Things Law Students Should Always Leave Out of Resume5 min read

So, you’re a law student, acing in all your university subjects and used to always being the best of the best. But no matter how hard you try, your resume gets rejected every time you try to apply for a job.

Why does this happen?

Resume mistakes are pretty common, especially if you’re just a law student or a graduate, creating a compelling resume is something new to you, which can be pretty daunting.

While some professionals claim that law students get rejected because of bad grammatical or punctuation mistakes, there are more things that you put in your resume that can give a bad impression of you as a future lawyer.

So, let’s take a look at the most common things law students should always leave out of their resumes.

1. Going Overboard with Personal Details

Constructing a resume always presupposes sharing some personal details like interests, relevant to a certain industry, etc. It’s pretty easy to go overboard and overshare your personal details when it’s not necessary.

For sure, you want your future employer to know as many details about you as possible, but you can do it in an interview. Your resume should be as concise as possible and contain only the information that is relevant to the industry.

It’s recommended to leave out the following personal details:

• Marital status and dependents: this information will not affect you doing the job properly. If asked in an interview, you can share this information. But try to leave this information out of your resume.
• Personal circumstances: if you took a gap year at the university, for example, it’s not something you should immediately share in your resume. Everyone has different circumstances that affect their lives, but it’s not something you should make excuses for or explain in your resume.
• Your academic excellence: you may be a proud A-student, but as a future lawyer, you’ll be more valued for your skills rather than for your academic excellence. So don’t brag about how you got an A in criminal law.
• Links to social media accounts: while some employers choose to check the social media profiles of their candidates, they will never tell them they do so. Make sure that your social media profiles are appropriate, but don’t share links to your social media accounts. That’s totally unnecessary.

2. Objective/Purpose Statement

If you’re applying for a job to become a serious lawyer in the future, it’s already clear that you want to work in a certain field. Your employer already knows the purpose of your resume, so leave it out. Moreover, the more words you have in your resume, the more boring it gets.

But how many words should your resume have if you’re just a law student and only beginning your path to a successful career?

A beginner resume should contain no more than two pages with short concise sentences and not overcrowded with bullet points. If you have less than 3 years into your career, employers expect your resume to be short, as you don’t have a lot to share. In fact, if you put too much on your resume, it will be suspicious.

Moreover, a study suggests that your resume shouldn’t take more than 8 seconds to read! So don’t come up with the lies or irrelevant information just to make your resume longer. On the other hand, your resume should contain all the necessary information for an HR manager to make a decision about your candidature. Finding the right balance between putting too much on your resume and failing to provide a full picture of your skills can be tricky, especially for a recent graduate. Therefore, don’t hesitate to use a professional assignment writing service or contact resume writing experts. It’s better to spend additional efforts on preparing your resume to ease the job search process.

3. Hobbies

You might be a good soccer player or be fond of playing the guitar from time to time. But if it’s not relevant to your future career as a lawyer, it shouldn’t be on your resume as well.

Including hobbies is a pretty common resume rookie mistake, justified by the desire to describe your personality as much as you can and add more content to a resume. However, you should leave out all your irrelevant interests and list only relevant ones.

Including hobbies to your resume is only necessary when you want to present yourself as a potentially good professional. Hobbies like writing for a future lawyer will be more useful than cooking, for instance. And you can surprise everyone with your tasty cookies and pies when you get hired. It’s not so easy sometimes to distinguish the relevant hobbies. In this case, you can also opt for professionals’ help and get editing services reviews about your resume content and structure. Once you get an expert’s opinion, you can then edit your resume on your own and save money on ordering one.

What Else?

To draw a conclusion, it’s also important to remind you about using appropriate formatting. Too many bullet points, graphs, and charts are totally unnecessary and only make your resume less readable. Everything is good in moderation. Keep this in mind as well as the mistakes that were mentioned in this article, and you’re good to go.

Guest blog post by Jessica Fender

Author: Fabien