Writing a high quality legal CV

Writing a CV can be one of the most challenging parts of an application and the pursuit of legal experience. During this post, we want to show you the elements of your CV that are going to stand out to employees. We hope the tips and pointers we have discovered can help you with future applications.

To start with the way, we set out and write the CV is important. The way we look to write our CV’s can be the difference between a very good standard application and one that is not so good. Firstly, I would suggest that we keep our CV Brief and to the point. As you can imagine for most available places there will be several people applying. With that in mind, it’s difficult for a recruiting lawyer to spend lots of timing reading your CV. Having a concise and informative application will allow you to stand out in the crowd no matter how long a recruitment officer has to look at your CV.

When starting your CV, it’s important to make your name visible at the top of the page this is the thing that has to stand out and the one thing that you want a recruiter to remember when they look at your application. Now, the better you can get your information across the more likely the person is to remember who you are. Your basic information is also very important such as phone number or house address etc so that you can be contacted.

From my personal experience, it’s a good idea to add a professional social media profile such as a LinkedIn address. This makes your CV look more professional and allows the reader to gain more insight into you and your professional career thus far. This allows you to keep your CV brief and to the point and helps cut a lot of unnecessary content that won’t help your application.

It’s a good idea to start your CV with a personal profile. A personal profile is usually a short paragraph around 5-6 lines long. This profile will outline who you are, what you want in a career, what you can bring to the role and your current academic position. This profile will be the first in-depth thing that an employer will read about you and it’s important to keep it concise and to the point, so the employer can see exactly what they want and need to know.

Once the personal profile is completed it’s time to show what you can bring to the role if given the job or experience. It’s important to keep the skills section concise and when talking about specific skills it’s important to make them pertinent to the role that you are applying for. For example, the ability to work in a high-stress environment, or working alongside the public using in-depth people skills. This will help you show how you would fit the role and what exactly you would bring to the company.

The experience section is one of the most vital sections of your CV. This is one area that really allows you to show what you have done and give real-life examples of when your skills have come into use. Your experiences should be in chronological date order with your oldest experiences coming first. This gives the reader a good idea of how experienced you are in certain fields. Once again, being as concise as possible its good to describe your role in 1-2 sentences giving all vital information.

When it comes to your education it’s important to set out your qualifications in a certain way. When setting out your GCSE’s it’s a good idea to simply add your school name, year of exams and the number of GCSEs or equivalent. With GCSE’s it’s likely that the company would ask for your GCSE’s at a later date. When we talk about AS/A-levels we should set out the place of education and year taken and the final grades that you finished with. Now University degrees can be difficult with no final grade being given for most. However, it would be a good idea to state the university and the degree type and name as well as your predicted grades.

Finally, setting out anything that’s extracurricular will make you stand out from the crowd. In this final section, you can add things like sports and societies that you have taken part in. Companies are looking for well-rounded and accomplished people. It’s true to say that exam results and experience is key, however, your reader will value your extracurricular activities just as much. Being able to, through sports and other activities, prove you can be a team player is invaluable and goes a long way to show your value. Ultimately the activities you carry out in your own time could be the icing on the cake that shows that you are the right person for the job.

We hope the tips above can help you make a precise and to the point legal CV that will allow you to show your skills and attributes in the best possible way. If you think we have missed something, or you have some added tips feel free to mention it below.

Until the next time, we have been The Almost Lawyers and we thank you for your continued support.