Lawyer CV Example & Writing Guide

Lawyers play a crucial role in our society due to their significance and exceptional skill set. They are essential for upholding justice and ensuring the functioning of our legal system. Legal professions demands a substantial level of expertise, acquired through years of education and practical experience. If you're a lawyer looking to improve your CV and share your professional story with potential employers, you’ve come to the right place! Here at CVapp.ie, we’re passionate about helping legal professionals just like you boost their career potential. In this guide, we’ll explore each section of an effective lawyer CV and share our top tips for creating impressive, memorable CVs that’ll get you hired in no time. 

Professional summary: Your career story

Lawyers need to possess exceptional verbal skills, and your professional summary provides an excellent opportunity to showcase this talent. It's crucial to impress recruiters by briefly summarising your professional personality and notable achievements within two to four sentences. Law firms are interested in understanding not only your contributions to their team, but also your dedication and commitment to your work. For this reason, it’s essential to leverage your abilities as a persuasive and effective communicator to highlight your professional image. To get you started, we’ve attached a customisable professional summary example below: 

Using keywords to your advantage

To improve your chances in the hiring process, it's crucial to understand the role algorithms play, particularly in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). ATS software analyses and evaluates CVs based on the criteria selected by employers. These systems are designed to match keywords and phrases from job descriptions to the content of your CV. To best optimise your CV, and increase your chances of getting noticed by employers, you can extract relevant keywords and phrases from the job description and strategically incorporate them into your CV. 

Skills section: Promote your professional toolkit

To put it simply, lawyers need more than just good communication skills. They must also have a range of interpersonal abilities. This is because they will be working with clients who may be going through various stressful situations. Lawyers need to remain calm while understanding their clients' needs and explaining complex legal matters in a way that is easy to understand. Additionally, it's important for lawyers to be knowledgeable in the specific field they are interested in. Recruiters often skim through this part to check if your skills match their needs, so make sure they align! 

Employment history: Showcase your career trajectory

In order to enhance the clarity of your career story, it is important to describe your previous positions in reverse chronological order, beginning with the most recent ones. For each job, you should generate a sub-list outlining your accomplishments, achievements, and significant milestones that relate to the duties and cases you handled. Remember to utilize strong action verbs, impactful nouns, and descriptive adjectives to make your descriptions compelling. Additionally, avoid using overly complex grammatical structures that can unnecessarily lengthen your statements. 

Here’s a great example of an employment history section below: 

Education: Outline your academic strengths

It’s important that lawyers possess the necessary qualifications and certifications as mandated by Irish law. Having the right educational background and relevant certifications is vital in demonstrating one's competency in the legal field. These qualifications assure potential employers that you have met the required standards and are equipped to handle legal responsibilities. It’ss crucial to include these essential details in your education section. Potential employers will be specifically looking for this information to ensure that you meet the established criteria and are a suitable candidate for the position.

When you’re done, your education section should look a little something like this: