[TRANSCRIPT] Attorney Resume Advice: How to Enhance Your Career with a Killer Resume

We are starting our resume workshop. We also did one last week and I will be doing another this week as well because we had a lot of resumes that came in last week during the webinar. And then also before, so that we didn't get to. Just to reiterate some of the things that I spoke about last week, a lot of people will really mess up their future and their long-term potential based on the quality of the resumes and mistakes they make.

And what we're going to go through today and looking at resumes are typically mistakes that you can avoid quite easily on your resume and really get an understanding of how law firms review your resume when you're applying for positions. Over my career, I review every day hundreds of resumes.


I have reviewed resumes of people looking for positions and I have honestly probably reviewed more than 500,000 resumes during my career and placed thousands of attorneys. I place attorneys almost every day of the week personally and have gotten lots of people jobs. So this should be helpful for you to see the way that I look at resumes, the changes that I will suggest to people's resumes, and kind of everything that I know about that.

So with that, let me just get started real quick. Let me see here. One second. Okay. So the first resume I have shared the screen.

First resume, let's see here. So this looks like a patent attorney and they have been working at the same firm since 2020. Before that, they were at another firm where they were doing trademark work. Before that, they were doing trademark and patent attorney work.

This is actually interesting. We don't get a lot of patent attorneys in these sorts of reviews, so this is a very good resume. But there's a couple of things about it that I'm not quite sure about. This particular attorney majored in electrical engineering, which is a great thing to have if you want to be a patent attorney.

They worked at a patent firm doing patent work for quite a while, which is five years, then went into doing trademark and then litigation, but mainly trademarks. That's almost like a switching practice area. They went from doing a very complex practice area to doing trademark, which is not as difficult.

And now they're doing general related work. A couple of things about this resume: anytime someone does a practice area switch, that can be a little bit alarming sometimes to law firms. This person may have moved to a smaller market. I don't know, but now they're doing different types of work and they may have their own practice.

I don't know exactly what's going on, but to move from doing patent prosecution to doing trademark to now doing general more general type of work is a pattern where the person seems to be. I don't know what the reasons for that type of movement are, but I would, a couple of things about this resume: if you want to try to market yourself as a trademark and patent attorney, I would probably try to put in a little bit of information and make it not look like such a dramatic practice area switch because you have five years of experience doing patent prosecution.

Then all of a sudden you went over to doing trademark law, which doesn't require even a science degree to do. Now you're doing a general practice. There needs to be some sort of explanation for that and why you're doing that. Because being part of the patent, doing the patent USPTO work is a good thing, but it's not necessarily going to help you in this general type of position. This resume would almost be better if it stopped in 2018. Trademark is certainly in demand right now, but if you want to do trademark, I would try to maybe to some extent be more focused, talk about the work you're doing here that's related to IP and really de-emphasize real estate and litigation because most law firms are looking for people that are specialists.

One thing I think that I talk about in most meetings is when law firms are evaluating your resume, they want to know: can you do the job? Will you do the job long term? Can you be managed? Do you want the job?

Here, I think law firms are going to wonder if you're going to stick around wherever you go because it just seems that in your resume, this resume is moving from something that was very focused on patent work to now trademark for a year, and now something more general. A lot of times there's nothing wrong with that in the practice of law, and lots of people don't, but you've been moving into all these different things. Now this may be a good resume for going in-house, for example, because you can do all sorts of different types of work and be an in-house counsel, but a law firm is going to be a little nervous about it.

So I like the resume, but they're going to be a little bit nervous. Okay. So this particular resume, as you guys may be aware, anytime I see all this sort of stuff at the top, it makes me a little nervous because it does smack of... and this is very common for corporate related resumes to have this sort of information. This person, by the way, looks like a very good attorney.

I can just from looking at the resume, but there are some things that should be done. Here we go. You start to look at their

You start looking at their resume and the stuff that they've done. Let's see. This looks like a new resume. What I like about this, by the way, what this person did here is this person talked about their law firm experience. They just say that they practiced for firms. They don't talk about all of them.

Then they talk about their experience, which looks to me like this person is basically an IP attorney and that's what they did in this position. I actually liked what they did here because many times if you list four or five firms, it just looks like you're a job hopper. This person's not a job hopper because they've been at four firms in 12 years. They probably stayed at a firm every three years, and they put down one good firm, a really good firm that they were at. So that's good. I liked that.

In terms of this, this is pretty good too, as well, their experience, the way they put this down and the dates. So that's good. I like that. But I think almost that everything potentially could stop here. I don't know that all this experience and stuff at the top here is necessary. I don't think that this is... and this is my style of resumes, but a lot of times when you start putting all this stuff in, it just looks quite desperate to some extent. So I would recommend probably putting all this stuff closer in here.

If you're eligible for in-house counsel registration in Massachusetts, you should make sure that most people that have bars in different states are eligible to be in-house counsel in most states. That's not something you really need to worry about. Also, you have to be careful about putting that in places if you're applying to places other than Massachusetts, and then your education should always go at the end of your resume like this when you're more than five years out of school.

I don't know if you need to say highlights; these are obviously highlights, so you don't need to do that. Let me just do that a different way.

But I don't know if you need... you don't necessarily need to say those are highlights. You just do it that way. But if you look at this resume, it looks like there's a lot of very good things about it. A lot of times people say the first ever and that sort of thing. I don't know if you need to do that or who you were recruited by. I would just say

in-house counsel for a lot of times, this is something that very high-achievement people do. They always try to stay on the first or the best or that sort of thing. I would hope you would report to the CEO and attend board meetings. I don't know that you need to put that on there.

This is a good resume. I think the only question here is if you would want to be... if you don't say... I would just say law firm experience after, when you say words like foundational experience, people start assuming that you're putting words in their mouth, so you just want to be very direct about that.

I don't know that company-wide employee resource and networking group for women. I guess that's okay, but I like a lot of times just focusing on the business aspects of what you're doing. All this is very good, the way this is done here.

So I liked this resume a lot. I think if you...

Okay. This one barred mission attend to sit for the July 21 bar examining. That's in New York law examination, multi-state prevention sensibility. Okay. Most people pass it professional multiple responsibilities. You don't need to put that up there.

You don't need to put that you're sitting for the bar. If you're trying to get a job in New York, it's actually just assumed that you'll be sitting, especially as a 2021. Some of the stuff like tax law society, I just recommend if your resume isn't really strong with senior, the editor in chief of something, and you're doing something that really takes a lot of time, there's no need to put on things like tax law society and stuff unless you're very interested in tax for some reason this legal intern.

There's different schools of thought about the ways to... a lot of times, and I apologize, what's happening with some of this stuff is we're editing these resumes sort of for you before you see them, or we're copying from PDF. So they're coming out and they can need some work in terms of when we transfer them from PDFs to regular documents of legal interns work for three months.

You were a legal intern for three months. I don't know that you oversaw and reviewed things. I would maybe just give a little description of the company and the type of work that they do. Just say general legal work, because this kind of is... people want to know you're giving people... when people look at your resume, what happens is they start thinking in terms of this person doesn't have this experience.

So just talking about that, this is a. Whatever type of company, a couple of lines about, system of legal work with this type of company, that's all you need to say. That's all I would do because when you start saying purchase and sale of future receivables, manage broker relationships, like they don't, no, one's going to give someone who's in law school, the position of managing broker relationship, advising and underwriting, Nevada evaluated, overseeing purchase and sales over, they're not going to give them that experience.

So this language is very strong and for the work you're doing, and I don't say that in a negative way, it's just very strong. What I would recommend doing, but just be to maybe lighten that up a little bit and then and just put what the company does and then same thing here.

Like you start talking about lean law, foreclosure business represented in collections. I'm assuming, because you did the tax law society and you have an accounting background that you're also interested in maybe doing. Tax or something along those lines, when you start putting things about litigation, trust, and estates and all these other practice areas on there that, that can also scare people away.

And I don't say that in a negative way, but I would just say got exposure to litigation trust in the states and corporate related work, or, or got, was exposed to court even, don't just say something along those lines. And so you don't need to go into a lot of detail because you don't want to point people in a direction.

Everyone's happy to take a chance on a law student. They don't care what your experience has really. They're not there. You do, but they're not really that interested in it. They're just interested. If you're, you seem excited, you're willing to work for a price that they're happy about and and they like it.

And that's it. And then I don't you say, like I partook in a court proceeding that's nice. You want, I was resumes. You need to use plain language, like how people talk. You wouldn't want to say partook in a law, a court proceeding. You just want to say, and even attended court proceedings, probably all these descriptions of what you're doing I would recommend everyone.

The problem is what's happening without. This is these people at the people that are reviewing your resume are being pointed in all these different directions. So here they're being pointed in directions of working in brokers, and they're very implanted in trust in the states and litigation and deposition residential, financial report, all that recruited and trained.

Okay. I guess you did. So I would just say wholesale manager, so just don't go into a lot of detail. There's nothing wrong by the way, for, especially for law students not going into a lot of detail. People need to look at your resume and they need to get thing.

People need us, people need to be people need to be on the center of, okay.

So they want to basically they want to read, they want to read your resume and say, I get it.

This person wants to do this.

That's how you need to do it. So here, the problem with this particular law student resident resume make sure you always fix

The problem with this is that it doesn't read, like you want to do one thing. It reads there's just a bunch of stuff going on. So that's the problem there. So people want to see one thing and that's the problem of all these resumes. To some extent that we've been looking at this person was an IP attorney and they became a in-house counsel where there's nothing really on here about IP.

And then they're trying to say that they have experience with executive advising and growing companies and all this stuff and litigation, and here's some patent infringement. I would put this at the top, anything to do with IP and then emphasis to emphasize the other stuff. And then this person saying I do intellectual property business, real estate.

So all of these resumes from the standpoint of most employers are going to be difficult for an employer to grab onto. If this person had done nothing if this person wants to be in real estate, then you know, they might talk about real estate here and try to talk about real estate here and talk about, some real estate work.

For the young man and young woman's Hebrew association and then the Lazarus and Lazarus talk. But do you want the, you typically want to have some sort of pattern and consistency in that resume because again every law firm wants to know if you'll do the job long-term so if they do see a long-term interest in something that you have they're going to like that.

Okay. Legal personal experience. Okay.

Okay. So I'm not going to tell you anything bad that, I don't that that I consider unethical, but I don't know if you need to list, how much part time you did and how much full-time if you were an attorney during those dates, you're an attorney during those dates.

If anyone asks you, you should tell them, but I don't know that you need to draw attention to the fact that you were an attorney than staff attorney that, you know, and draw attention to the fact that you're a part time. Now you can look at right here. I always show people this always look at Grammarly.

There's also pro writing aid but you need to really look at your resume very closely and and make sure. You know that accompanying some properties? No, that's good. So you need to go through and proofread things. So I'm just looking at this and this is like a very obvious thing that after party there's this, so everyone needs to really very closely proofread your resumes because because if you don't proofread your resume very closely, it just draws experience to lack of detail and other things that are very important for an attorney in any job.

And it shows you're almost like demonstrating your weaknesses and this doesn't have to say you can't do these jobs, but but this important thing to make sure, cause you can see all these issues when you see here, like ellipses are loud enough

and used to be changed and, third party subpoenas and all this stuff. So this stuff needs to be done very closely. And and you can even put down, your dates of employment to say 2002 to 2020 during this time served as an attorney staff attorney and during my last eight years as the secretary and corporate counsel.

And And this is a lot of detail here, so no one needs all this information. So you need to probably, get this down into a couple of lines. And and anytime you guys are writing something or ladies or lighting something, you just, you just, you think about how do I use fewer words because work experiences, same as experience and then this person, everyone, a lot of times uses a lot of words.

And when you make, when you use a lot of words, when you say more than you need to, the problem is it makes people work and nobody likes to have to do extra work. So your job as an attorney is to simplify information, to make things began redrafting so just this all needs to be really slimmed down with a few lines that gives people enough to talk about to understand, and then this, you don't need this.

And then and then here you graduate in 96. Almost, one of the things I don't like here is and I don't mean this in a negative way. But one of the problems here is that this is a really nice run. Most people do not have 18 year runs or I don't know how many 18 year runs and I, and an employer.

So I don't think anybody's going to be too excited that you were the HR manager and the library while you were practicing law. So I don't know how important that is. And I don't know that they're going to be that excited that you spend a year as a tax. And then you were the director of administration and all these early jobs you had in your career.

So what I would almost recommend doing would be to, it would be very nice to have this particular position just at the top. And then and then maybe a couple of lines which is what this person did which I liked of between 2012 and 14. They took 12 years and they put down just a couple of lines of what they did.

And so I would just say here during the period of 2000 and, whatever, but these years here, when you graduated in 1997, I believe, but worked as a attorney for a law firm. And too long, no law firm to two different companies for something or got experience doing that.

That's how I would handle that. And that's just going to look a lot better. It's and then and then it's going to be look consistent. And then I don't know, this is all in the same area of Pennsylvania. You can put that down there and that's how I would handle that because you don't, again, you obviously what you're doing and you were good at your last job.

Otherwise you wouldn't have kept you there that long and you wouldn't have stayed. So you have a lot of very good things, but I would recommend. If it was me, I would try to really make sure that this information is consolidated because otherwise it just detracts from the overall strength of the resume there.

And then, you always want to be careful sometimes when you talk about the whistleblower officer and these kinds of things and any time it looks like, you may be someone that could potentially be adverse to where you're working, that people don't like to see that.

So I just would be very careful with that, but other than that, it looks good. Okay. So this resume and try to consolidate everything and make it smaller. Okay. This particular restaurant technology focused council. Okay. So these kinds of words, like when people do this these are things that, again, that a lot of times resume companies will do for you.

They'll add all this stuff about you and

That's actually interesting. But this sort of thing is leads, transformational initiatives. So these sorts of words are. Yeah, these are like fluffer words. And and typically when when an employer is looking at this, it's okay to have these fluffer words in there, but a lot of times it detracts from things and and people, aren't going to look at this stuff and and really it's not gonna it's it, I think it does more harm than good.

This is how, people do resumes a lot of times, but it's not necessarily, it can just remember, always looking to things. Don't make people work hard with a lot of words on a resume. So just con this experiences better. Okay. Believe them are technological. Okay. That's cool.

Okay. So there's a lot of stuff on here. But a lot of it is quite interesting. And and it's for the type of work that this person does or this technology company. It also, it looks unique and and this person is probably a senior technology council, but so I would try to maybe get this down to maybe four bullet points would be what I would do.

And and since this experience has been for the past four years, essentially, or three years oh, very good. I think in terms of what this person has done recently, it looks very positive. And then and then I also how this person has had just a lot of employment in various law firms they've gone and looks up, it looks appealing in house right out of school.

That was not a very good economy back then, by the way. So it's pretty awesome. They were able to get back in this, these firms. I don't think this firm was like most firms wasn't making offers from 2001. I've been around long enough to know that. So the but yeah, this is, I like this resume.

I think that everything about this resume is very strong for what this person wants to do. So, I personally like it. There's a lot of employment stability, and there's a lot of good things about it. Even though there's a lot of bullet points here, I think a lot of this is very interesting.

I like it. Some of this stuff could probably come off. You don't need to talk about being on the Dean's list or that you got the top grade in corporate law. The leadership scholarship is interesting, so I would probably leave that on there.

This is probably the community involvement and interest. If you think that's necessary to leave on there, that's fine. These are things that you're interested in. Sometimes I get a little nervous when people put the exact nature of their volunteer work because law firms and companies don't necessarily want to know. If someone has a lot of time for international travel, they may not like that. If someone has time to raise a foster family, that's a good thing, but who knows? You just have to be careful. These are all good activities, but at the same time, you wouldn't want to necessarily mention being part of a far-right or far-left organization or playing an expensive sport. I've seen people say things like "enjoy flying my jet on the weekends." That's probably not a good thing. But other than that, this is a great resume. I don't see anything wrong with it at all. It's a very strong one. I would just shorten some of this stuff up. It's pretty obvious what you do. This is a very good resume, especially for someone coming into a technology company, a growing company, or helping people with a company transition and having a lot of issues coming up.

Definitely an applicable resume. This person started out in 2012 in law firms, and they've been working. This is a fairly common type of resume. For whatever reason, this attorney has a lot of good things about it. The thing you always have to ask yourself is, can you do the job long-term? Can you be managed? Do you want the job? For whatever reason, when this person graduated in 2009, their first job was as a law clerk for what looks like the state court. Then they went to work in another government office, and then they did one associate's job for a little over a year. Then they did another job for four years, which was good. Then they went to another law firm for four or five months, and then another law firm for four months, and then another law firm for two months, and then another law firm for a contract. Now they've been at this... then they went to another level. My sense is this person doesn't like law firms, which is a part of the club of a lot of people that don't, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem is that with all these jobs, someone's probably going to have a difficult time hiring you because they're not going to know if you want to stick around.

I don't know why you don't like sticking around. It may just be the atmosphere or the kind of people you're working with. Certainly, you wouldn't be the first person not to like law firms or do well there or feel happy. That's perfectly fine. What I would recommend is, it seems to me like you actually enjoy government jobs the most, or working in attorney's offices and so forth, or for judges. It seems like you've had very good experience doing that and you've lasted a long time. I would recommend creating something very similar to what this person did, which is just a great example for us all, where they talk about their law firm experience. I would say, between these dates, I worked in several law firms where I got experience, and then try to lead with the main type of experience. If you worked in insurance coverage or workers' compensation, just talk about the different types of experiences that you had in those law firms.

Maybe try to come up with something consistent; maybe it's litigation. Then I would put it as law firm experience, government experience, and then entering your most recent employer or something. You weren't even really there very long. I would do that. People need to stop doing this stuff, like putting in a pro bono certificate. I don't know what the client counseling competition is. I wouldn't list that. I don't know that it's a good idea to always list study abroad stuff. It's fun and creates great memories, but it also typically means that your parents were willing to pay a lot of money or someone did that for you.

Other than that, editor-in-chief looks great. If you're applying for jobs in Virginia, you can list Virginia. If you're applying for jobs in Virginia, do not list Colorado. A lot of people think that law firms and stuff would be interested in that, but it actually hurts you because it shows that you tend to be interested in different types of things.

You've been working in, and I don't know where you are right now. Oh, this is in Colorado. If you're going to stay in Colorado, then by all means, list Colorado, but if you're applying for jobs in Virginia, I wouldn't put on Colorado. People can always check. I like all this stuff here. You were on the environmental commission and all this stuff. It just seems like you're very interested in government-related work. That's what I would do. I would limit the positions to some extent to make sure it doesn't look like you've had so many jobs because it makes it too risky for people to hire you.

Most of the time, if you've been an associate at a law firm, they know you are admitted there. There's no reason to put that on there, but if you want, you can.

This is great information here for a cover letter. That's really the only place you need it. I would put it in your cover letter. One of the things I just wanted to show you, I'm just noticing some things. When you're writing these paragraphs and so forth, everyone needs to make sure that you fix all this stuff. When people are hiring you, they're most interested in whether or not you can do the job. Regardless of where you go to school, you don't have to draw attention. You can just put down that it doesn't have to be, you don't have to say it was APA credit on that date. Most lawyers get a lot of people applying for jobs. You have to be very careful. You don't want to draw attention to negatives.

I don't know the history of Thomas Jefferson Law School. It was accredited. It wasn't accredited. In California, for those of you that aren't from here, you have law schools that are accredited, which means you can practice anywhere in the country, and then there's ones that aren't accredited. Some of them lose their accreditation, and they get it back. I don't even know. There's rules here about spelling things out, but I don't even know what that means. But it does mean that maybe it wasn't accredited at some point. I wouldn't draw attention to that. I would just say Juris Doctorate, whatever that date is.

A lot of this stuff, you can just say Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. You want as few lines as possible on your resume. People don't care about your high grades. I don't even know what a 4.0, 4.1, or 4.3 means. Just leave that stuff off. Don't draw attention to the fact that the school may have been accredited and not accredited. You don't need to put your grades on your resume. You don't need to put all these direct dates like July 29th, August 19th. You can just say August to December like you did here. You didn't say the exact December date. You can say something about family law.

No one cares about your work at La Quinta or as a hairstylist. I wouldn't put hairstylist on there at all, even though you did it for a long time. The problem is, even though it's good that you've had all this exposure to the public and so forth, there's no reason to mention it.

I like this resume. You should definitely be able to get a position, especially in family law. That would be what I would do. I would make this whole resume focus on family law. I would remove all this stuff at the top, and there are punctuation errors. I would run it through software and make sure everything points to family law. This resume is probably the education's better, the experience is better, but this person's done a lot of different things here.


And then this person if you clean this up, you can make your resume look like, cause you said similar to my previous position. So I'm assuming you were doing family law related things. And I just would say Okay. Family law, Clark, that's it.

And then and that's it. So making yourself just look like a family law attorney is going to help you. Okay. This is a foreign resume. I don't want to spend a lot of time on foreign resumes. I did last week I talked a lot about them but again, everyone needs to go through and proofread these things and run them through grammar, checking software.

Every foreign resume we see tends to have a lot of information in it. No one cares if you've got these kind of if you take we'll actually executive MBA's from big deal and an LLM is a big deal, but I've certainly got degrees from, all sorts of Ivy league schools and taking business classes there, but that doesn't mean, our executive education classes.

That's the last thing in the world I would put on my resume. I think I even have a degree from UCLA that I spent a year getting a it's something business related, but I would never put it on my resume. And so you don't you typically and I don't say that to, to output Harvard business school and these programs, I might've cost you a hundred thousand dollars ticket, I don't know.

But you just, pretty much, you don't want that people are hiring attorneys, they're hiring attorneys, they're not hiring people that get the certifications from the schools. It's one thing to get a certification to another, to practice it. So I would take a lot of that this resident there's too much going on in this resume for me to pass go older but this resume you need to take a look at the American resumes we've looked at so far especially with the first one and.

And really do what you can, but no, this is going to be very difficult to get a job. Actually it looks like you did go to Harvard business school. I can't even tell from this resume. But but it's very, this needs to every resume needs to be very clean because I can't, I'm, I look at resumes for a living and I look at this thing and I can't tell what the hell's going on.

And it has nothing to do with, that this is a bad resume. It's just not the way Americans do resume. And so you don't need to talk about all this, I don't want to go into too much detail, but I hope everyone can understand problems with this as a U resume.

There's just too much going on. So you have to look at what a us resident, they're doing all these videos here. Look at this languages. Wow.

The videos and stuff that I've done of resumes before I would, I would go through and look at them. And I don't know what this one is either farm recipe.

So this is the 2 20 20 graduate and the 2000, I like what this person has done with their education. I think this is very. I don't think you want to say you're in the top two thirds of your class. I don't think the top two thirds means you were in the bottom third or someone was, I dunno, it doesn't sound very good.

It sounds like senior in the top 95%. So I wouldn't take that off. Postgraduate diploma, project planning top two thirds, top one third. Okay. So that means you're in the bottom third. Okay. I don't know what's going on there, but if, unless you're Inc you're you're people don't understand what these top third. Okay. That's pretty good, but generally, I don't know that it's a good idea to list your class ranking, especially for Al lambs and all that kind of stuff. And us law firms aren't gonna know and employers what a GPA means from a school in Uganda. So fact finding would be, you have a, so everyone needs to run their stuff through the software because the second you make a mistake in this stuff, It's disqualifying you guys from lots of jobs and and so you just need to be very careful with all of this, either on behalf.

So go through and you're gonna have to clean up your language. So this would say working Robert House, anyway, so go through, I would have somebody correct somebody to go through your resume and really fix up the English here because there are some mistakes and and then and then and then most of the time. People aren't going to be, I would just say employment associates, you don't people, this experience you've had in Uganda is not necessarily going to be applicable to what you're doing here.

And so all this stuff to about having strong motivation and stuff, but your record will show that not necessarily this. And I would think anyone that moves to the United States, these activities playing second place, coffee tasting, and cupping. Okay. That's cool. Best taste turn now your no, that's cool. What's interesting. Playing chess. That's awesome. So the best female chess player in your law school, I don't know. You can say you liked chess. And then this is not how U S people write their resumes.

So just, I would actually go talk to your law school and get some input from them. And really and and I've given you input but these resumes, anything that's exotic and different, and certainly anyone that goes to school overseas is exotic and different. You just need to have it have a kind of update and in terms of having a more American field and then unless it's definitely going to be more because the more you say the more risk you put of having information that, that looks out of it Alexis nexus, everyone in these are actually one word.

I think Westlaw and Lexus nexus is also one word. So everything that you're writing down if you get any, if you get one mistake wrong that can hurt you. If you make one type of that can hurt you. And I wanted to tell everyone a quick story. I told that in our meeting, we had for our recruiters yesterday, but I was.

One of my first job out of law school was working for a federal judge. And my first week there, I or maybe my first couple of weeks, I wrote a motion for him or, an opinion and the opinion was maybe 40 pages long. And and and I thought, more texts is better.

It's better to really, do an exhaustive argument and so forth. And and meanwhile, my co clerk was writing things that were four and five pages, and he was perfectly happy with them, but I was very interested in the subject. Matter of everything I did. So I was worked really hard, but I'm not necessarily the smartest knife.

So he called me into his office. He's can you come into my office? And I went in and he had two doors. He closed both of them. He sat down and he was mad. His face was red. And he said, look at page, 16 or 26 or something I looked at. And I said, what, what's the problem. And he pointed out that I had misspelled a word that and it was the word was misspelled because my spellcheck hadn't caught it.

And it was the wrong meaning. It was, I don't know, like T H, G R instead of. T H E I R or something along those lines, your T H R E it's a stupid error like that, but he was very upset about it. And he's this is unacceptable. You can't be turning in work like this. This would make me look horrible.

If I've turned this, I put this out in public. And at the time I was like, this guy's a fucking idiot. He must he's so up high this is how I thought about it. There's something, he's got a screw loose. He's more interested in, style over substance. But the thing was, is because I had to keep my job and because I knew how important it was.

I started aggressively proofreading my stuff, so I would spend. Half of the time, or, maybe 30% of my time was writing and then the other 70% was polishing things and making sure it was perfect. And the result of all that was when I got into practicing law, all of a sudden, like I started turning a new work and I was way ahead of my peers.

So when I got into a law firm everyone wanted to work for me and liked my work. And and I did very well. And and when I left that clerkship job I still thought the guy was like, a freak about details and stuff, but then, years later I wrote him a letter when I realized how much she'd help me, because I realized the importance of really doing a good job with this stuff and making sure that everything is perfect and you're not going to catch stuff just with this grammar software, by the way.

I recommend using a couple of different things, but when you turn in a very good work and you don't make errors, then you're going to get you're you have a very good chance of getting positions. And and I had another thing that was very interesting to me happen. Then I been practicing law for a year.

And there decided I wanted to lateral to another firm. And I sent my resume to someone that was sending my resume on. And I said you just changed my dates of employment and right in the right dates. And they were off by a month. And the law firm codon almost didn't hire me. So this type of stuff is, these errors and tight language and all this, all these sorts of things really make a difference.

And so people can look at your resume and they can tell immediately what kind of attorney you are and the more you're writing. And if you don't feel up to par, like you're a really good attorney and you don't understand, and you're doing things like I certified to the best of my belief and knowledge of, this is just not this kind of stuff.

On a resume like that. And so you just need to be very careful and you need to keep your language very tight and not make too many errors, not say too much because the more you say, the more you the more you the more you're exposing your weakness. I didn't know that and then I should, I think I do know actually, but I didn't know the Thomas Jefferson lost its credit accreditation or got it back or when it was, no one told me that now.

I know. And is that a good thing? Probably not. I certainly, when I was in school I've never went overseas or anything like that. Frankly, I couldn't afford to. Is that something that you want to put on your resume? I don't know. And then all this stuff, you have every resume here.

Part of the problem with a lot of these resumes is you don't realize who you're speaking to. So if you want. If, if you want to talk about Harvard business school and you're trying to get a job as an attorney, that's probably not a good idea. You want to leave with all the legal stuff you're doing and you have to have a resume that reads like somebody would want to see in a law firm.

They need to believe that, you want to do this stuff. So this is the, one of the, some of the mistakes that a lot of people are making here. And I'm in these tight spacing issues and all this kind of stuff. So you guys really want to make sure with your resumes, that you're, you have to prove them.

You have to you have to shorten them down and realize no one cares, no one cares about all this stuff. Like they know for the most part, if you go to a certain place, you're going to be doing a certain type of work. And and so they don't really need all this detail.

And then when you start listing things that really aren't that significant as your experience and in that that can help you hurt you as well. Okay. I'm going to take a, it looks like we're making pretty good progress at least today. So I'm going to take a break from maybe two to three minutes.

And when I come back we will get through hopefully a lot.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

All right. Awesome. So we're getting back here. Okay, let's see here. Yeah. So the, one of the big things guys is just proofreading your resumes that's very important. Yes, I'm not sure I understand what this experience here is. I would it's a very interesting experience. I don't know if you've been doing that for four years as long, which is, as long as this, you've had this position, if they've been as if you oh, okay. You see your pointers a monitor. Okay. That makes sense. Alright. Few articles. I like this one second.

I like this resume in terms of all of these articles, I don't understand the, this incredible productivity article writing. But it, this almost looks like someone that wants to be wow. And MBA from that's great. There's almost looks like somebody that wants to be a a locker yes. Or something along those lines. So I, I do all of these articles many times I think with these legal interns internships, I think that I there's, if you look here, I there's more, there's almost more stuff here regarding your internships then then other stuff, but it's all related to your current job, which is actually very interesting.

So normally I would say to remove it, I would just say here to try to make it much shorter and do what you can along those lines and and see what you can do. These, but these internships should not take up this much space. I don't, I, you should have a couple of minds about this particular internship and just give the dates and then and leave it at that and not go into too much detail about that.

Other than that, the law review articles are very interesting, but they don't belong above your education. They belong below it and they belong in something that's extra. And the Barden missions are fine. But I would also put those sort of at the end or something along those lines.

But other than that same thing here. Dean's last, if you were on the Dean's list the entire time you were there, then you can write that by being on there one certain certificate or something is fine, or one semester it's not something that would lead with. And then other than that, in terms of the type of work you're doing, I think this is a very good resume.

I I would try to for the most part, with this experience, I would try to eliminate to some extent to a couple of lines. I think once people understand that we'll know what this is. Here you just talk about what this is. You don't talk about what you're doing. I don't know why you don't do that there, but don't, I see you're virtual, you're an associate with both of these.

Okay that's what I would do. So this, your experience is pretty self-explanatory I would just say, don't say what Devon capital is. Just say, work with company appointed as a monitor on behalf of us regulator, and then try to shorten up your experience senior attending meetings really isn't something that that, you need to put on a resume communicating with people is not something you need to put on a resume.

People are more interested in the work that you're doing, the reports and and that sort of thing. I would try to, if you can integrate that into this description and make it a lot shorter and the articles are interesting. I like your enthusiasm about all of this, but at the same time yeah, it's all very good.

I don't understand. Yeah it's interesting. It's very interesting. I like your interest in the law and so forth. That's very good. I would, with your experience, I would probably consider at this point, maybe trying to get a job inside of a law school or something or another government position.

I think you'd be very good at, but that's just mine. Okay. I love that you like quotes, but this is not something that. That's important if you're applying for a job, obviously they hope you're licensed all this stuff. I know you don't the thing with the best attorneys and people that you're just expected to jump in on things and and do this work no matter what.

So I hate to cross all this out, off your resume, but it's just, this is all stuff that just makes the re the reader work. So one of the things about resumes is and the ineffective and it's basically, it's something that I would say effective persuasion and the way to do effective persuasion is typically the most effective persuasion. You do not. So you allow people to reach conclusions

you're not, and do not conclusions to reach.

What that means essentially is, here, like you're telling people. To reach all of these conclusions and in this person, here if I just see this and I see all this articles, the person's writing in this work, I would be like, wow, this person really understands working under even the foreign asset controls.

And in this type of work, they've done it their whole career. And while they're very interested in the kind of work they've done, look at all the law review articles and stuff, they read them. I have this person would be fascinating to talk to. And they're someone who's obviously committed. That's all I needed to know.

And so when you start looking at all these resumes, you can see that you start getting all of these people start giving you all this insight into the type of people they are. This person, if I look at this, when I see all this stuff, I see them in Illinois and from a legal family.

No one cares about that. I I know you do. And certainly I talk about where I'm from and stuff all the time everybody does, but you don't need to talk about that. And then when I see this stuff, I think why is this person telling me their grades at this school? That's not a credit. I don't care, but when I see, but if I saw just this, the law school and I saw just the degree in English literature and everything was spelled properly, and I saw every job, I saw something to do only with family law.

And I didn't start thinking about hairdressers when I looked at their resume. Then I would think, wow, this is great family law attorney. And I would look at them and this person would get a job. But if I start thinking all these other things about their resume and they're trying to leave in other conclusions and then thinking this person went to a law school, proud that they got a 4.1 out of five and I just, I need, I don't want to be led to the wrong conclusion.

And sometimes things that you think are good, like being in the top two thirds of your class, why would you point out until it would lead me to the conclusion that you in your school and Campolo Uganda you were only, you were in the bottom 30 or class. I just, I, it just didn't make any sense.

So you need to be cognizant of the way you're leading people to conclusions and here I like quotes too, but this is about you. And I don't want to be led to all this.

And then when you start making you have to spell out these words, you have to make, we'll look out for all this stuff and all this sort of thing here. I don't know what your I believe this but you should probably try to have there. Yeah. And this resume by the way attorneys that work in have experience. So it looks like you're the contract team leader, which is great. And the attorneys had the kind of experience. Especially in hospitals and so forth I would say manage here and then I would just,

you say the go-to person and just, put all this stuff and then you don't need to put all this in there. You just need to you don't need to even put the spend in there. Like some of these people are going to be spending hundreds of millions. And so that may be impressive to you. I think it's impressive, but contract management, you want things to look the same throughout your whole resume contract management.

And one of the things I don't like about this resume is no titles. I would like to secure titles if you can, and

in there, and then but then all of a sudden, this is a great resume because everybody everything is there's so much consistency here. Sorry, I'm trying to talk to me. Pause, rescheduled. But yeah there's so much consistency in terms of what you're doing if I don't know what a certified change manager is, but And then you should put your your education on here wherever that is you, don't just you need more on there and all these extra kind of degrees that you take you can put somewhere else but they don't need to go. There have, put the change manager above your law school, but that it doesn't matter where you went to law school for the type of work you're doing, because you've gotten a lot of very good experience, but this is a very good resume, not for what you're trying to do.

So I think you would have no problem probably getting a position be careful with the job, with with with your bar dates cause people are gonna say why did this person not start working until July? So people are going to assume, you can just say, state bar to Texas state bar, that's all I need to say.

So just remember anything you say to a good attorney, they will look at and they will raise questions about, so they will attorneys are trained to look and poke holes in things. Issues. So they're going to look at your resume and if the more content you put on your resume, the more they're going to punch holes in it, the more you can make them work to read things that may not be relevant them angry, or they're going to be, and the more they're going to think that you can't make your points succinctly and they won't like that.

So you just have to be careful of all that stuff. And this resume is very good though. The things I like about it are just, there's so much employment, consistency. You've been doing the same thing. You're obviously very proud of it. You like what you're doing? You're doing a great job, so this is a good resume.

Just needs to be shortened. Okay. Let's see here.

Okay. I like this resume too best litigator or wow.

All these activities and stuff aren't really necessary. I wouldn't be very careful about all these pending states. And also saying your pending in the U S PTO, unless that's what you want to do. Let me see here.

I would be careful about these other bar states. Because then it's going to show you don't necessarily know where you want to work. I would be careful about the PTO. You can put the PTO on your resume, but if people see that in your applying for jobs that aren't P PTO related or, don't require patent the patent bar, then that's going to hurt you.

I don't understand what the Seattle university school of medicine stuff is. It would be one thing. If you went to Yale for medical school or you but I don't know, you worked at, you just did a program there in the summer. And then you went to university of Wyoming. So I I think it's great that you went to Yale for a summer, but I don't know that it's necessary to go on your resume.

And then, I don't think you need to say this is pre-medicine. I can say it, you can say honors program, but I don't know if you can say even going to see a pre-medicine and MBA, the problem with all this stuff is when you start leading people away from. Looking like what you want to do. There's nothing wrong with doing pre-medicine.

It's great. You have to make sure all these typos and stuff are fixed, but, and I'm sure this was a competitive thing to go work at. Yeah, but I don't know how necessary it is. If you can just work there in the summer. Okay. Now we're getting into professional experience. You graduated in 2020. Okay. So you've been working, who's a consultant.

Guess you got out of school in January, 2020. So you haven't been in a school very long and you took the Illinois bar. And then you worked while you were in school. I think

Oh, I see. So you graduated in 2006 and then you went to, after that, then you took all these jobs.

So you have two things, you have legal experience and non-legal experience. And so what I would recommend here is you really need to get all this non-legal experience and throw it into somewhere else. It just needs to there's too much going on. And this isn't a problem. The, a lot of people have in the resume.

It's like this resume right here. We know what this person does there, our contracts team leader, that's all that's all the resume says. And it's great. There's nothing, that's perfect. We know exactly what this person wants to do. Same thing with this person is works for.

Regular monitors of tier one banks and then writes about it. So we don't know what you do or what you want to do. And that's the big problem. Like you have to be able to like, hear talks about, I started reading this and was like, wow, this person's an incredible litigator. They've done that.

They're going to be a great litigator. I'm going to get into this. And I see MBA and I'm like, where the hell that come from? And then I see Yale school of medicine. I'm like, what's going on with that? And then I see all these bar exams and patent bar. So I don't know what you want to do. And so the problem is if someone does, and then I see this judicial law clerk last summer which was great.

And then I see innocent project and then I see this, so all that's fine. But I think you need to have a separate set. You need to basically have legal experience. And then all this stuff here is in Texas and all this non-legal experiences also in Texas. So what is the connection to all of these other areas?

And I would just, I would come up with a few lines about what your other experience was prior to law school. And then, board member, all this stuff it's just, it's overwhelming. So again, like the big thing that I think I want to show everyone here or tell everyone here is, that you need every resume.

And I think one of the things that I see when people have problems is, people need to be on the set of something like, so you need to put people on that. You need to put the reader of your resume on the center of something. And here it's I want to be a business person. I want to be a doctor.

I was trying to be a doctor. I look like I'm a litigator. And now I look like now I want to, now I'm taking the patent bar and getting admitted in 15 different states. I don't know what's going on. And I'm just like, what the hell? And I'm not seeing anything wrong with that. But at the same time, you need to put people, you need to decide what you want to do.

And if you want to be a litigator, then you need to dumb down all this non-legal experience and do that. If you want to be a corporate attorney, then you need to, figure out how to do that. But you have to put people on the set of something and this resume right now in which maybe a lot of the resumes you know yeah, is doing a lot of different things.

Now, if you don't want to be a litigator, then you probably should, you have to dumb this stuff down, but you need to be the, you in order to get what you want, you have to appear like the person you have to appear like a certain type of person. And and that's just the way it works.

And and I'm not saying there's anything wrong being a board member and all these things. I actually think those are really good, but but that's, this is in where is this in Texas? So what I mean, why are you in Illinois? I don't know what's going on, so why don't you take it into Illinois?

And all these state bar admissions, you can just stay active than Illinois and then so people need to have something, cause I, I can't make any sense of this. I don't know if you're going to want to work at a company. I don't know if you're going to want to work in a law firm. I don't know, what you want to do.

And so that's the problem. So I hope you know, and this I don't know there's a lot of improvement here to other stuff, but again, everyone that's with your resume, it's like the big, one of the big things I would say to everyone is, we do a resume shows employers keyboard system, and to employers, there's a certain box.

Now there's nothing wrong with being a Renaissance man or woman and that sort of thing. And having all of these different, great experiences you've had and begin, I can get, you can see all this stuff needs to be here for you, what you need to fix. All of this stuff, there's nothing

there's nothing wrong having all these experiences and what you've done, but you need to you need to point people in one way. So this resume honestly, would be much better. They have a wish just as if it was just the university of north Texas, best litigator award this person this, and this.

And and then all this stuff gone. I hate to say it, but it's just, and then maybe, and you don't have to be a board member. You can just be a volunteer and you don't have to I said there's a lot of good things about this, but again, all this stuff here is pointing people in a different direction than what this stuff is.

And so you need to do that. And and I almost would, just put the MBA looks like you want her to do something different that than going to law school, it looks at Karen sure about it. And and so it's just, you have to worry about that. Okay. Let's see. So university of Denver, this, I hope that helps with this resume.
 

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About Harrison Barnes

Harrison Barnes is a prominent figure in the legal placement industry, known for his expertise in attorney placements and his extensive knowledge of the legal profession.

With over 25 years of experience, he has established himself as a leading voice in the field and has helped thousands of lawyers and law students find their ideal career paths.

Barnes is a former federal law clerk and associate at Quinn Emanuel and a graduate of the University of Chicago College and the University of Virginia Law School. He was a Rhodes Scholar Finalist at the University of Chicago and a member of the University of Virginia Law Review. Early in his legal career, he enrolled in Stanford Business School but dropped out because he missed legal recruiting too much.

Barnes' approach to the legal industry is rooted in his commitment to helping lawyers achieve their full potential. He believes that the key to success in the legal profession is to be proactive, persistent, and disciplined in one's approach to work and life. He encourages lawyers to take ownership of their careers and to focus on developing their skills and expertise in a way that aligns with their passions and interests.

One of how Barnes provides support to lawyers is through his writing. On his blog, HarrisonBarnes.com, and BCGSearch.com, he regularly shares his insights and advice on a range of topics related to the legal profession. Through his writing, he aims to empower lawyers to control their careers and make informed decisions about their professional development.

One of Barnes's fundamental philosophies in his writing is the importance of networking. He believes that networking is a critical component of career success and that it is essential for lawyers to establish relationships with others in their field. He encourages lawyers to attend events, join organizations, and connect with others in the legal community to build their professional networks.

Another central theme in Barnes' writing is the importance of personal and professional development. He believes that lawyers should continuously strive to improve themselves and develop their skills to succeed in their careers. He encourages lawyers to pursue ongoing education and training actively, read widely, and seek new opportunities for growth and development.

In addition to his work in the legal industry, Barnes is also a fitness and lifestyle enthusiast. He sees fitness and wellness as integral to his personal and professional development and encourages others to adopt a similar mindset. He starts his day at 4:00 am and dedicates several daily hours to running, weightlifting, and pursuing spiritual disciplines.

Finally, Barnes is a strong advocate for community service and giving back. He volunteers for the University of Chicago, where he is the former area chair of Los Angeles for the University of Chicago Admissions Office. He also serves as the President of the Young Presidents Organization's Century City Los Angeles Chapter, where he works to support and connect young business leaders.

In conclusion, Harrison Barnes is a visionary legal industry leader committed to helping lawyers achieve their full potential. Through his work at BCG Attorney Search, writing, and community involvement, he empowers lawyers to take control of their careers, develop their skills continuously, and lead fulfilling and successful lives. His philosophy of being proactive, persistent, and disciplined, combined with his focus on personal and professional development, makes him a valuable resource for anyone looking to succeed in the legal profession.

About BCG Attorney Search

BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive, while achieving results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.