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Resume Layout Guidance

Header
List your present address and a telephone number and
email address where employers can reach you.

If you are a current student, use your HLS email address.

Be sure that your voicemail greeting is professional.

You may decide to include your permanent address as

well, both to allow employers to get in touch with you when
you are not at school and to let them know the geographic
area you consider home.

Do not include a job objective here or elsewhere on your

resume; your career objectives and plans should be
expressed in your cover letter.

RACHEL MOSS
81 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 495-3108
rmoss@jd11.law.harvard.edu

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Education
Unless you are more than three years out of law school,
your education section should precede your experience
section.

For current law students, indicate the degree you expect to

earn, e.g., J.D. and date of graduation, e.g., June 2013.

List your advanced degrees, starting with your law or

most recent degree and working back to college.

If you have earned two degrees from the same institution,

list them separately.

Your education section should reflect whether you

transferred as an undergraduate, studied abroad,
enrolled in a joint degree program or received a graduate
degree prior to law school.

Omit your high school education in nearly all cases. If you

think it would be helpful to include for geographic or alumni
connections, indicate that when submitting your resume for
review.

EDUCATION

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, J.D. Candidate, June 2011

Activities: Harvard Law and Policy Review
American Constitution Society
Womens Law Association
1L Section Events Committee

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

B.A. with High Honors in American Studies and English, May 2008
Honors:
Phi Beta Kappa
Rapoport-King Honors Thesis Scholarship
Kemp-Foreman Unrestricted Endowed Presidential Scholarship
Activities: University Democrats
Blanton Museum of Art Student Guild
First-Generation College Student Mentorship program, mentor
Thesis:
They Arent Hearing Us Theyre Rich: Consequences of Social Difference

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on Public Housing in New Orleans and Nationwide

Honors & Activities

You should include two separate subsections
for each educational degree: "Honors" and
"Activities."

Be sure to include
a brief explanation
on any awards or
distinctions that
are not familiar to
most readers.

At most, you should include three to five entries;

listing too many detracts from the most relevant
activities or honors.

The "Honors" section should list any awards or

distinctions you received, such as Dean's List,
cum laude or Phi Beta Kappa. Because they
are Latin phrases, magna, summa, and cum
laude should always appear in italicized, lower
case letters. (Note that honors such as Dean's
List may seem redundant if you also graduated
with Greek or Latin honors. )

In the "Activities"
section, indicate
any student
organization
memberships,
reading groups,
elected offices,
activities or sports
in which you have
participated.

Do not include your undergraduate grade point

average unless it is specifically requested by
an employer or not well-reflected in honors
received. An impressive GPA is often selfevident from your honors if you graduated
magna cum laude for instance. If you do
choose to include your grades, do so in
brackets next to honors: such as cum laude
(GPA 3.7).

Of note, public service employers are

interested in much more than how you perform
on tests. While they may ask you about grades
during an interview, they almost never impose
strict grade cutoffs.

LSAT and other

standardized test
scores should not
appear on your
resume.

Thesis or Paper
You may want to include a separate "Thesis" subsection under the appropriate educational degree and indicate the title
of your thesis in italics.
Any notes or articles you are writing for a journal should go under a separate publications section, in blue book form or
with a notation such as: (publication pending) or (forthcoming in the spring edition).

Experience

List your work experience in reverse

chronological order, with your most recent work
experience listed first, going back no more than
five jobs.

Clinical work during law school, internships and even part-time work
may be included under your "Experience" section, particularly if you
came straight to law school from college. Remember that volunteer
work counts equally in terms of experience and need not be singled
out under a separate heading on your resume. On the other hand, if
you have a significant number of work experiences, you may want to
create a separate heading such as a "Community Service" section
on your resume and group your volunteer work there.

Do not feel compelled to list every job you have

held before or during law school, as your
resume should be designed to highlight your
most significant and relevant experiences. The
most obvious omissions should be your earliest
work experiences, particularly nonlegal work that
has little to do with your current job search.

You can choose to exclude more recent work experience, such as

one part of a split summer, but be careful; gaps may grab an
employer's attention. If you leave out a bad work experience, you still
may find yourself having to explain the gap in your resume.

Descriptions are everything in this section, since

they capture the essence of your experience and
any recognition and accomplishments. Paint a
dynamic picture of the type of work you did and
the extent of your responsibilities.

Try not to exaggerate your responsibilities and avoid selfaggrandizing descriptions. Detail what you did in each job. For
example, if you worked at a legal services center, list the type of
clients with whom you worked and the scope of cases you handled.

The proportional length of each job description

is key. Use the longer descriptions to accentuate
those work experiences most critical to your
current search. Employers will assume that the
longer the description, the more priority you give
to the experience. Thus, you can downplay
certain experiences by either merely listing them
on your resume or by abbreviating their
descriptions.

Do not make the employer search for information on your resume.

Just as you do not want him/her to have to decode your resume
format, you also do not want to leave the employer confused about
your responsibilities or the type of work you did.

EXPERIENCE

TENANT ADVOCACY PROJECT

Fall 2008 Present
Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA
Represent tenants facing eviction and other housing issues such as application denials,
transfers, and reasonable accommodation in Housing Authority grievance hearings.
Advise tenants of legal rights by telephone.

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CENTER FOR AMERICAN HISTORY

Summer Fall 2007
Austin, TX
Served as student page in University of Texas archival library. Retrieved archival
materials for researchers. Entered data in a biographical newspaper database, compiled
newspaper clippings for vertical files, and assisted with special projects.
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS RESIDENCE LIFE
Fall 2005 Spring 2007
Austin, TX
Provided support, peer education, conflict mediation, policy enforcement, emergency
management, and event planning for a floor of 40-50 student residents. Performed
administrative shifts at residence hall front desk.

When employers review your resume, they

should be able to figure out quickly what
you did at a particular job. If an employer
becomes frustrated with the information on
your resume because it is incomplete or a
struggle to interpret, your resume will be
put aside.

Your experience descriptions should be broken into shorter phrases so

that they read more quickly than sentences. Each segment should begin
with an action verb like these examples: Assisted in scheduling city
projects. Drafted Congressional testimony. Created summer intern
program. Advised freshmen on course selection.

Action verbs should dominate your resume

see our list of action verbs for ideas.
Review your entire experience section and
omit any passive verbs, particularly any
form of "to be." Phrases such as "was
responsible for running" should become
"Ran," for example.

Unless you need to fill space, job titles should be used only when they
indicate relatively high level positions or help define jobs, such as Director
of Legislative Advocacy or Education Outreach Coordinator. List them in
italics on the line directly below the employer's name. Titles such as
"volunteer," "research assistant," "paralegal" or "law clerk" should be
omitted; instead, you should plunge directly into a description of your
responsibilities.

If you have held more than one job with the

same employer, enter both jobs under one
header, putting the title of each job in
italics.

Dates

Publications

Clearly delineate dates on your resume. Place

them flush right on the page.

Include publications in a separate section of your resume,

especially if they are law-related pieces, such as a note or
comment for a journal.

Refer to the dates of summer or semester-long

jobs as Summer 20__, Fall 20__, Spring 20__.

The citation should generally follow blue book format.

Do not worry about the exact dates of your

employment. If you worked at an organization from
March 2006 to November 2007, simply put 20062007.

If your article, comment or note is published in a law journal that

may not be recognizable to a prospective employer, write out the
full title of the law journal rather than use the blue book reference

Computer Skills

Languages

Unless yours are extraordinary, omit theseyou do

not want a legal employer hiring you based on
computer skills or based on any Lexis/
Nexis/Westlaw training you may have.

If you are fluent or conversant in several languages, you may

create a separate category entitled "Languages" that lists the
languages you speak: "Fluent in French. Can read Italian.
Conversant in Japanese."

Since most law students have this training, its

inclusion does little to distinguish you.

Do not overrate your skills, as you may be asked to

demonstrate them during an interview.

Interests/Personal
Adding one or two lines about your outside hobbies, interests or travels can be invaluable for interviews. Not only does
it help to counterbalance your academic pursuits, but it gives an interviewer additional topics of conversation. It also
stops an employer from asking open-ended (and sometimes inappropriate) questions, such as "Tell me about
yourself," in an effort to get to know a little more about you personally. You should be prepared to talk a little about your
passion for the things included in your interest/personal section. However, be careful not to include personal
information that the employer does not need to know, such as age, marital status or whether you have children.
PERSONAL

Interests include travel, movies, vegetarian cooking, reading fiction, following

political news, and practicing yoga.

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References
It is unnecessary to add "References (or writing samples/
transcripts) will be furnished upon request" at the end of your
resume, as employers will ask you to provide them with your
references and it occupies valuable space on your resume.

Bring a separate piece of paper listing three or

four references to an interview (along with an
extra copy of your resume) and be prepared to
offer it if the interviewer mentions references.

This sheet should be formatted in the same manner as your

resume. Your name, address and phone number should be at the
top, with "References" typed in the same format as "Education" is
on your resume. This title should then be followed by the names,
titles, email, address, organization names, addresses and
telephone numbers of references. It also is important to include a
line or two about how you know the person. See sample reference
sheet.

Give careful consideration to which references

you will use for different employers, as some
contacts may be more helpful for one position
than another. Before you list someone as a
reference, be sure to call them to ask
permission, let them know the type of work you
are pursuing and, if necessary, refresh their
memory about your work.

Last modified: December 14, 2011

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