In the highly competitive landscape of law school admissions, a well-crafted resume can make a significant difference in your application. A compelling law school resume not only showcases your academic achievements, experiences and unique qualities through a range of activities, but also highlights your potential as a future legal professional. Below is important advice that can help you excel in the resume writing process. In addition, at the bottom of this page, you’ll find links to key insights from law schools to propel you on your way to completing this critical piece of your law school application.
Understand the Importance of a Law School Resume
Before delving into the details, let’s explore why a well-structured law school resume is crucial for your applications. Admissions committees review numerous applications, and your resume serves as a concise representation of your qualifications and accomplishments. It offers a comprehensive snapshot of your academic background, leadership experiences, legal skills, and community involvement. Furthermore, a well-crafted resume allows you to align your background with the unique narrative presented in your essays and other parts of the application. With this in mind, let’s explore the key content and formatting strategies for creating an exceptional law school resume.
Typical Resume Sections
- Header and Contact Information: Begin your resume with a header that includes your name, phone number, and email address. Ensure that your contact information is accurate and professional.
- Education: Provide details about your undergraduate and any graduate degrees, including the institution’s name, degree earned, month and year of completion (or expected completion), major, minor, as well as GPA and major GPA (if these are exceptional).
- Employment: In this section, detail work experiences you’ve had that are relevant to your law school application. Include positions held, the organizations you’ve worked for, dates (i.e., start and end month / year) of employment, and a brief description of your roles and responsibilities. Highlight any tasks or accomplishments that demonstrate skills relevant to the legal field and showcase qualities such as leadership, communication, or problem-solving.
- Volunteer and Community Service: Include any volunteer work or community service experiences that demonstrate your dedication to serving others and making a positive impact. Here too, include positions held, the organizations you worked for, start and end month / year, and a brief description of your roles and responsibilities, as well as any leadership activities or accomplishments.
- Activities: Include other activities that demonstrate your abilities and dedication to serving others. If you have participated in legal associations, moot court, mock trial teams, or pre-law societies, include them in this section. Once again, include start and end month / year, and names of each organization. Describe your roles, responsibilities, and notable achievements within these activities.
- Honors & Awards: Highlight academic honors, scholarships, research projects, publications, or presentations (including the month / year received), that demonstrate your intellectual abilities and commitment to excellence.
- Skills: Showcase your relevant abilities and strengths. These can include specific legal, analytical, communication, research, time management, problem-solving, interpersonal, language and technical skills, as well as attention to detail. Keep the list brief and focused on the most relevant and impactful skills to maintain the reader’s attention and ensure the section remains focused.
- Interests: In a very, very brief “Interests” section, provide insights into your personal pursuits outside of academics and professional experiences. This can help the admissions committee get to know you on a more personal level. Include one or more hobbies, sports, clubs, or other activities that illustrate your well-roundedness and unique qualities. Last, but not least, ensure that the interests that you’ve selected align with the image you want to present to the law school.
Additional Content-based Advice
- Provide context when appropriate: For instance, if you earned the Guide2Grad Scholarship, be sure to include a blurb of what the qualifications are for this award. If you worked for the Big Dough Corporation, indicate what kind of company this is.
- Quantify when doing so will put you in a more positive light: For instance, if you trained an impressive number of employees or taught a significant number of students, stating that specific number can be beneficial. And, if you showed positive results at an organization — for instance, if you significantly increased the number of customers or sales — consider using actual whole numbers or percentages to document such accomplishments.
- In most cases, applicants should not include experiences that took place during high school: Exceptions may include truly substantial achievements (typically those outside the high school classroom — such as membership on a nationally competitive dance team) or activities that spanned from high school through at least some part of your college years (e.g., volunteer work at a soup kitchen from junior year of high school through sophomore year of college).
Structure & Formatting Tips
The structure and format of your law school resume plays a vital role in highlighting your qualifications and experiences. Consider the following strategic points to develop a structure that uplifts your resume’s content:
- Reverse Chronological Order: With very rare exception, a law school resume should present your experiences in reverse chronological order within each section, (i.e., starting with the most recent ones). This format allows the admissions committee to see your most recent accomplishments and activities first, providing a clear timeline of your growth and development.
- Font Styles and Colors: Don’t be fancy. Opt for a simple and professional font style, such as Times New Roman, in black color. And avoid using colorful or decorative fonts that may distract from the content. The law school resume should be a straightforward, easy to read document.
- Length: Most law schools happily accept up to a two-page resume as long as the content justifies the length (though do note that a relatively small number of law schools, including Harvard, prefer (and a much smaller number require) a one-page resume. To be clear, a one-page resume is absolutely fine for all schools, but depending on the quantity and quality of your various experiences (as well as the actual resume page limits of your target schools), it may be advisable to add a second page. Keep in mind that once you are in law school, you will be advised to use a one page resume.
- Organization: Your name and contact information should be at the top of your resume. For most applicants — especially, those who are in an undergraduate or graduate program or are recent graduates — the Education section will typically be the first section of the draft. The Interest section is almost always the last section of the resume (when it is included).
- White Space: Your document should not be cluttered. Too many words on a page has a negative psychological impact on most readers, causing them to lose focus and skim the draft at a faster pace. Therefore, Keep your resume visually appealing by incorporating sufficient white space. Margins of about one inch on all sides create a balanced look.
- Bullet points: With rare exception, experiences should be described in bullet points rather than using paragraph style. This allows readers to quickly move down the page while easily digesting each of your activities. Also note that each individual activity (professional experience, volunteer work, or extracurricular activity) is typically going to contain between one and four descriptive bullet points. While there is no scientific maximum number of bullet points, once you move past five or six, reviewers can easily begin to lose interest and skip to the next section or activity. Of course, there are exceptions, such as when an applicant has been in a certain employment position for a number of years or has high level experience. In those circumstances — for instance, in the case of a corporate executive applying to law school — it could be a good idea to combine bullet points with (further indented) sub-bullet points to break up some of the information (e.g., accomplishments or certain types of experiences) so that it is more digestible for the reader.
- Use consistent formatting: To ensure a professional presentation, maintain consistency in dates, bullet point sizes, and margins across sections. Consistent formatting contributes to a polished and professional appearance.
As you can see, crafting an outstanding law school resume requires careful planning, and attention to detail. By following the advice provided in this guide, you can create a compelling resume that highlights your qualifications and sets you apart from other applicants, thereby increasing your chances of securing admission to the law school of your dreams. As you develop your resume, consider the additional advice provided by the following law schools.
Harvard Law School Toolkit – The Resume
- This site provides guidelines and tips specifically tailored for law school resumes. Although Harvard is one of few schools that explicitly prefers a one-page resume, they’ll be happy to review a two-page draft if the content warrants this length.
Converting Your Job Resume into Your Law School Resume in Five (Relatively) Easy Steps
- This blog post from the University of Pennsylvania’s Career Services provides valuable guidance on converting a job resume into a law school resume. It also offers step-by-step guidance to help you showcase your relevant skills and experiences effectively.
Seven Law School Resume Templates
- The University at Buffalo School of Law provides a collection of seven law school resume templates on their blog. These templates can serve as a helpful starting point for creating your own law school resume.
Quinnipiac University School of Law – Resume Tips
- Get valuable resume tips specifically tailored to law school applicants and students from Quinnipiac University School of Law (though note that like Harvard, Quinnipiac advises most applicants to aim for a one-page document).
University of Texas at Austin 2-Page Resume Template
- Review the two-page resume template offered by the University of Texas at Austin.
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