this with your work experience. This section should start off with your most recent work and you should work backwards from here. You should look to give as much information as possible about your recent positions, including case load, important cases won and any further training you have undertaken in these jobs.

The next section of your Legal Resume should cover your education and this again needs to run in reverse chronological order. In this section don’t worry too much about your early education at school. Here you can just give grades and dates. You should give more space to further explain your Law degree and what areas you achieved best in.

The final section of your Legal Resume should focus on anything that doesn’t quite fit within any other section, but which you feel can benefit your application. This might include social endeavours, group memberships or non relevant qualifications gained in your working life.

Sample Legal Resumes

Legal Secretary Resume