Customer Reviews

Best Resumes for Attorneys

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This should be entiled "Best Resumes for Attorneys at the Top of your Class, (As for the rest of you, we're not concerned)." Hey, everyone knows law is extremely competitive, but shouldn't there be something in this book for someone not in top 20% or above. Every sample resume involves being at the top of your class. Obviously, I didn't graduate in the stratosphere but I am far from being alone, 80+%. Also, I've been able to eke out a decent practice despite this. I've used this book for the past few years and it is helpful because there is a large selection of sample resumes and cover letters to choose from, but I've often chuckled to myself when doing so, because for having such a large selection of examples for so many areas of the law, it just deals with the "elite." It never addresses anyone who might be below this standard. That is why I think that its use is somewhat limited and not realistic.

A resume is tricky to write, at best. You have to highlight years' worth of accomplishments at different jobs and possibly even different fields in a page or two. Attorney resumes can be particularly complex, as many of us worked for some time at a first career before coming to the law, and need some way to handle that time of our lives in a legal resume. Further, many attorneys have both in-house and firm experience, and will want to tailor the content of their resumes accordingly. In addition, the type of resume a corporation might want to see may be a lot different from what a law firm expects to see.

Given the complexity of the topic, one would expect a book entitled "Best Resumes for Attorneys" to provide some insight into these issues. Instead, the book fails utterly, providing instead a "Best Resume for Attorneys." All experiences are mashed into a bland one-page format that strips out virtually anything that might distinguish you from anyone else. The authors waste precious page space hectoring the reader about how certain example resumes are bad because of formatting errors, as if this were a secretarial handbook rather than a book for professionals. Every example of a so-called "best resume" is virtually identical to every other example provided.

If you read this, your brain will actually expel knowledge it already has about good writing and job search tactics. Avoid entirely. This isn't even worth checking out from the library, because even touching the cover of this book might taint your ability to write like a human being and put together any kind of resume that might actually get you a job.

This is probably the worst book I've ever reviewed on the subject. Sure, it's great if you are an attorney from a top 10 school at the top 20% of your class, but still are not bright enough to figure out the most basic of tactics. True, the gatekeepers for the elite jobs are not authorized to think outside of the box, and therefore resumes based on these tips will appeal to them; on the other hand, there is no reason that these attorneys should have to put more than a cursory search together as these employers will be chasing them. As to the rest of us presumably unqualified professionals, the book is of absolutely no relevance. Based on this, I presume that the authors (legal recruiters) are likewise only interested in finding jobs for the papered best and brightest.

This book provides good resume templates. I then used the "Vault Reports Guide to America's Top 50 Law Firms" to send resumes to law firm hiring managers and to prepare for my interviews.