A law school application encompasses many components, including essays, test scores, college transcripts, and recommendations. And although you likely will spend a significant amount of time focusing on these elements, you should not neglect your resume. Customizing your resume for your law school application is vital to put your best foot forward as an applicant.
In this blog post, we at Stratus discuss how to create a strong resume for applying to law school.
Law School Resume Formatting Guidelines
A good place to start is formatting your resume with a style that meets the expectations of law schools. Today’s technology provides many creative ways to express your individuality and background through your resume. However, a law school resume should not exhibit any of that creativity and should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Use a professional font. The font should always be black, and it should be a professional style, such as Times New Roman or Arial.
- Use a consistent font size. Besides your header, all text should be the same size. Also, the font size should not be smaller than 10.5 points to ensure readability.
- Avoid small page margins. You should make the page margins no smaller than 0.75 inches. This is important because the person who reviews the resume might want to print it, and you do not want any content to be cut off.
- Do not exceed one page. Your resume should be one page. Industry standards say a resume should be one page because employers do not have time to review a long resume. This applies to law school admissions committees.
- Divide your resume into sections. Your resume should consist of several sections, highlighting such areas as your education, work experience, and personal information. These section headings should be in all caps (e.g., “EDUCATION” instead of “Education”).
- Apply formatting consistently. Using consistent formatting throughout your resume is vital, even for subjective elements such as whether to write out the month or use a number (e.g., “August 2020” versus “8/2020”). You should not list some dates numerically and spell out the month for others.
- Use bullet points. When describing your previous work experience and responsibilities, you should follow the classic style of using bulleted lists. Each bullet point should not exceed two lines, and you should aim to have three bullet points for each job. This will provide enough detail for your job, while not going overboard. You should focus on having more detail on your most recent positions. If you cannot come up with three bullet points, it is not the end of the world.
- Pay attention to punctuation. You should also review your punctuation closely. If you choose to end each bullet point with a period and you miss one, the spelling and grammar check will not catch it.
- Proofread thoroughly. Similarly, given that resumes are not usually formatted like a traditional Word document, it can be easy to miss typos. Therefore, make sure to comb through the document a few extra times.
Law School Resume Content Tips
Whether you are applying to law school while still in college or you have taken a few years off to work first, you likely have had to create a resume at some point. If this is the case, you do not need to throw out your current resume—but you should not assume that a well-crafted resume for hiring purposes is perfect for a law school application. Whether you are starting from scratch or adapting your previous resume, the following tips will help you create strong resume content:
- Avoid jargon. When writing content for your resume, be sure to use universal language that anyone can understand. Although you may be an expert in certain areas, the law school admissions staff might not be. Therefore, you should review your resume carefully to ensure it will make sense to someone without your knowledge. It might be helpful to have a friend or family member review your resume for that purpose. In addition, if you worked professionally before applying to law school, you might have crafted your resume to include certain keywords or metrics to aid in your job search. These elements will serve no use to a law school admissions reviewer and could confuse them. Again, this does not mean you have to scrap your past resume content; you might just have to tweak it.
- Write descriptively. You should write your resume content in a manner that is descriptive but concise. Beginning sentences with action verbs can help you effectively describe different aspects of your past roles on one line. Some examples of action verbs are “drafted” and “yielded.” In addition, avoid vague sentences, such as “Organized weekly meetings.” Instead, include something like “Organized five meetings per week by preparing reports to effectively describe the company’s performance versus revenue goals.” To touch on the previous bullet point, an example like this is descriptive but avoids terms that someone reviewing a law school application would not understand.
- Balance work experience with law school–related skills. Aim to strike a balance between showcasing your professional accomplishments and presenting the skills and accomplishments that will be an asset for you as a law student. Although these two areas are not necessarily mutually exclusive, your work experience might not have a lot to do with the skills needed for law school, such as research and writing. You should certainly display your skills related to law school, but do not lose sight of what on your resume makes you unique and showcases your leadership, hard work, versatility, and any other great qualities. If you have had success in your career that you can easily explain to someone outside of your industry, you should include that in your resume, as it will help differentiate you from other applicants.
Law School Resume Sections
Once you understand how to format your resume and what you want to put in it, you should take the final steps of crafting your resume by building the appropriate sections:
- Name and contact information: At the top of the page, you should set your first and last name in bold. It is a good idea to make your name slightly larger than the rest of your resume text. For example, if the rest of your resume text is 10.5 points, then make your name 12 points. Right below it, list your address, phone number, email address, and LSAC number on one line.
- Education: Next, create the “EDUCATION” section. Set your undergraduate institution in bold, followed by the address on the same line, along with the dates you attended the school. The next line should contain your degree name, your GPA, and the month and year that you received your degree. The line under that should include your honors, and then the line under it should list your school activities.
- Experience: The next section is “EXPERIENCE.” In this section, you should list all of your positions. If you are still in school, this will likely include only internships, club leadership roles, and part-time jobs. However, you should not feel self-conscious about any role you put down. As long as you worked at least a few hours a week at the position, law school admissions committees will be interested in your experience there. If you have worked for a few years and you do not have enough post-college work to fill up your resume, you can include jobs you have had both during and after college. You should always prioritize your most recent positions in terms of space and detail. Each position description should list your employer, its location, and the time period that you worked at the position.
- Personal: Typically, the last resume section is “PERSONAL.” As your application essays will provide much of your personal information, this section should only consist of a line or two. In this area, you can share a few hobbies to give the admissions committee an idea of your personal interests, such as sports you enjoy playing, your favorite types of cooking, or languages you have learned. If you have mentioned your hobbies in your application essays, this can be a good place to re-emphasize those activities. Additionally, this section can provide topics for questions during your law school interview. Sometimes an interviewer will be interested in something mentioned in this section and will ask you about it, likely yielding an easy question for you to answer.
Law School Resume Sample
Bottom Line
Whether you have an existing resume or are starting from scratch, you will have to customize your resume for your law school application. But either way, you should not feel that this is a major endeavor. Your application essays will likely require a lot more work! But by creating a concise and well-formatted resume, you will add an extra shine to your law school application.