5 Ways a Law School Resume is Different from a College Resume

As the 1L summer job search gets into full swing, it’s time to make sure your resume is up to date and ready to send out to employers. If you’ve only recently transitioned from college into law school, you might be wondering if you can just take your old resume from college, stick on the name of your law school and some extracurriculars you’ve joined, and call it a day. Unfortunately, that probably won’t work. Law school, unlike most colleges, is a professional school, so your resume should reflect the profession you’ll soon be entering.

There are a variety of key differences between law school and college resumes, from content to formatting, so it’s worth spending a little extra time to make your resume law school-appropriate before sending out those summer job applications. Read on to find out five important ways a law school resume differs from a college resume.

1. Law school resumes prioritize quality over quantity

While your college resume might have had most of your work experiences listed, you may want to pare things down for law school. (Definitely nix anything from high school!) It’s better to have fewer positions listed, with more detail on what you did in each one, than a laundry list of everything you’ve ever done, whether or not it’s relevant. Think about experiences that allowed you to develop skills you’ll use in the legal industry (more on that below). Also consider the narrative you want to tell and what each listing contributes. And remember that you should have something substantive to say about each item on your resume if you are asked about it in an interview.

2. Law school resumes emphasize transferable legal skills

Law school is essentially a trade school, so it’s vital to show that you’ve developed the basic skills of the trade. Employers don’t necessarily expect that you’ll have had experiences specifically in the legal field, so if you don’t have any prior legal experience to date, that’s totally fine! Just make sure to strategically present what you have done in a light that emphasizes essential legal skills like writing, research, communication, and attention to detail that are transferable to a job in the legal field. Try to think outside of the box on this one—an experience that seems completely unconnected to the legal field, like working in a restaurant or on a farm, may have helped you develop these skills in unexpected ways.

3. Attention to detail is paramount on law school resumes

You can talk all day about how meticulous and detail-oriented you are, but the proof is in the pudding—or, in the case, the resume. Employers won’t just be paying attention to what you write but also how you write it. While you should avoid typos in your resume when applying to a job in any industry, details are even more important for a field in which an incorrectly formatted document or flubbed citation can have negative consequences. Employers will likely be paying close attention to the small things, so make sure to carefully comb through your resume with an eye out for any typos, formatting issues such as alignment, or inconsistencies (for example, if you choose to abbreviate months, be consistent and abbreviate them everywhere).

4. Law school resumes should be clean and simple

In college, especially if you were applying to work in an artsier industry, it might have been a positive for your resume to be graphic and eye-catching. For a law school resume, though, you should keep it simple and streamlined. The legal field is relatively conservative, so your resume should follow suit. No unique fonts, bright colors, fun graphics, or scented paper here (although it may have worked for Elle Woods). Pick a simple, unadorned, and easy-to-read font (Times New Roman will never let you down), and use simple headers. If you think it looks boring, you’re probably doing it right! Simplicity will allow the important part—your accomplishments—to shine through.

5. Law school resumes may have specific formatting requirements

This varies school-by-school, but many law schools have particular, somewhat idiosyncratic formatting requirements they recommend that you follow when creating your resume. For example, my school wanted us to use sentences rather than bullet points for job listing descriptions, which I had in my previous resume from college, and small caps for employer names. Check in with your career office to find out if your school has similar requirements, and try to get a sample resume you can use as a guide. It’s also a good idea to send your resume in for review by a career counselor, who can make tweaks and catch small issues that you might have missed.

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