The Girl's Guide to Law School®
Get In, Get Through, Stay You
You’re in for a treat! My fantastic friend Rebecca Netter, who left Biglaw to become a legal recruiter, has agreed to answer some questions about getting a legal job, from the perspective of someone who spends all day figuring out if someone is a viable candidate for legal jobs.
In other words, she knows what she’s talking about.
We can talk all day about résumé formatting, or what should be included, but there’s really only one question you should be asking (repeatedly) to make your résumé shine for any occasion.
Your clerkship application résumé will be very similar to the one you used when applying for summer jobs or even for law school. The key difference is that your clerkship résumé should further emphasize your writing and research skills.
It’s easy to give general advice about how to make your law school résumé the best it can be. It’s harder to actually do it, right?
Instead of talking generally, I thought it would be helpful to do a résumé teardown for a sample (fictional) law school applicant, so you can see how a humdrum résumé can morph into something pretty impressive!
Let’s get started. Take a look at Jane Doe’s resume below. It’s not horrible, but it’s basically just a list of all the jobs she’s ever had, with some basic information about her education.
Jane’s starting resume
Before we move on, what would you change?
