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Thanks all!

No one going to care about what you did beforehand if it wasn't legal. A good portion of law students are k-jd, and a good portion of the rest don't have any legal experience. Clinics, summers, externships, and other awards will fill your resume soon enough.

dietcoke0 wrote:No one going to care about what you did beforehand if it wasn't legal. A good portion of law students are k-jd, and a good portion of the rest don't have any legal experience. Clinics, summers, externships, and other awards will fill your resume soon enough.

Thank you. That's a big relief to hear.

make this section a functional resume, instead of chronological:

Temporary Sales
- Used Car Sales, Ripoff Company, March 2011- September 2011
- Avon Lady, January 2012-March 2012


Customer Services:
- Call center phone rep, Outsourcing-R-Us, January 2013 - March 2013
- Customer Service, Bankruptcy Collectors, June13 - present

Big Dog wrote:make this section a functional resume, instead of chronological:

Temporary Sales
- Used Car Sales, Ripoff Company, March 2011- September 2011
- Avon Lady, January 2012-March 2012


Customer Services:
- Call center phone rep, Outsourcing-R-Us, January 2013 - March 2013
- Customer Service, Bankruptcy Collectors, June13 - present

You think I need to include the months? I'm concerned it will raise eyebrows, because it will show how short the jobs were. Also, I was hoping that just using years would allow me to leave off a couple jobs without having to explain gaps.

Yeah, shows you were doing something in between school and law school (or that you worked doing school)

But yeah, I have my legal shit first, then my most interesting work, then some filler that shows I was working. Lawyers aren't going to care you didn't work long at a shitty job, and if they had a similar work experience than you, then it's instant fodder for interview convo

"God, you sold cars too to help pay for law school? That was the worse..."

dietcoke0 wrote:Yeah, shows you were doing something in between school and law school (or that you worked doing school)

But yeah, I have my legal shit first, then my most interesting work, then some filler that shows I was working. Lawyers aren't going to care you didn't work long at a shitty job, and if they had a similar work experience than you, then it's instant fodder for interview convo

"God, you sold cars too to help pay for law school? That was the worse..."

Actually car sales wasn't the experience I was referring to here, but before UG I did sell cars for about a year. It's actually a pretty fun job in a lot of ways, but brutal when the hammer's coming down for not selling enough.

Also, I imagine career services would help me with this sort of thing, wouldn't they?

Yeah of course. We had a required resume workshop, then you can give your resume to CSO at any time and they rip it apart and put it back together for you.

I echo the notion that nobody will care about what you did before law school. However, as a 3L who is starting to fill out bar exam apps, I recommend that you keep track of all of those random odd jobs and their contact info because in 3 years you'll have to remember every single job you've had.

Void wrote:I echo the notion that nobody will care about what you did before law school. However, as a 3L who is starting to fill out bar exam apps, I recommend that you keep track of all of those random odd jobs and their contact info because in 3 years you'll have to remember every single job you've had.

Wait, seriously? I'm 25, I started working at 14, and I've been bouncing around odd jobs ever since. That's going to be a huge list.

Edited to add: thanks for the input by the way. As a 3L I'm sure you have other stuff to do, and this info is a big help.

Yes. You'll probably only need to go back to 18. But yes.

The type of job is irrelevant, but try to hide the fact that you bounced around so much.

Tim0thy222 wrote:

Void wrote:I echo the notion that nobody will care about what you did before law school. However, as a 3L who is starting to fill out bar exam apps, I recommend that you keep track of all of those random odd jobs and their contact info because in 3 years you'll have to remember every single job you've had.

Wait, seriously? I'm 25, I started working at 14, and I've been bouncing around odd jobs ever since. That's going to be a huge list.

Edited to add: thanks for the input by the way. As a 3L I'm sure you have other stuff to do, and this info is a big help.

yeah depends on jurisdiction but typically you need your entire job history from age 18 to present or the past 10 years; whichever is shorter.

And thanks for thinking that my time is important. It's not, but I appreciate the sentiment!

UVA's career services will have something within the first month or two where they have drop-in resume review sessions. You can also make appointments with your career services adviser to specifically work on your resume. You'll have plenty of other things to stress about in due time, so don't fret about this now.

envisciguy wrote:UVA's career services will have something within the first month or two where they have drop-in resume review sessions. You can also make appointments with your career services adviser to specifically work on your resume. You'll have plenty of other things to stress about in due time, so don't fret about this now.

I agree with this. I have always questioned the TLS conventional wisdom that one thing 0Ls can do before starting law school is to "get your resume together." Employers hiring for 1L summer positions are not expecting to see very much legal experience, and it's not even common for your pre-LS experience to be considered very helpful/applicable/exciting. (Excluding IP, and super-impressive pre-LS resumes).

My point is that you will be in the same boat as everyone else. The vast majority of 1Ls have resumes filled with petty retail and low-end service jobs that nobody really cares about, so you will all be fine.

Tim0thy222 wrote:

dietcoke0 wrote:No one going to care about what you did beforehand if it wasn't legal. A good portion of law students are k-jd, and a good portion of the rest don't have any legal experience. Clinics, summers, externships, and other awards will fill your resume soon enough.

Thank you. That's a big relief to hear.

I don't think this is 100% true. I had a small gap after I graduated during which I was only working part time, and one person (out of about 35) noticed and asked about it very purposefully.

delusional wrote:

Tim0thy222 wrote:

dietcoke0 wrote:No one going to care about what you did beforehand if it wasn't legal. A good portion of law students are k-jd, and a good portion of the rest don't have any legal experience. Clinics, summers, externships, and other awards will fill your resume soon enough.

Thank you. That's a big relief to hear.

I don't think this is 100% true. I had a small gap after I graduated during which I was only working part time, and one person (out of about 35) noticed and asked about it very purposefully.

So in your case it was only 97.142857% true. Good catch.

Void wrote:

Tim0thy222 wrote:

Void wrote:I echo the notion that nobody will care about what you did before law school. However, as a 3L who is starting to fill out bar exam apps, I recommend that you keep track of all of those random odd jobs and their contact info because in 3 years you'll have to remember every single job you've had.

Wait, seriously? I'm 25, I started working at 14, and I've been bouncing around odd jobs ever since. That's going to be a huge list.

Edited to add: thanks for the input by the way. As a 3L I'm sure you have other stuff to do, and this info is a big help.

yeah depends on jurisdiction but typically you need your entire job history from age 18 to present or the past 10 years; whichever is shorter.

And thanks for thinking that my time is important. It's not, but I appreciate the sentiment!

How do they do these checks? I'm slightly worried as my contacts at a lot of my earlier jobs are no longer with those companies, do I just reference them to HR? What if it was a consulting job? Do I reference them to old bosses who have moved on if I keep in contact?

kryptix wrote:

Void wrote:

Tim0thy222 wrote:

Void wrote:I echo the notion that nobody will care about what you did before law school. However, as a 3L who is starting to fill out bar exam apps, I recommend that you keep track of all of those random odd jobs and their contact info because in 3 years you'll have to remember every single job you've had.

Wait, seriously? I'm 25, I started working at 14, and I've been bouncing around odd jobs ever since. That's going to be a huge list.

Edited to add: thanks for the input by the way. As a 3L I'm sure you have other stuff to do, and this info is a big help.

yeah depends on jurisdiction but typically you need your entire job history from age 18 to present or the past 10 years; whichever is shorter.

And thanks for thinking that my time is important. It's not, but I appreciate the sentiment!

How do they do these checks? I'm slightly worried as my contacts at a lot of my earlier jobs are no longer with those companies, do I just reference them to HR? What if it was a consulting job? Do I reference them to old bosses who have moved on if I keep in contact?

You're fine as long as you can put them in touch with someone who can verify that you worked for them. On my application it was permissible to put "cannot recall" for names/addresses or whatever. Its not really a huge deal but they'll expect you to put moderate effort in to tracking stuff down

Random aside, do you need to have contact info for volunteer work you had on your resume? I have absolutely zero clue what the name is of anyone from some of those things that I had on my law school application

You could do something like this:

2011-2013 - Pre-Law School Jobs

• Sales Rep
• Service Rep
• Mechanic

bk187 wrote:You could do something like this:

2011-2013 - Pre-Law School Jobs

• Sales Rep
• Service Rep
• Mechanic

Brilliant. You don't think that'd be too obvious? If not, then that's perfect.

SaintsTheMetal wrote:Random aside, do you need to have contact info for volunteer work you had on your resume? I have absolutely zero clue what the name is of anyone from some of those things that I had on my law school application

Depends on jurisdiction. Short answer: yes. Just use google.

If this actually means "i made up some volunteer stuff for my LS app" then you are probably going to have a rough time.

Void wrote:

SaintsTheMetal wrote:Random aside, do you need to have contact info for volunteer work you had on your resume? I have absolutely zero clue what the name is of anyone from some of those things that I had on my law school application

Depends on jurisdiction. Short answer: yes. Just use google.

If this actually means "i made up some volunteer stuff for my LS app" then you are probably going to have a rough time.

na didn't make anything up, but at least one thing I can think of I just did on a couple weekends through a school group. I didn't mis-represent anything but still I'd have zero clue who my "supervisor" was, unless it could be verified by the school contact..

Tim0thy222 wrote:
Brilliant. You don't think that'd be too obvious? If not, then that's perfect.

I've heard this suggested to me for people with lots of odd jobs. I can't recall who suggested it (I think my CSO?) but I think it's perfectly fine, esp if you have a lot that would otherwise take up a ridic amount of space on a resume.