How to Write a Great Resume for Law School 

How hard can it be, really? After all, a resume is just a list of your past experiences, right? 

Nothing could be farther from the truth. A chronological list of past activities is a basic resume, but a great resume is so much more. 

So, let’s take a look at the incredible range of potential of an excellent law school resume. The resume you submit in your law school applications should

• Paint a picture of who you are as a person and a professional
• Indicate the breadth of your activities 
• Tell the chronological story of your academic and professional life
• Trace your overall academic and professional trajectory
• Provide a clue to your future potential
• Highlight your strongest achievements
• Exhibit a range of professional skills
• Display personal qualities and soft skills

That’s a lot of information! And all the above needs to be achieved in a single page.

This is the real challenge of coming up with a great resume. (If it were easy, we wouldn’t have to write a whole post about it!) And in many ways, a great law school resume stands alongside your personal statement as the touchstone and focal point of who you are—and your first introduction to the admissions committee.

Bad Resume Advice

There are probably a million pages out there on the internet about “How to Write a Great (Law School) Resume.” Unfortunately, much of the advice these pages offer is unhelpful or even counterproductive. 

Let’s take a look at some of this bad, terrible, awful advice:

Here’s an example of a rule from 7Sage: 

“Use bullet points, but no more than three per entry.”

Really? Maximum three? Why three? Why not two or four? What if you were in one job for seven years? Or a one-month internship? The real criterion is not some arbitrary number, but rather a series of questions:

• Is this particular bullet boosting my resume significantly? 
• Is it highlighting something new that I haven’t already covered?
• How does each bullet contribute to the whole narrative of your resume (e.g., highlighting the breadth of your profile or showing a “shooting star” trajectory)? 

As you can see, there’s no arbitrary rule for the number of bullets in each entry. Instead, consider each point in the context of your overall experiences and what other elements you want to include or omit.

Or take a look at another example from 7Sage. They advise you to provide context for each entry, but their example makes a mess of it, proposing a change from

• “Received George Byron Waldrop Award” to
• “Recipient of George Byron Waldrop Award, given by faculty nomination to the classics major who ‘shows the greatest promise for future scholarship.’”

The bullet they propose is poor for several reasons:

1. It’s long and unwieldy (bullets need to be edited for brevity and impact).
2. The proposed change actually gets rid of a great active verb “received” and replaces it with the less impactful “recipient of.”
3. The context provided fails in the task of emphasizing how special this award is in a way that the reader can easily understand. 

A better rewrite might be as follows: “Received George Byron Waldrop Award, out of 1,000 students, the classics major’s most prominent award.”

Or consider another bad bit of advice by Juris Education:

“You can add whatever sections you want that best reflect your candidacy, qualities, and experiences so far. You can also rename/alter these sections as you see fit.”

Not so fast. You shouldn’t add “whatever sections you want”—there are sections everyone should have. Obviously, every candidate must include “Professional Experience” and “Education” sections in their resume.  But “Community Service” and “Interests & Hobbies” sections are musts as well (more on this below). 

As for other potential sections (e.g., “Publications” or “Awards”), these should be considered based on whether they are boosting your profile, and by how much. 

You also shouldn’t “rename the sections as you see fit”—these should be very standard. You want to stand out, but not because you’ve been so original and clever in your naming of sections. Break the mold with your personal accomplishments, not your headings.

Or take this other terrible tip from Top Law School Consulting:

“Law schools don’t really care about the length, as long as you’re not using a tiny font to keep it to a single page, or adding in unnecessary details to make it two pages. 

A two-page resume is not necessarily better than a one-page resume, and vice versa.” 

The main problem with this advice is that it is false—it even directly contravenes the advice of law school admissions officers themselves. 

You can listen to the podcast Navigating Law School Admissions with Miriam Ingber and Kristi Jobson, the deans of admission at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School, where they explicitly speak of a preference for one-page resumes, which should be enough for most candidates.

In fact, like all other decisions about your resume, the length needs to be strategized for maximum impact.

We’ve seen that a lot of the guidance out there is misleading; for a better idea of how to approach your resume, let’s go straight to the source.

What Law Schools Really Want

Looking at the websites of law schools is a great way to get a sense of what they’re looking for. They won’t give away every detail of how to create a great resume, but it’s a good place to start!

For example, Harvard Law has a page with a Resume Toolkit, which gives a strong sense of the basics of what a law school resume should look like—and the pitfalls you need to avoid. You can apply the tips on this page across the board in your application to any law school.

Here are a couple of other sample resources: 

• A pdf from Stanford Law with some basic tips on composing a great resume
• A video from Chicago Law about what to put in your resume and how long it should be

A law school resume will provide a high-level overview of who you are, highlight what you’re capable of, and give a sense of what you might contribute. This resume needs to be really impressive if you want to stand out in this incredibly competitive landscape.

Did you know the Harvard Law Admissions Office reviews over 7,000 resumes each year? That’s a lot of resumes! Now imagine how similar they all look at first glance … You can understand the uphill battle you’re facing.

A good place to start is with a question. Ask yourself: how can I stand out via my resume? (And no, the answer is not using a pink font, or putting that hot photo at the top of the resume …) Which brings us to an important topic …

What Not to Do when Creating a Law School Resume

There are some common mistakes you should avoid when writing up your resume:

• Don’t include any photos or graphics.
• Don’t go wild with the formatting, and be very wary of inconsistency. Make it look professional.
• Don’t go wild with the fonts (as much as we too love comic sans, it’s not the right choice for your resume!).
• Don’t include any references (there’s already a whole part of the application dedicated to that).
• Omit any “Summary” or “Objectives” section. Not only is it a colossal waste of invaluable resume “real estate,” your objective goes without saying: to get into law school!
• Finally, anything that happened before college doesn’t exist! As proud as you may be of that high school achievement, or your amazing SAT scores, they have no place in a law school resume.

Okay, so I know what not to do. What should I do? 

How Do I Write a Strong Law School Resume?

First of all, aim to stand out with the best of what you have! 

Standing out means several things:

• Showing your candidacy is stronger: You can stand out by presenting facts and achievements that comparable candidates might not have. Did you get that early promotion that only 2 people out of 100 got? Get the highest bonus bracket at your job? Win a full scholarship at your undergrad? Win a Presidential Medal? (I mean, who hasn’t?) 
• Highlighting breadth of experience: Obviously you will include the basics—academic and professional experience—but you also want to paint the broadest possible picture, while focusing on your strongest experiences. It could be internships, volunteer work, community service, extracurriculars, sports, music, publications, languages, technical skills, certificates, awards, or hobbies and interests. Keep in mind that you want to provide windows into every aspect of who you are.
• Tracing a “shooting star” trajectory: As much as possible, you want to show that your career and academic progress have always been trending upwards. You want to show the progress between roles as an advancement. So, for example, try to significantly differentiate bullets dealing with different jobs to paint a picture of progress.
• Highlighting soft skills: One huge mistake most candidates initially make when composing their law school resume is to focus only on the technical aspects of their professional or academic experience. But soft skills tend to be as important as, if not more important than, hard skills. So you should be sure to compose bullets that include vital soft skills for attorneys:public speaking, teamwork, leadership, and so on.
• Telling a clear story: Everything in your resume should contribute to a single purpose: your proposed future career goals. The tighter the resume is in leading into those goals in a clear manner, the stronger it will be. For example, let’s say you dream of becoming a politician or a judge and want to present these goals in your application. The content you select to include in your resume should tell the story of a life preparing to become those very things. This is one way of giving a huge boost to your resume that most candidates will miss out on.

Above all, remember this: Resumes are scanned, not read.

That means they have to be dense, easy to read, broad. Every single line in your resume should be adding value.

Bearing in mind that principle, let’s look at some specific issues: length, structure, content, maximizing impact, and formatting.

So Really, How Long Should My Resume Be?

One page will suffice for the typical resume. “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

If you are strategic in your resume crafting, you’ll be surprised how much can fit on a single page.

Ultimately, the question of length is a misleading one, because it’s tangential to the more important consideration: impact.

You will generate the maximum possible impact in your resume by:

• Being highly selective about the content that goes in
• Crafting precise, terse, crystal-clear bullet points
• Making your resume dense

One page is enough for most candidates and will also be the standard once you graduate law school and seek a job as an attorney. If one page is the industry standard for all job resumes, including those for legal employers, why would it not be enough for law school?

If you’re applying directly from college, there’s no reason in the world your resume should be more than one page.

But most law schools are open to two pages, and there are two main exceptions where a two-page resume might be more impactful: 

• Candidates who are applying with extensive professional experience
• Candidates who have a very wide range of experience 

So, if you have significantly more experience than others (say 7–10 years), you might produce a longer resume (although number of years is not the only criterion). 

Or if you have had such a wide range of experiences that the extra space is needed to cover them, then a two-page resume can be not only acceptable but more impactful than one page. For example, a candidate who has professional experience, military experience, and volunteer experience, and has made strong publications would be justified in aiming for a two-page resume.

Whatever the case, keep in mind that you’re aiming for impact first. Your decision about resume length should serve to make it as impactful as possible, whether one page or two.

If you aren’t sure, you can ask us; this is something a good coach can advise you on.

How Do I Organize My Resume?

Most resumes should be in reverse chronological order. If you’re a college student in undergrad, your “Education” section will come first. If you have some work experience, then “Professional Experience” will come first. The “Interests & Hobbies” section should come last.

Any other sections should be organized in terms of the final impact they will make, which might differ from applicant to applicant.

So what sections should you include?

As we mentioned above, “Professional Experience” and “Education” sections are mandatory. Other indispensable sections are “Community Service” and “Interests & Hobbies”:

• Professional Experience: This should be included if at all possible—even for college students. Because as a college student applying to law school, most of you will have had at least one internship. And yes! Internships do count as professional experience.
• Education: Self-explanatory—covers your undergraduate education (and any other relevant education). Be sure to list your graduation date.
• Community Service: If you have no community service to speak of, then take that as a sign that you should take on some volunteer work before applying, as community service is a core element of all law school programs; if you have none, it’s likely to be seen as a serious gap in your experience.
• Interests & Hobbies: And of course, every candidate should have some interests—even if it’s just pickleball and your college heavy metal band (you never know who will be interested!).

Then there are various optional sections that you can include if relevant:

• Extracurriculars: This can be a separate section, especially for candidates applying directly from undergrad who want to highlight their range of activities in college to supplement their limited professional experience.
• Sports Experience: Mostly relevant for pro or semipro athletes. Can also be interesting as a section for college athletes in division sports, although this info could alternatively be included under “Education.”
• Publications: Relevant mostly for candidates who have an outsize number of publications. Can alternatively fit under “Education” or “Professional Experience.”
• Languages: Usually combined with the next section. (Only list languages in which you have enough proficiency to use them in a professional context—you can leave out your middle-school French!)
• Technical Skills: Most useful for law school applicants with a range of highly technical skills, such as a STEM candidate with various programming skills.
• Certificates: Usually oriented toward a candidate’s specific goals. Sometimes, these may appear as individual bullets under “Professional Experience” or “Education” instead of in their own section.
• Awards: This can be a great “omnibus” section for those with many awards. Could also be placed as individual bullets in other (relevant) sections.

These aren’t the only possible sections, but they’re the ones we most commonly see and suggest.

As you can see, there are many possibilities, and the proper way to compose your resume is by ensuring that your selection of sections highlights the best and strongest of your experiences. As always, strategize for maximum impact in the very short overview of your life that is a resume.

You always want to include your most impressive awards, achievements, and promotions in your resume no matter what. So if anything like this doesn’t naturally fit into a section, create one for it! For example, if you have had the unique privilege of publishing a lot, create a “Publications” section; a standalone section will emphasize that achievement. 

How Do I Decide What Content to Include in Each Section?

There’s no simple answer here. There’s a lot you’ll want to cover in a limited space.

The basic idea is to provide a varied collection of your strongest concrete achievements, which work together to tell a big success story while also showing great promise for the specific future you’re working towards: becoming an incredible attorney. 

All the general goals and precepts mentioned earlier apply here too. It’s always better to highlight achievements rather than responsibilities or qualities, since any achievement will necessarily highlight great qualities and skills with concrete proof of what they allowed you to accomplish.

You may not know which content is best, because it can be hard to tell what law schools are looking for and how to attain all of the resume’s goals at once, but a good way to start is to include everything that could conceivably be relevant in a first draft—and then whittle it down by removing the less interesting and impactful information.

If you’re unsure, you can always seek advice and coaching from people who know what the schools are looking for. 

How Do I Make Each Bullet Impactful?

This is a tactical goal for each line that requires great language skills, precise writing, and a good deal of thought and editing for each bullet. Let’s look at some of the general principles:

• Always include your most impressive concrete achievements, regardless of the field or context.
• Always quantify the results of every achievement.
• Consider relating each achievement to its context so the reader has an idea of how you stand out from your peers: “Led the largest team in the company”; “Received highest bonus in company history”; “Sole recipient of Award X.” Bullets like these are invaluable for highlighting your impact relative to others.
• Ensure that at least some of your achievements target core “soft skills” or qualities that are useful as an attorney—mainly leadership and teamwork, but also things like public speaking, negotiating, rhetoric, and client-facing skills.
• Highlight achievements which showcase your abilities to succeed in your specific proposed post–law school goals.
• Begin each bullet with an action verb: “Led,” “Collaborated,” “Reduced,” “Increased,” etc. Aim to highlight actions rather than titles and positions whenever possible.
• Keep all bullets, without exception, down to one line. (Yes, it’s possible to get every bullet down to one line, no matter how complex the achievement.)
• Rewrite for brevity and impact.

Once you have edited each and every bullet for impact and perfection, you can begin sculpting the resume as a whole to target its other goals.

How Should I Format My Resume?

Your formatting should be as standard, plain, and readable as possible. It should conform to professional norms. Keep in mind that the practice of law is a relatively formal and conservative context, and you should have a professional resume to reflect that.

So make sure that:

• You use a standard serif font like Times New Roman, in a standard size (10- to 12-point)
• You use standard margins
• You have enough white space
• Your dates and entries look exactly the same
• There are no typos or inconsistencies anywhere on the page!

Ultimately, a resume is a test of professionalism as much as it is a display of your experience and skills.

How to Craft a Standout Resume That Highlights What Law Schools Really Want to See

Crafting an excellent resume requires a great deal of skill, a ton of work, and deep knowledge of what a great resume looks like—as well as what schools are actually looking for.

Of course, having seen and worked on hundreds of other resumes helps you identify what works and what doesn’t, and exactly how to craft a fantastic resume for law school.

Our consultants know what works and—just as important—how to get your resume there. If you have any questions about your own law school resume, reach out to us.