When you are seeking an Associate Attorney role, whether coming straight from Law School or looking for a foot in the door to becoming a partner eventually, it is essential first to review a top-notch Associate Attorney resume sample.
The legal field is a pressure cooker of competition because the supply of candidates far outweighs the demand. Therefore, your Associate Attorney resume should pack a punch right from the get-go to get noticed by prospective hiring managers and recruiters alike. Being the best of the best means nothing if not reflected in your resume application.
How to transform a resume into an interview-winning document, will be explained below in our Associate Attorney Resume Guidelines and resume templates for Associate Attorneys below.
What you can read in this article
1. Contact Information:
Include mailing address, personal email, and phone number (Avoid using work numbers or emails). Alternative contact channels, such as LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger, may also be listed.
2. Career Summary:
This is your opening statement for the resume content that is about to follow, so make it count. Tailoring your career summary per the job you apply to is a smart idea to grab the attention of recruiters quickly.
Your abstract should contain 4-5 lines highlighting legal industry tenure, technical competencies, most impressive achievements, qualifications, and a one-liner regarding law school education.
3. Qualifications Summary:
Associate Attorneys are required to have a Bachelor’s degree in Law as a minimum but also be completing a Juris Doctor (J.D) from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association.
Provide accurate information about qualifications you have attained per institution, qualification name, and dates. Don’t forget to include qualifications you are currently completing too.
4. Relevant Legal Experience:
When writing your experience section, think of the tasks you have completed in terms of value to the organization and not merely duties. Also, sprinkle the responsibilities from the job advertisement through your experience section (if you have done them, of course) to amplify your fit for the role.
Remember that your resume is not a deposition document and needs first to be easy to read, and secondly, no more than two pages. Use reverse chronological format to list your experience from the most recent position backward.
5. Skills Summary/Key Skills:
Do your research on the company’s career page or ‘’work for us’’ tab and write down a few keywords relating to the type of people they employ. Then read through the job advertisement a few times to identify the most prominent skills.
Now, include these skills in your resume’s skills section. This approach will assist in emphasizing your suitability for the position.
6. Licenses/Certifications/Relevant Coursework/Training:
To be an Associate Attorney, you need to have passed your Law School Admission LSAT exam, attended three years of Law School, and passed the State Attorney’s Bar Exam for the state that you want to practice in.
You are also required to participate in continuous professional development education every three years. Quite a mouthful of information, but very important to list in your Qualification Section.
Include dates, hours accumulated, institution names, etc. similar to how you recorded your degrees previously. If you are a Summer Associate, in other words, you still need to complete the bar exam; you can just include your LSAT results and the Law School you are currently attending with an estimated completion date.
Associate Attorneys are early-career lawyers who start working at law firms after completing law school and passing the state’s bar exam. They would generally work under the guidance of a Senior Attorney, Law Firm Owner, or Law Firm Partner.
Regardless of your experience as an Associate Attorney, there are a few vital aspects that you need to highlight on your resume to show prospective employers that you are a good fit for the position they have vacant.
Start with your work setting. Do you work for a private or corporate legal office? State, local, and federal governments also employ associate Attorneys. This is important because of protocols and structures followed. You may have a better chance of moving from a corporate law firm to a private law firm, both working with business enterprise clients because the legal structures are similar.
The same goes for working in state government and moving to a federal government office. (This is not to say they you cannot apply for a job at a corporate firm coming from a local government office).
Next on the resume case is the type of clients you advise or represent. Explain to the reader that you are focused on businesses and enterprises or high-level individuals for example, and also what the scope of your court exposure has been thus far. You may further categorize your client experience into percentage civil cases dealt with vs. the number of criminal cases handled.
The third point is relevant to your specialty. If you are a Junior Associate, you may have worked in a few specific areas, but as you gain more experience, Associate Attorneys focus on one particular area of the law to become a recognized expert in their field. What is your specialty? Below we have provided the main specialties of the law fraternity that an Associate Attorney may receive exposure to:
What does a typical day look like in your life at the moment? Make a list of what you are responsible for daily, weekly, and monthly and then compare what you have written against the requirements and duties presented in the advertisement. If you have a few years of experience already, you may be responsible for overseeing the work of support staff such as legal secretaries, assistants, or paralegals.
A hiring manager may also want to know if you chair depositions do litigation and conveyancing or if you specialize in drafting legal agreements and contracts. In this paragraph be sure to mention what your billable hours are and how far you have exceeded target hours in the last six months.
*Cool Tip for a stellar resume:
Legal-Tech Expertise is very much in demand these days. Your familiarity with using online information databases or research applications will show recruiters that you have kept up with Industrial Revolution 4.0 digital innovation. This may include things like web-bases meetings, collaborative case management, online tools for trial preparation and general operation tech hack to simplify administration, time management project management and billings
Looking at all this info, thinking: “I am applying for my first Associate Attorney job and do not have any formal experience yet?” Fear not, below is a list of things you can highlight in your resume:
Hiring managers that have large numbers of Associate Attorney resumes to screen often will review only the career summaries to make a decision on which candidates to invite for interviews. Keep your career summary concise and to the point with the most relevant information first to spark their interest immediately
A career summary is similar to an opening statement that you would present in court and should outline essential facts about your working experience, interpersonal traits, accomplishments, and qualifications. The law environment is filled with legal jargon, but a legal eagle won't always review your resume. Ensure that the verbiage and terms used will also be understood by non-legal readers such as hiring agents and recruiters.
The aim of your summary statement is to show off the benefit and value that you can bring to the organization as opposed to merely wanting the job.
Productive, versatile Associate Attorney with extensive working tenure of seven years in all aspects of real estate transactions. Highly adept in contract negotiations, business rights litigation, and civil law codes about individual property rights with extensive exposure to civil courts client representations. Completed a Juris Doctor Degree with a GPA of 3.9 and achieved the highest score in the State Attorney Bar Examination.
Intellectually curious junior-level Associate Attorney with one-year full-time experience under the mentorship of a Criminal Law Attorney Partner. Acquired thorough knowledge of criminal court proceedings, depositions and defense strategies, and case law. Finished Law School as the top student for the class of 2018 and attempting the Bar Admission Exam in the next three months.
A highly focused and analytical Associate Attorney specializing in Entertainment Law practices. Over a decade of experience in contract reviews for local and international singer/songwriter artists. Top Associate in terms of billable hours for the last three years and up for a Junior Partner promotion in the next quarter. Fluent in French, Spanish, and English.
An Associate Attorney’s career path commences with a Junior Associate Attorney’s role, and then promotions will occur as you gain more experience into Senior Associate positions. The career span of an Associate Attorney typically lasts from six to nine years before the option of partnership is presented. The job descriptions below are categorized by the various career stages of an Associate Attorney:
Your accomplishment statement section is the catalyst for getting interviews and landing that dream opportunity. Therefore, do not be hesitant to brag a little about your achievements and accolades. Start with making a list of things you have done during your career that you are most proud of, for instance, the number of cases you have won, your contribution to researching previous case history to identify specific precedents, developing Junior Associates in their careers or landing key accounts for the firm.
As you can see, accomplishment statements are not merely a recollection of your job duties. It would help if you had action-packed statements showing your positive contributions made to the firm with numerical values attached to them. This is called resume quantification and will immediately give you the edge over the other candidates.
Herewith a few examples to get you started:
The education section is one of the areas that employers would look at first regardless of where you place it in your resume. Whether you are an entry-level Associate Attorney or a tenured candidate with many years of legal experience, it is vital to provide sufficient background about your academic progression and continuous legal development activities
List qualifications in a way that makes it easy to read.
In summary, indicate What, Where, and When regarding your qualifications, certifications, or industry licenses obtained.
2016 – 2018 Masters Degree in Social Media Law, University of Detroit, MA
2017 – eDiscovery Certification, American Bar Association, Online
2016 – Licensed Attorney, National Conference of Bar Examiners (American Bar Association-approved), Brooklyn, NY
2012 – 2015 – Whittier Law School Programme, Boston, MA
2009 – 2012 Juris Doctor Degree, William S. Boyd School of Law, Las Vegas, NV
GPA: 3.9
2009 Member, Moot Court Honors Board, Hot Springs, AR
Many recruiters and employers in the legal field run resume responses through automated screening software (called applicant tracking systems) first and then receive a list of the top-scoring resumes for shortlisting.
Your skills section is a vital part of your resume because you can beat the screening bots by making sure all the soft skills and core skills listed in the job advertisement are included in your skills section which will ensure that you pass through the robot gatekeepers and into the inbox of the hiring manager.
Remember that technical skills about the law are important, but so is including your interpersonal skills. To make this section easy to read, use a skills matrix to showcase your core competencies and interpersonal traits.
| Business Acumen | Law Knowledge | Conveyancing |
| Research Methodology | Trial Preparation | Litigation |
| Depositions | Antitrust Law | Client Service |
| Case Strategies | Client Management | Upselling |
| Draft Legal Documentation | Wills, Estates, Trusts | Product Liability Law |
| Power of Attorney | Settlement Meetings | Tort Law |
| Mediation | Court Procedures | Cross Examinations |
| Client Advocacy | Project Management | Corporate Law |
| Legal Advice | Reference Literature | Interrogation Skills |
| Service Orientation | Confident | Persistence |
| Negotiation | Creative | Loyal |
| Collaboration | Problem Solving | Disciplined |
| Communications | Public Speaking | Integrity |
| Teamwork | Presentations | Logical Reasoning |
| Active Listening | Trustworthy | Stress Tolerance |
| Leadership | Writing Skills | Empathy |
| Analytical | Attention to detail | Objective |
| Respectful | Persuasiveness | Sound Judgement |
| Doctor/Master of Public Policy or Juris Doctor/Master of Public Administration | Juris Doctor (JD) | Master of Laws (LLM) |
| Doctor of Jurisprudence (JSD) | Business Law | NALA Advanced Certified Paralegal (ACP) |
| Doctor of Comparative Law (DCL) | Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) | Doctor of Philosophy in Law (Ph.D.) |
| Passed Bar Exams (Indicate States) | CLE – Continuous Legal Education | eDiscovery Digital Research Certification |
Sectors: Various
Career Type: Legal, Prosecution, Litigation, Conveyancing, Public Defense, Private Advisory, Counselling, Bargaining
Person type: Counsellor, Advisor, Prosecutor, Judge, Researcher, Adjudicator, Judiciary, Presenter, Communicator, Drafter, Mediator, Representor, Arguer, Interpreter, Investigator, Vetter, Processor
Investigator, Reporter, Verifier, Creator, Processor, Vetter
Education levels: Bachelor’s to Masters’ Degree
Salary indication: $81K (Low), $123K (Average), $196K (High), per year
Glassdoor
Labor market: Estimated 6% growth between 2018 – 2028
Organizations: SME, Corporate, Commercial, Fortune 500, Government, NPO
