How to Write a Law Student Resume

One page. This holds through your 3L year and for almost every private-sector application. The exceptions are federal applications submitted through USAJOBS (which expect a long-form federal resume with hours per week, supervisor contact information, and salary for each position) and applicants with a substantial prior career or an academic publication record. If you are a career changer with fifteen years of experience, a second page is defensible; if you are a 25-year-old 2L, it is not.

Build it in Word from a blank document, not from a template with tables, columns, text boxes, or graphics. Firm applicant-tracking systems parse your file into fields, and multi-column layouts scramble that parse. Keep anything substantive out of headers and footers for the same reason. Export to PDF and name the file Lastname_Firstname_Resume.pdf.

Education goes first and stays first until you have several years of post-JD practice. List your law school, its city and state, the degree ('J.D. expected May 2027'), and then indented sub-entries for journal membership, honors, GPA or class standing, and one or two significant activities. Then list your undergraduate institution with degree, major, graduation date, and undergraduate honors. Include your undergraduate GPA only if it is strong (roughly 3.5+) or if you have no law school grades yet as a 1L.

Whether to list a law GPA or rank varies by school, and the variation is driven by two things: whether your school ranks at all, and what your school's career office and student handbook permit. Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Northeastern, and several others use non-numeric grading systems or do not rank; students there list honors designations and journal or clinical distinctions instead. At schools that do rank, the default rule of thumb is to disclose a GPA that is above your class median and to translate rank into a percentile band ('Class Rank: Top 15%'). Some schools prohibit students from computing or representing their own percentile if the school does not publish one — check your registrar's policy before you invent a number, because misstating class standing is a character-and-fitness problem, not just an etiquette problem.

Do not list high school. The narrow exception is a strong geographic tie you are using to explain why you are applying to a market where you have no other connection, and even then it usually belongs in a cover letter. Skip 'Relevant Coursework' unless you are applying for patent, tax, or a specialized LL.M.-level position where specific coursework is a screening criterion.

Each entry gets employer, city and state, your title, and dates, then two to four bullets. Start every bullet with a verb — past tense for finished roles, present tense for current ones. Then name the document, the legal issue, and the audience or outcome. 'Researched various legal issues and drafted memoranda' tells a hiring partner nothing. 'Drafted a 15-page memorandum analyzing personal jurisdiction over a foreign parent corporation; the associate incorporated it into a motion to dismiss filed in the Northern District of Illinois' tells them you can do the job.

Quantify where numbers exist: number of clients interviewed, motions drafted, depositions summarized, hearings covered, people supervised, dollars administered. Do not disclose client names, matter-specific facts, or anything that could be confidential or privileged; describe the work at the level of 'a manufacturer in a products liability action.'

Non-legal experience belongs on the resume, especially for 1Ls. Translate it into the skills firms buy: writing volume, client contact, deadline pressure, supervision, handling money, working under a chain of command. Military service, teaching, nursing, engineering, and service industry work all read well when described concretely. If you have older or unrelated jobs and no room, group them under 'Additional Experience' with one line each. Do not create unexplained gaps by deleting jobs — an interviewer will ask.

Journal and moot court can live either under Education as sub-bullets or in a separate 'Law School Activities' section; both are standard. Give them their own entry with bullets if you hold a masthead position or did substantive work — as a journal editor, say how many articles you edited and cite-checked; as a competitor, name the competition and any award.

Clinics and externships go under Experience, not Activities. They are supervised legal work and often produce your best bullets: appearing in court under a student practice rule, drafting a petition, conducting an intake interview. Research assistant positions also go under Experience; name the professor and the subject matter, because a judge or academic hiring committee will recognize the field.

If you have a published note or article, add a 'Publications' section and cite it in Bluebook form for the appropriate document type — for a student note, that is your name, the designation 'Note,' the italicized title, volume, journal abbreviation, first page, and year in parentheses. If the piece is accepted but not yet out, add '(forthcoming 2026).'

The architecture stays the same; the emphasis moves. For firm OCI, foreground grades, journal, and any prior legal or business experience relevant to the practice group. For patent work, put your technical degree, any USPTO registration number, and your bench or industry experience in the top third of the page. For judicial clerkships, foreground writing: journal, RA work, judicial internships, legal writing awards, and any publication; OSCAR lets you attach a writing sample, transcript, and recommendations, so the resume itself stays one page and stays clean. For public interest and government, lead with clinics, volunteer work, language ability, and demonstrated commitment to the issue area; some career offices permit a second page here, so ask yours before assuming.

Federal agency applications submitted through USAJOBS are a separate document entirely. The federal resume format expects month-and-year dates, hours worked per week, supervisor names and phone numbers, and enough narrative detail to show you meet the specialized experience requirement in the job announcement. Do not submit your one-page OCI resume to a USAJOBS posting.

Timing note for 1Ls: most law schools independently maintain a rule barring 1Ls from contacting employers before December 1. NALP retired its old Principles and Standards in 2018 and replaced them with the Principles for a Fair and Ethical Recruitment Process, so the December 1 constraint now comes from your school, not from a national code. Have a polished resume by early November regardless.

Typos and inconsistent formatting are the top killer, because the resume is a writing sample. Read it backward, print it, and have your career office and one classmate proof it. Then check that every date, degree, honor, and title matches your transcript and your school's records — firms verify, and a misstatement can follow you into the bar application.

Other recurring problems: overstating language proficiency (say 'conversational' if you are conversational; interviewers do switch languages), listing Westlaw and Lexis as skills (assumed), padding an Interests line with 'reading, traveling, music,' and burying the substance of a job under vague verbs. Interests are legitimate interview fodder when they are specific and true — 'competitive powerlifting,' 'restoring vintage motorcycles,' 'USCF-rated chess.' Two to four is plenty.

Finally, check whether your school imposes a house format. Many career offices require a specific resume style for materials submitted through Symplicity or 12Twenty, require a career-office review before you bid on OCI, and prohibit certain disclosures. That rule beats any general advice here.