The 10 Resume Mistakes I See Most Often
Over the past 4 years, I’ve reviewed over 100 resumes written by law students, and I always see the same handful of mistakes.
This is AFTER both the student and their school’s Career Office have signed off and think the resume is “final.”
➡️ Please do not rely on Career Services to proofread your resume. That is not their job. The job is yours alone.
So I created this checklist for you. It targets the 10 mistakes I see the most often.
Please make sure your resume passes this checklist BEFORE you send out to any legal employer!
CHECKLIST
1: Don’t tell me what your responsibilities were; tell me what you DID. Generalities are dirt. Specifics are gold. Make your resume interesting for your reader!
2: Use a readable font. Write in a font size that will be easy for your reviewer to read, and keep in mind that people over 40—including this one—cannot see tiny print. The last thing you want to do is make your reader work hard!
3: Don’t repeat that you did an activity for the company or your school when that is clear from the context. In a bullet entry under a job at a school or firm, you don’t need to specify you did something for the school or firm, and the context makes doing so redundant.
4: Be as concise as possible in your experience entries. Remove articles (the, a, an) before nouns. Convert “of the” clauses to possessives. See Dear 1L ch 13.3 for further guidance and examples.
5: Align your date ranges perfectly with the right margin. If you aren’t using a template (and I hate templates), you will need to set your right-facing tabs. See Dear 1L ch 13.2.
6: Use en-dashes for your date ranges. Note that lawyers do not use spaces around en-dashes, but as long as you are 100% consistent with your spacing throughout, doing so is not wrong per se for resume purposes.
7: Be consistent with your bullet formatting. Don’t mix square and circle bullets. Make sure all bullets are an identical size.
8: Be consistent with your vertical spacing. Err on the side of having more vertical spacing to make clear where one entry block ends and the next starts. Don’t cram entry blocks up against each other vertically. Adding a return that’s shorter than a full, 12 pt return can free up space.
9: Be consistent with your use of bold/italics & commas and other punctuation marks. These are probably the hardest nits to catch. Do a separate proofread to look exclusively for these types of inconsistencies. Consider using a magnifying glass. 👉 Look out especially for inconsistent bolding of commas and periods and inconsistent use of straight and curly quotes.
10: Don’t use adverbs. Don’t tell me that you “meticulously prepared” or “diligently organized” things. It makes me think you’re exaggerating. (But if you received particular recognition for your meticulousness or diligence, do mention that!)
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I hope this helps. I am sending so much luck to all of my new 2Ls during this stressful job-application period!
💌 Amanda