Resume Writing Tips for Students Entering a Legal Career Skip to main content

Do you have the right personality for College?

 

If you’re getting ready to enter the legal industry as a legal assistant, creating a strong resume is one of the most important opportunities for showing potential employers how you’ll contribute to their organization. Legal assistants play a crucial role within the legal industry, providing the support which lawyers and legal professionals rely on to stay on top of their busy schedules and succeed at what they do. As a legal assistant, you’ll perform different administrative, accounting, and clerical duties, in addition to preparing and handling a range of legal documents. You’ll also be responsible for handling communications and client relations, ensuring the transparent and effective flow of information. 

 

The moment when you’re able to reflect your training, qualifications, and skills on your resume, legal professionals within any law firm will be able to recognize that you have what it takes to enhance the success of their organization. Below, discover some resume-writing tips which will help you to succeed in launching your legal career. 

Include a Summary of Your Qualifications

When applying for jobs after legal assistant training, your resume will be more likely to fall through the cracks if it doesn’t lead with a summary of your qualifications. Including a summary at the beginning of your resume, after you’ve provided your contact information (name, address, phone number, email, and LinkedIn URL), will help employers to quickly understand why you’re qualified, and what makes you unique as a candidate. Your summary should include why you think you’re a good fit for the position, and how your industry experience aligns with the work you’ll do in the position. By reading your summary, a hiring manager should be able to quickly understand what you can contribute to their organization. 

 

Your legal assistant resume should begin with a summary of your qualifications

Emphasize Your Relevant Training

If you’re looking to launch a successful legal career, one of the most important things you can do is to include all of your relevant training within your resume. This will include the training you’ve received during a legal assistant program, the relevant industry experience you’ve gained, and any certifications you might have. As with every section of your resume, be sure to include dates and locations with each separate entry. Additionally, while it might be tempting to keep the experience and certifications section of your resume the same for each application, it’s important to tailor this section to remain relevant to the position at hand. Before sending in your resume, conduct some independent research on the firm you’re applying to. Using the information you gain, you can pick and choose which of your experiences, training, or certifications to highlight, eliminating the entries which aren’t relevant to the particular position.

Highlight Your Accomplishments with Action Words

As a future legal assistant, you’ll want to draft a resume which shows employers what you bring to the table, and the best way to emphasize your achievements is through the use of action words. Action words in a legal resume can be placed when describing what you contributed to an organization, or what you’ve accomplished throughout your training in the legal field. By using action words such as “supported,” “implemented,” “managed,” and more, you can emphasize the quantifiable information that makes you stand out as a qualified candidate. Hiring managers will be able to discern exactly how you made a difference within an organization, and exactly what you accomplished as an employee, making them more likely to consider you for the position. 

Now that you know what to include on your resume, you’ll be ready to begin your job search after completing legal administrative assistant courses. Start your training today!

 

Embark on the transformative journey toward becoming a legal assistant with a program at Academy of Learning Career College!