Almost everyone needs to prepare a resume especially for law school applications. This resume doesn't say the same things as a job resume. For instance, you don't want to list the computer languages you know, the software you can use, or the machinery you can repair. You're not applying to program the computer, enter the accounts receivable, or fix the furnace.
In fact, the more detailed and specialized your skills, the less you want to say about them. For instance, one of my clients presented me with a resume that said:
Languages: Fluent in Russian, Ukrainian and English. Have a good reading knowledge of French, Classical Greek, Classical Hebrew, Classical Syriac, and Old Church Slavonic.
I might have amended that to:
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, English, French, and four ancient languages.
Why the change? The four languages I left are useful for a lawyer. The four I deleted are not. But eight languages is always impressive, so mention the number.
Of course, if you 're having trouble filling the page, go ahead and use the longer list.
Resume Formats
Your resume's appearance will vary according to the amount of information and what you want to highlight.
At its most basic, a resume is an orderly summary of schools, honors, activities, and law- or law-school-related skills. Sample #1 is a perfectly fine example of a basic resume. It's only 40 lines long and 165 words, so you may want to use a 12 point font, to keep the paper from looking too empty,
More typically, an applicant has several schools, awards, or jobs, and is more concerned with fitting it onto one page without looking cluttered. You can put information on the same lines as the headings, saving 8 or 10 lines -- 2 per heading. And as you can see, Sample #2 looks perfectly fine. It fits 210 words into the same 40 lines, using an 11 point font.
For the older or more active applicant (why does that sound like an ad for vitamins -- or worse?) the issue usually is how to fit all those years onto one page. Sample #3 holds 340 words -- a full hundred more than sample #2 -- in almost the same space. It uses 45 lines instead of 40, still in 11 point font. How did she do that? Note that she saved five lines at the top.. She only used one line for all personal info, and she didn't even bother to put a line for the word "Education," assuming correctly that people don't need that help to see what this section is. She saved 4 more lines in the middle -- two (the line skipped and the line typed on) by combining Honors and Activities into a single section with a single header, and two by using horizontal lines instead of double spaces between sections. The lines create the illusion of space without actually using it
Too much to say is far worse than too little, as Sample #4 points out. This resume holds 60 lines (650 words) of dense 10 point type, without even bothering to include her name or other identifying information. Its author told me that she didn't know what to drop, so she just kept squeezing in more.
Sample #5 shows the same resume after I finished editing it. It's only 387 words (which is indeed a lot, but is 250 words shorter than it was) and 48 lines, and is once again in 11 point font. Notice that the edited resume contains exactly the same number of items! The professional affiliation was dropped, but the job after graduation was added. Pay careful attention to what I left out -- all the details that are relevant within your field, but serve no informative purpose outside of it. Titles of papers, courses taken, places of field research, are in general not important to a legal career.
All resumes include approximately the same things, but placement and description can be important. Let's look at some examples.
Person # 1 has 8 years of full-time work experience and a 2.3 undergraduate gpa. She didn't participate in extracurricular activities much because she worked full time during college. She might put work experience first, and education last. She might further highlight her story by breaking work experience into two sections:
Work after Graduation
and
Work During College
Person #2 has one activity -- track. He's participated nationally and internationally for 15 years. Instead of heading this section "Activities," we called it "Track and Field Career." We also included a Career Highlights section, thus:
TRACK & FIELD CAREER
Career Highlights
Three-time Olympian; 3-time U.S. Olympic Trials Champion (1996, 2000 & 2004)
29-time National Champion & 13 American Records
Bronze Medalist 1999 World Championships
2001 & 2002 CA State Games Opening Ceremony Official
We placed this section above Work, but after Education. Since all his community outreach activities involve athletics, we included them in the track & field career section.
Person # 3 had a very unusual career before law school. All of his work experience involved heavy physical labor, and we wanted to highlight this "un-yuppified" (yes, I made that word up for this special occasion) background. Here's what we wrote:
EMPLOYMENT
Driller's Helper August year -present
-assisted the driller in maintenance and repair of the drill
Treeplanting Foreman, Lumber Co. Ltd. Prince George, B.C. May-August
(years)
-responsible for crew discipline, morale, tree care, and quality of planted
trees
- located cutblocks using chart maps and GPS coordinates
Forno Cook, Restaurants Ltd. Vancouver, B.C. January -August year
-cooked food in a wood fired oven, assisted bartender in serving customers
at the bar
Deckhand and Dockyard Worker, Fishing Industries, Alaska, and Seattle,
WA, [dates]
-responsible for cleaning vessel and assisting with its maintenance
-operated and navigated vessel using GPS and chart maps
These jobs highlight the diversity he brought to his law school, which was glad to have his experience in their environmental law program.
Enough. If I gave anything more away for free, there'd be nothing more to save for the paying customers. What more can there possibly be to know? The right level of detail, the most interesting spin, and which admissions officer loves track!