Lawyer Resume: Examples & How to Write One
Legal hiring is credential-first: bar admission, practice area, and the matters you have actually handled. This guide covers the conventions a legal resume is read against — admissions, matter descriptions, court experience, law review and clinic lines — with a complete litigation associate example and the formatting notes that keep a parser from scrambling it.
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What a lawyer resume must include
- Bar admission by jurisdiction and year — for example, “Admitted, New York (2022); New Jersey (2022).” Admission is the first thing a legal employer checks, and the states matter more than any adjective.
- Practice area, stated plainly. “Litigation associate” is not enough; say commercial litigation, employment, family, real estate, or whichever area the posting names.
- Matter experience at the level you worked: matters managed, depositions taken, motions argued, deals closed, hearings covered. Legal resumes are read for scope of responsibility, not adjectives about it.
- Court and forum experience: state and federal courts, administrative tribunals, arbitration panels, and appellate work if you have it.
- Research and drafting tools by name: Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law, and the firm systems you have used.
- Education with your J.D., school, and year, plus honors, law review, moot court, or clinics while they are recent enough to carry weight.
Legal employers read a resume for evidence of what you have carried. A first-year associate who managed 20 discovery matters is more interesting than one described as “detail-oriented.” What you handled, how many, and in which forum is the whole story.
Bar admission and credentials: the conventions
- State each admission as jurisdiction and year: “New York (2022).” Do not write the bar exam score or the bar number — the number belongs on the application form and in the conflict-check process.
- If you are awaiting admission, say so exactly: “Passed the July 2025 New York bar; admission pending.” Do not imply admission you do not hold.
- List federal court admissions separately from state bars, since they are separate applications.
- In-progress credentials belong with a completion date: “LL.M. in Taxation, expected May 2027.”
- Public disciplinary history is a fit question for the interview and the application; do not bury it, and do not present a transfer application as an admission.
Lawyer Resume Example
Example resume
A one-page, ATS-safe litigation associate resume with admissions, matter volume, and court experience stated plainly. This is the structure our builder produces — switch templates, export PDF or DOCX, no account needed.
Showing 3 of 15 free templates — open the builder to browse every layout. All 15 are free.
Recommended sections for a lawyer resume
- Summary — 2–3 lines with your practice area, years in practice, and the strongest matter-level fact you can state.
- Bar admissions — jurisdiction and year, kept as its own short block near the top.
- Experience — reverse-chronological, with matter types, volume, and the level of responsibility you carried on each.
- Education — J.D., school, year, honors, law review or moot court. First for current students and judicial clerks; after experience for practitioners.
- Court and bar activities — bar association committees, pro bono work, CLE presentations, and published writing, kept current.
- Skills and systems — research platforms and document management tools, grouped so they can be scanned.
Lawyer resume skills keywords
Legal postings mix practice-area vocabulary with procedural terms, and both are screened. Read the posting and use its words where they are accurate — “commercial litigation” and “business disputes” describe similar work, but the match matters to a parser. Keep the list to things you could discuss in an interview.
- Practice areas: commercial litigation, employment, labor, contracts, real estate, trusts and estates, family law, immigration, intellectual property, criminal defense
- Litigation skills: depositions, discovery, dispositive motions, expert discovery, mediation, arbitration, trial support, appellate briefing
- Transactional skills: contract drafting and negotiation, due diligence, closings, corporate governance, regulatory filings
- Research and drafting: Westlaw, Lexis+, Bloomberg Law, briefs, memoranda, client letters, settlement agreements
- Court systems: NYSCEF, PACER, e-filing, local rules, case management orders, court conferences
- Firm systems: iManage, Relativity, Clio, billing and timekeeping, conflicts checks
ATS notes for legal resumes
- Keep the document single-column. Legal resumes are often formatted for print, and multi-column layouts are the most common parsing failure in this field.
- Use conventional headings — Experience, Education, Bar Admissions, Skills. The exact heading is what keyword extraction looks for.
- Write court names and jurisdictions in full at least once: “U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.).”
- Keep dates consistent as month and year, and list admissions with four-digit years so they parse as dates.
- Skip text boxes, tables, and footnotes for content. Footnote formatting is common in legal documents and frequently dropped from parsed text.
- Export to PDF with selectable text, and keep a DOCX version for portals that request one.
Law firms, legal departments, and courts all read the same file, but only some of them read it through software first. A resume that parses cleanly is not a different document from one a partner enjoys reading; it just survives the trip through the system intact.
Matter descriptions, admissions and court names are text a parser has to read in sequence, and footnotes or tables frequently disappear on the way through. ShitResume keeps every template on a single linear structure, so matter lists and admissions reach the screener in the order you intended and the export keeps that sequence. No account, no card.
Common mistakes on legal resumes
- Using adjectives instead of matter facts: “highly motivated litigator” tells a hiring partner nothing about what you can carry.
- Listing bar admissions without years, or overstating a pending admission.
- Describing matters so vaguely they could belong to anyone: say you “handled litigation matters” when you managed 25 active cases.
- Including a bar number, bar exam score, or other details that belong on the application form rather than the resume.
- Keeping law school moot court and clinic lines past the point where they matter, while cutting the deposition work that replaced them.
- Two-page resumes with no second page worth reading. Length is not a proxy for experience.
ShitResume is free: every template and every export costs nothing, and the document is prepared in your browser, so client names and unredacted matter details stay inside the office. No account, no upload, no trial. Draft it between filings; the admissions block and your matter count do the arguing.
Skills and keywords for this role
Use the terms that genuinely describe your work — an interviewer will ask about anything you list.
- Bar admissions: New York (2022), New Jersey (2022), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- Practice areas: commercial litigation, employment litigation, contracts, real estate, estate planning
- Matter experience: depositions, dispositive motions, discovery, settlement conferences, trial support
- Research and writing: Westlaw, Lexis+, briefs, memoranda, contract drafting, client correspondence
- Court and procedure: NYSCEF e-filing, PACER, local rules, case management orders, mediation
- Firm operations: iManage, Relativity, Clio, billing and timekeeping, pro bono matters
Frequently asked questions
Should I put my bar number on my resume?
Usually not. List the jurisdiction and admission year — “Admitted, New York (2022)” — and give the bar number on the application form or during the conflict check. If a posting explicitly requests it, add it as a short line under admissions.
How do I describe matters without breaching confidentiality?
Describe the type of matter, your role, and the procedural stage without naming clients or terms that identify them. “Drafted the summary judgment motion in a $2.4M contract dispute” conveys scope without disclosing anything privileged. When in doubt, generalize the industry and keep the dollar figure only if it is public.
Should education or experience come first on a lawyer resume?
Education first for current students, recent graduates, and judicial clerks, because the J.D. is the credential under review. Once you have been practicing for a few years, experience first and education at the bottom. Bar admissions stay near the top either way.
Do law review, moot court, and clinics belong on a resume?
Yes, early in a legal career, each as a single line: the publication or competition, your role, and one concrete detail. As practice experience accumulates, trim them to the strongest one or two and let the matter history take the space.
How long should a lawyer resume be?
One page for most associates and recent graduates, two pages once you have substantial matter history or a lateral practice to describe. Hiring partners skim for admissions, practice area, and scope of responsibility, so those belong in the top half regardless of length.
Do legal employers use an ATS?
Larger firms, legal departments, and legal recruiters often do, and some portals parse the resume to prefill application fields. That makes a single-column layout, standard headings, and selectable PDF text worth having even in a field where the document is ultimately read by a person.