Top Law Schools

There have to be a million threads on this, but my search turned up nothing in the past few months. I have looked at the Harvard sample resumes, which seem like a good place to start. But, I have some questions about what should be included.

1. I've been out of undergrad for 3 years, it will be at least 4 years out by the time I go to law school. In the meantime I taught for a year and have been in grad school/teaching for 2 more years. How much from undergrad do I need to include on my resume? If I have multiple conference presentations as a PhD student it seems silly to have undergrad conferences as well. Same for little awards like "french student of the year" or dean's list type things and so on. There are some things from undergrad I have on the resume, like big awards and scholarships, but it isn't clear how fine-grained it needs to be if I've been doing other stuff in the time since.

2. How long is too long? The conventional wisdom back in the day (for jobs) was that a resume should never be more than a page long. But my educational credentials and list of relevant work experience alone is one page. WTF? One of the HLS samples is over one page, but not a full two, like mine. Is two pages too long? Are others short because short is better or because of lack of stuff to include?

3. One of the HLS samples includes a 'personal' section that basically includes a camping trip. Do I need to throw rock-climbing proficiency in the mix here? Really?

4. Just in general, what are the vital resume components? Education, Work Experience, Awards, Academic stuff (conferences, publications), Extracurriculars...?

I was out of undergrad 5 years when I applied. For undergrad, I listed two activities that I did all four years that I had leadership experience in. I left the rest out. I did not have any awards , but I would list them if you have the space. Also, most applications have a space in the application itself where you can list awards. Personally, I think two pages is fine, especially because you have been out of school for a few years. I did two pages, and I do not think it was an issue at all. I know some people feel differently about that, though.

Just a thought.. but have you considered doing a curriculum vitae? You could do a one page resume for them to look at and then include a CV with everything on it that can be as long as you need it to be. An admissions officer from boston college law suggested that to me. I know it's not HYSCCN but it's something to consider.

My Thoughts (aka this isn't based on knowledge of admissions)

If you're to the point of having publications/conference presentations, list them all. If that takes you to two pages, USE the two pages. It's two pages either way, so why not use the extra space if you have it to add in the "smaller" awards.

The "interests" part is customary on the OCI resume (unfortunately imo) but I don't think you need it on the law school application letter, they get to know a little about you from your other application materials.

From what I've seen people have done an Education section and an Experience section. The Education section would have publications/presentations/awards/activities done at each level of your education and Experience would contain work/leadership experience. If you want to break it down differently I think thats fine

Edit: Just wanted to make clear that I'm assuming this is the resume for admissions, not an OCI resume/mass mail resume

Thanks for the help everyone!

I just added some columns and that's doing wonders for the length (it's down to 1.5 pages).

You're not applying for an academic job, so just list highlights of your publications and refer to an online CV.

My dad does a lot of hiring and even for people with 15 years of experience he'll trash multi-page resumes. Most people won't, but nobody will junk your resume for being a page.

3.95/180


Seriously though, good luck with your targets!

rayiner wrote:You're not applying for an academic job, so just list highlights of your publications and refer to an online CV.

My dad does a lot of hiring and even for people with 15 years of experience he'll trash multi-page resumes. Most people won't, but nobody will junk your resume for being a page.

I guess we're back to application season again, and back to the resume length arguments.

Law school resumes are fundamentally different from job application resumes, inasmuch as adcom will always read your resume. This doesn't give you license to fill your resume with meaningless bullshit. But if you have experiences you want to tell them about, here's where you do it. It doesn't need to be "to the point," because law schools are admitting students who they (theoretically) want to be well-rounded, whereas employers really don't give a shit beyond your ability to fulfill their job requirements.

FWIW, Yale blog somewhere mentions that Yale prefers traditional (one page) resumes.

I went with a 1.5 page resume for my other schools that included major undergrad leadership + major volunteer experience on the second page. For Yale, I simply omitted this second half page, and felt fine about it since they have specific questions in the application that ask about undergraduate work experience and other activities anyway (so they got to hear about that stuff as well, just in a different format).

My first page stayed the same for all schools (and was the only portion Yale got) and I broke it down into Education, Academic Awards, Work Experience. I think that was it!

I've been out of school for 5 years.

Good luck!