Lawyer Resume Examples & Writing Guide

A mid-level associate resume for a commercial litigator at a regional firm (names and firms are made up). Bar admissions sit right under the header, the summary names the practice area and matter types, and every job has counts. That is how a hiring partner reads.

Law firm hiring is done by lawyers, and lawyers skim. Four things decide whether your resume reaches the interview pile.

• Bar admission and state. Are you admitted in the state where the job is, and since when? Your admission year is how firms count your seniority (a "2020 admit" is a fifth- or sixth-year). If you sat the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) and can transfer your score, or are admitted by motion elsewhere, say so.
• Practice area and matter type. "Attorney" says nothing. "Commercial litigation associate, contract and construction disputes, federal and state court, 30+ depositions" tells them whether you can carry a docket on day one.
• Law school, honors and journal. Firms still look at the school, class rank or Latin honors, law review and clerkships. Put these in Education, not in a footnote. After about eight years the matters matter more than the grades, but the line still needs to be there.
• Evidence of responsibility. Trials, arguments, deals closed, briefs filed under your name, clients you manage directly. A resume that lists tasks ("conducted legal research") without counts reads like a first-year's resume no matter how many years it covers.

“I read the admission line, then the school line, then I look for a number: depositions, trials, deals, whatever the practice is. If a fifth-year cannot tell me how many depositions they have taken, I assume the answer is not many.”

Give admissions their own section called "Bar Admissions" right below the header or after the summary. Include the state, the year and your status (active, in good standing). Add federal district and circuit courts and any specialty courts (Tax Court, Court of Federal Claims). Firms verify admissions with the state bar, so registration numbers are optional.

• Required: admission to at least one state bar for any job that involves practicing law. Federal court admissions are required for litigators who file in federal court and are a plus otherwise.
• Good to add: MCLE compliance ("current through the 2026 reporting period"), the Patent Bar (USPTO registration number) for IP lawyers, and notary commissions for real estate and estate practices.
• Do not list the bar exam itself as a certification once you are admitted. "Passed the bar" is implied by "Admitted".

Most junior attorney resumes skip the summary and start with Bar Admissions and Education. Once you have three or more years, a three-line summary saves the reader from adding up your matters. Use an objective only if you are newly admitted or switching practice areas. Line one always names the practice area, the years and the bar.

Lawyers write bullets the way they write engagement letters: general and cautious. A hiring partner wants the opposite. Count the depositions, name the court, give the amount in controversy or deal value, and say what happened. Client names stay confidential unless the matter is public; the numbers do not.

Legal resumes traditionally had no skills section. Now most firms and every corporate legal department run resumes through an applicant tracking system, so a short skills block (8 to 12 items) helps you get found. List only skills that can be tested in an interview.

• Litigation: motion practice, brief writing, depositions, trial preparation, oral argument, appellate practice, e-discovery, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Evidence, your state's procedural code.
• Transactional: contract drafting and negotiation, M&A due diligence, purchase agreements, disclosure schedules, financing documents, entity formation, securities filings (Form S-1, 10-K, 8-K) if you do them.
• In-house and regulatory: commercial contracts (MSAs, SaaS, DPAs), privacy (CCPA, GDPR), employment counseling, corporate governance, compliance program design, litigation management and outside counsel budgets.
• Tools: Westlaw Precision, Lexis+, Bloomberg Law, Practical Law; e-discovery in Relativity, Everlaw or DISCO; iManage or NetDocuments; Clio (small firms), Aderant or Elite 3E (billing), Ironclad or DocuSign CLM (in-house); PACER and CourtLink for dockets.
• Soft skills hiring partners actually screen for: client communication, judgment under deadline, managing paralegals and junior associates, business development (rainmaking) for senior roles, and a second language where the client base needs it.

Leave out generic items like "attention to detail" or "critical thinking". A lawyer resume with a typo says more about attention to detail than the phrase ever could.

A lawyer "with no experience" is really a lawyer with law school experience, and firms hire on exactly that. Your resume for a first associate job, a judicial clerkship or a government honors program should be one page and lead with Education, in the law school resume format your career services office taught.

1. 1Header: name (add Esq. or J.D. only once admitted or graduated), phone, email, city and state. No photo, no home address.
2. 2Bar admission line: state and month admitted, or "Sat for the July 2026 Illinois bar; results expected October 2026". Recruiters look for this before anything else.
3. 3Education first: law school, J.D. and month/year, GPA and class rank if they help (top third or better), Latin honors, journal, moot court, clinics. Then your undergraduate degree in one line.
4. 4Experience: summer associate positions, judicial externships, clinics, research assistant and paralegal roles, in reverse order. Two to three bullets each with counts (memos written, motions drafted, hearings and your role in them).
5. 5Bottom: languages, publications (student notes count), bar memberships. Skip hobbies unless the firm is known to ask.

Legal hiring is formal. Large firms use recruiting systems such as viRecruit, LawCruit or Workday; corporate legal departments use whatever the company uses. The file is parsed into fields first, and then read by a lawyer who notices every formatting choice.

• Length: one page through about 7 to 8 years of practice, as most US firms still expect. Two pages for senior associates, partners, in-house lawyers with several employers, or anyone with publications and speaking. A separate "Representative Matters" or deal sheet can hold the detail so the resume stays short.
• Order for experienced lawyers: header, bar admissions, summary (optional), experience, education, skills and languages, publications and speaking. Order for students and new admits: header, admission status, education, experience, skills.
• Style: one column, 11-point serif or plain sans-serif, standard margins, no color, no icons, no photo, no date of birth. In the UK, Ireland and Australia the same document is a CV and the titles are solicitor or barrister; the content rules are the same, the term changes.
• Keywords to mirror from the posting: the practice area exactly as written ("complex commercial litigation", "emerging companies"), the courts or agencies named, "first-chair" or "second-chair", "due diligence", the year of admission or class year they ask for, and the software they name (Relativity, iManage, Clio).
• Save as PDF (Marcus-Delgado-Resume.pdf). A cover letter is still expected at most firms and clerkships; address it to the recruiting director or hiring partner by name.

Before you send it, paste the posting into the cvplex ATS checker with your file. It catches a missing court admission the posting mentions, a practice-area phrase you wrote differently, and headers the parser could not read.