Attorney Resume Templates — Examples and Guide for 2023

- Featured In:
Table of Contents
Here are more resources that can help you
-
Resume/CV Templates
-
- Resume Styles
- Best Resume Template
- Professional Resume Template
- Basic Resume Template
- Simple Resume Template
- Creative Resume Template
- Portfolio Resume Template
- Infographic Resume Template
- Contemporary Resume Template
- Modern Resume Template
- ATS Resume Template
- One-Page Resume Template
- Google Docs Resume Template
- OpenOffice Resume Template
- CV Template
- Biodata Resume Template
- Pages Resume Template
- Writer Resume Template
- Student Resume Template
- High School Student Resume Template
- Internship Resume Template
- Entry Level Resume Template
- Massage Therapist Resume Template
- Medical Assistant Resume Template
- Cashier Resume Template
- BabySitter Resume Template
- Customer Service Template
- Attorney Resume Template
- Customer Service Representative Resume Template
- Teacher Resume Template
- Engineering Resume Template
- Nurse Resume Templates
- Personal Support Worker
- Federal Resume Template
- Latex Resume Template
- College Student Resume Template
- High School Graduate Resume Template
-
Resume Help
Premium Attorney Resumes
-
Legal Assistant
This functional resume showcases your organizational and time management skills while also demonstrating your growing legal knowledge.
-
Paralegal
This combination resume lends equal focus to your legal skills and your growing practical experience in a legal office.
-
Lawyer
This chronological resume is the ideal method to showcase your decade of legal accomplishments and success rate.
Free Attorney Templates
-
Elegant Traditional
This simple layout prioritizes your professional experience and is ideal for attorneys with over 10 years of practical legal experience.
-
Hire Me
This two-column approach features a prominent summary statement at the top of the page. This resume template is a perfect opportunity to highlight transferable skills and legal experience.
-
Professional Orange
This functional resume features multiple skills- and results-driven sections. Use this resume if you’re a recent graduate: You can prominently highlight your legal lab experience and practical education while downplaying your moderate work history.
-
Self Assessment
Lawyers often specialize in one or two legal specialties such as real estate, environmental, or criminal law. This functional resume allows you to list and rate your various specialties and skills.
-
Bold Simplicity
This simple template follows a traditional format and allows your practical work history to speak for itself. Use this if you have more than 10 years of impressive legal experience.
-
Block Step
This functional resume template prioritizes your summary statement and skills over any potential lack of courtroom experience. It’s ideal for recent graduates or career changers.
-
Executive Elegance
This practical, functional resume prioritizes your legal specialties and technical skills over your traditional work history. Use this if you’re a recent graduate with great internship and summer associate experience.
-
Mono Shading
A legal resume should be simple, elegant, and focused on legal abilities over design aesthetics. This resume template is ideal for attorneys with over five years of legal experience.
-
Sample Resume Outline: Graduate Student
This standard resume template prioritizes your education and skills over your scant professional experience to help illuminate your academic accomplishments and legal specialties.
How to Write Your Attorney Resume
For the sake of this writing guide, we’ll show you how to write a standard combination resume. However, feel free to adapt this format to fit your experience level. We’ll add suggestions on which resume you should use to summarize your legal expertise best.
How to pick a resume format
Functional resume: We suggest this format for recent grads. A functional resume features two to four sections dedicated to your general and technical skills, making it perfect for a current lawyer with academic knowledge, mock trial experience, summer associate or internships, but little practical experience in a courtroom. You can learn more about this format, its strengths, and its related risks in our detailed guide.
Combination resume: The combination is an ideal choice for an attorney with three to five years of experience. You’ll have measurable experience that you can highlight under a work history section, but this format lets you lead with your skills first. You can learn more about this resume through our combination resume guide.
Chronological resume: You should use a chronological resume if you have over 10 years of experience. This format leads with your impressive work history and allows you to showcase ample legal expertise, many trial wins, and acquired legal specialties. You can learn more about this format in our writing guide.
How to add your legal skills
Before you can start to write your resume, we strongly recommend that you compile a list of all of your soft, hard, and technical skills. You won’t feature all of these skills under a dedicated skills section. Still, you’ll be able to lend strength to your resume by showcasing additional skills throughout your summary statement, work history, and cover letter.
A combination resume only features six to eight skills under its dedicated skills section, so you’ll want to showcase your most impressive skills here. Ensure skills align with the requested requirements of the open job to which you’re applying.
For example, suppose a job ad specifies that you’ll provide legal counsel to the accounting department. In that case, you’ll want to showcase a legal specialty in finance law and not entertainment or employment law. You’ll need to tailor this information for each job posting to successfully pass applicant tracking systems (ATS). ATS scan applications for matching keywords and relevant experience to eliminate approximately 50% of applications before reaching human eyes. Pay close attention to the skills you feature so you aren’t whittled out.
Here are the specialized skills that most lawyers should hold. You can find a detailed list of additional requested skills here.
Soft skills:
- Oral communication
- Debate
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Creative problem-solving
- Quick thinking and improvisation
- Analytical skills
- Strong people skills
- Organization
Hard skills:
- Legal research
- Trial prep
- Computer skills
- Sanctions filing
- Subpoena filling
Technical skills:
- Digital discovery
- Administrative law
- Animal law
- Bankruptcy law
- Corporate securities and compliance law
- Employment/labor law
- Entertainment law
- Family law
- Immigration law
- Intellectual property law
- Real estate law
- Litigation
Skills Section Example:
How to introduce yourself with a summary statement
A summary statement sits near the top of your resume, just under your name and contact information. This is your opening statement — a chance to present how you alone can fill an open role based on your professional and academic background to a jury of hiring managers and HR representatives.
You make the case by using the evidence before you; the list of skills you prepared and culled from an open job posting, making sure that the skills align with the desired skills of the company or law firm. You can lend strength to your summary statement by weaving in a narrative and demonstrating how a past accomplishment or trial win reflects your ability to fill the needs of an open job.
Our summary statement pro tips:
- Showcase a unique skill that isn’t found under your skills or work experience sections.
- Use quantifiable metrics such as percentage of cases won or number of successful appeals to demonstrate your competency.
Summary statement example:
How to share your work history
The work history is your opportunity to feature your learned or earned legal skills. This section is designed to explain how you successfully apply your technical knowledge to practice law for your previous employers. This section should feature information about the type of cases you argue, the trial prep work you do, the number of billable hours you log, case success rates, client happiness or loyalty, number of clients you can bring with you, or anything that pertains to the requirements listed under the open job ad.
Both a combination or chronological resume’s work history will follow this standard format:
Job Title, Company nameLocation, MM/YYYY - MM/YYYY
- Description of daily responsibilities or quantifiable accomplishments fulfilled at this job.
- Description of daily responsibilities or quantifiable accomplishments fulfilled at this job.
- Description of daily responsibilities or quantifiable accomplishments fulfilled at this job.
However, if you’re a recent graduate writing a functional resume, your work history will be very brief and include only your job title, name of the company or firm, and general dates worked. For example, your work history section may look like this:
Job Title, Company Name
- Location
- YYYY”
Work history example:
How to fill in your education section
Your education section is the easiest and most straightforward section to fill. Regardless of what resume format you’re using, your education should always include the following information:
- Degree earned
- University you attended
- Field of study you specialized in, if applicable
- Year you graduated
Name of UniversityYear of graduationDegree, Major and Minor
You can also include the following optional information, along with our recommendations of when to include this information:
- GPA: Only add your GPA if you’re a recent graduate and applying to an entry-level position.
- Awards and honors: We only recommend adding this information if you’re a recent graduate and applying to an entry-level position.
- Certifications: Add this information if it relates to the open job position. For example, if you earned a certification in intellectual property law and are applying for a job in Silicon Valley, this information could be beneficial to your application.
Education section example:
Add a Cover Letter
A strategic and tailored resume can successfully summarize your skills and technical knowledge. Still, a cover letter can conceptualize your experience by detailing an accomplishment or skill with one or two specific examples of your practical experience.
Our Cover Letter Builder can help you create this important document with pre-written suggestions, pro writing tips, and multiple downloadable formats.
Build a Faster Resume With Our Tool
If you’re not sure how to design and structure your resume but know what you’d like to include, trying using our Resume Builder. We feature professionally designed templates and optimized resume formats to help you score well with ATS and hiring managers.
This simple layout features a traditional font and the clever use of section borders to help each section of your resume stand out.
This distinctive two-column resume template identifies your name and professional experience in a bold color and clean presentation.
A clever design that breaks each of your professional accomplishments into distinct sections while following a format that will pass applicant tracking systems.
The elegant initials, simple header and strategic use of bullet points in this template help keep your professional accomplishments well-organized.
The bold use of a color blocked heading paired with an elegant resume layout helps your name and contact information stand out.
This structured design combines a two-column approach with bullet points to highlight your key accomplishments and professional history.
A traditional template uses a crisp combination of dark text and thin borders to radiate professionalism. Your name sits prominently above your professional history.
This template’s design features plenty of whitespace neatly divided by gray bars to make the information on your resume easy to read for employers.
This two-column resume conveys a very clear breakdown of its sections that allows a hiring manager to quickly scan your resume.
The subtle color accents in this template add visual pizzazz in a classy way, a great option for most traditional industries.
This resume’s modern design and bold use of color make it pop. Its uniqueness is well-suited to those seeking jobs in creative industries.
Everything about this template is assertive from the boxy layout to its all-caps heading text that gives the impression that you’re all about business.
The understated contact information at the top puts attention front and center on your professional summary, skills, work experience and education sections.
The subtle use of red alongside black gives this template a bold feel while still featuring plenty of white space to make it easy to read.
Customer Reviews
Attorney FAQ
What skills do you need to be an attorney?
You should demonstrate quick thinking and improvisational skills as well as solid debate skills as an attorney. Here are some key skills that can help you find your next role.
- Strong argumentative skills
- Debate and rebuttal skills
- Performative skills
- Strong conversation skills
- Attention to detail
- Ability to improvise
- Organizational skills
- Time-management skills
You can find additional skills that most employers request on our detailed skills list.
What do law firms look for on a resume?
Law firms will look for various skills and qualifications that depend on the role they’re looking to fill. However, they will look for the following education, experience, and skills:
- Legal specialization: Examples of various specialties include real estate, financial management, medical malpractice, environmental law, or criminal justice.
- Education: Do you hold a bachelor’s in pre-law and a master’s in law with specialty in intellectual property? This information is crucial to include if you’re looking for work in an innovative field.
- Bar certifications: Have you passed the bar in one state or various states? Where can you legally practice without requiring an additional barred lawyer to supervise your case trial?
How do you put pro bono work on a resume?
You will put pro bono work under your Work Experience or your Summary of Qualifications, depending on which resume format you chose. You can portray your pro bono work under the following structures:
Chronological or combination resume example:
Work History
Legal Associate, The Forsythe Group
San Francisco, May 2019 - now
- Divided legal work into 75% billable hours and 25% pro bono work.
- Represented billable clients through million-dollar divorce settlements. Worked with clients to increase settlements.
- Provided pro bono legal counsel to domestic abuse survivors through The Women’s Building. Helped survivors successfully file restraining orders, child custody agreements, initiate divorce proceedings and find safe, suitable living situations.
Functional resume example:
Summary of Qualifications
Pro Bono Work
- Partnered with a housing rights nonprofit to streamline the legal aspects of their work. Regular tasks included fast-tracking building permits through local ordinances, identifying and resolving bureaucratic bottlenecks, and finalizing construction paperwork.
- Provided free legal services to domestic abuse survivors, including filing restraining orders or child custody arrangements, through a women’s advocacy group.
Rate our Templates
Gabriela Barcenas
Gaby is Hloom’s resident writer, a certified professional resume writer (CPRW), and a baking enthusiast. She likes to defend the use of the functional resume to her friends in HR. She graduated from the University of San Francisco with a B.A. in English and Creative Writing and wrote about career growth, tech startups, education, fashion, travel and lifestyle culture throughout her career.
Similar Articles
100+ Free Resume Templates for Download in 2023
At Hloom we offer 447 professional resume templates, resume writing help and our award-winning Re...
Modified Date: May 10, 2023
50+ Resume Examples to Speed Up Your 2023 Job Search
Six seconds. That’s the average amount of time that recruiters and hiring managers spend looking ...
Modified Date: April 17, 2023
Best Cover Letter Templates for 2023
A great cover letter starts with an outstanding cover letter template. Hloom’s free cover letter ...
Modified Date: April 17, 2023