16 Legal Resume Examples, Associate Attorney to Paralegal

Open with a short legal summary

Write three to four sentences that name your role and years, your practice area or case scope, one or two systems you use, and the role you are targeting. For attorneys, put your bar admission in the first two lines; for paralegals, name your certification. Lead with what you have done, not what you want from the employer.

Litigation attorney with 6 years handling commercial disputes, admitted to the Texas Bar in 2018. Manages a docket of 30 active matters, drafts dispositive motions, and takes depositions. Skilled in Westlaw, Relativity, and CM/ECF e-filing. Targeting a senior litigation associate role.

Lead experience with matters, drafting, and results

The work a legal resume is hired for is concrete, so name it and attach one modest number to each bullet. Open every line with a strong verb, never "Responsible for".

• Caseload: state your active matters and their type, like managing 40 civil litigation matters through trial.
• Drafting: name what you draft, such as 60 motions and pleadings a year, and for paralegals add "under attorney supervision".
• Discovery: name the platform and scale, like coding a 300,000-document production in Relativity or Everlaw.
• Results: use outcomes the role can own, such as motions won or deals closed for attorneys, documents reviewed for support staff.

State bar admission and credentials the right way

This is the section a legal reviewer reads most carefully, so get the exact wording right.

• Attorneys: list bar admission with the state and year, like "Admitted to the California Bar, 2019", plus any federal courts.
• Recent grads: state exam status on a date, "Sat for the July 2026 New York Bar exam, results pending" or "recently admitted", never "currently sitting for".
• Attorneys: list your JD and law school, and add a board certification or specialty where you have one.
• Paralegals: list your certification (NALA Certified Paralegal or NFPA RP) and paralegal certificate, plus a notary commission if you hold one.

Keep the resume inside its scope (the honest rule)

The fastest way to get screened out is to claim work your role cannot own. Match the resume to what you are actually licensed and hired to do.

• A paralegal does not practice law, give legal advice, represent clients, or win cases. Use research, drafting under attorney supervision, discovery, cite-checking, docketing, and trial prep.
• Do not write "advised clients", "argued motions", or "negotiated settlements on behalf of the client" on a paralegal resume; those read as unauthorized practice.
• An attorney resume must be precise about bar status. A reviewer will check the state and year, so never round up or leave it vague.
• Claim outcomes your role owns: an attorney wins motions and closes deals; a paralegal supports the attorneys who do, and says so.

Match your skills to the posting's keywords

A legal skills list should read like the job description. Split it so a hiring manager and a parser both find what they need.

• Research and writing: Westlaw, LexisNexis, Bluebook citation, legal research, and brief or memo drafting.
• Litigation: e-discovery in Relativity or Everlaw, CM/ECF e-filing, PACER, docketing, and deposition or trial prep.
• Corporate: contract drafting, due diligence, data rooms, entity management, and CLM tools like Ironclad or DocuSign.
• Practice systems: case management like Clio, iManage, or NetDocuments, and immigration tools like Docketwise or USCIS filing.

Keep it to one clean, ATS-safe page

Law firms and corporate legal departments run applicant tracking systems, and the profession is conservative, so a clean one-page resume is the standard for most candidates.

• Use a single-column or simple two-column layout with standard headings a parser recognizes.
• Hold it to one page and lead with your most recent role in reverse-chronological order; very senior attorneys may run to two.
• Save as a PDF so the formatting holds, then run it through the ATS resume checker for a quick format pass.
• Swap the numbers in the templates above for your own caseload, filings, and systems; do not copy them as is.

What should a lawyer or attorney resume include?

A lawyer resume needs your contact details, a short summary, bar admission, work history in reverse-chronological order, education with your JD, and a skills list. State bar admission with the state and year, like "Admitted to the California Bar, 2019", because it is the first thing a reviewer checks. Lead each role with your caseload and results: matters managed, motions drafted and won, depositions taken, and deals closed. Name your tools, such as Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Relativity. Keep it to one clean page for most candidates.

What do you put on a paralegal resume?

A paralegal resume leads with the support work attorneys hire for: legal research, drafting under attorney supervision, discovery and e-discovery, document review, cite-checking to Bluebook, docketing, e-filing, and trial or deposition prep. Name your certification, such as a NALA Certified Paralegal (CP) or NFPA RP, and your paralegal certificate. Add the systems you use, like Relativity, Westlaw, and Clio. Keep every bullet inside paralegal scope: a paralegal does not practice law, give legal advice, or represent clients, so never write "advised clients" or "argued motions".

How do I list bar admission on a resume?

List bar admission with the state and the year you were admitted, like "Admitted to the Illinois Bar, 2015", and add any federal courts, such as "U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois". Put it near the top, in the summary or a short credentials line, because a legal reviewer looks for it first. If you are a recent graduate, state your exam status precisely and on a date: "Sat for the July 2026 New York Bar exam, results pending" or "recently admitted to the Washington Bar in 2025". Never write "currently sitting for the bar", since an exam is sat once, on a date.

What is the difference between a lawyer resume and a paralegal resume?

The difference is scope and credentials. A lawyer resume states bar admission and claims work an attorney owns: arguing and winning motions, negotiating settlements, closing deals, and advising clients. A paralegal resume states a paralegal certification instead of bar admission and stays within supervised work: research, drafting under attorney supervision, discovery, cite-checking, docketing, and trial prep. A paralegal does not practice law or represent clients, so a paralegal resume never claims to have argued a motion or won a case; it supports the attorneys who do.

How do I write a legal resume with no experience?

Lead with the legal work you have done in school or in a supervised role. A recent JD leads with bar admission or exam status, a summer associate role, a judicial externship, and a law-school clinic where you worked under faculty supervision. A new paralegal leads with an ABA-approved certificate, an internship, and any drafting or research done under attorney supervision. Fill the page honestly with a relevant award or pro bono volunteering rather than padding. The entry-level attorney and career-changer examples above show the shape.

How long should a legal resume be?

One page for most candidates. Associates, paralegals, and recent graduates should keep a single, skimmable page led by their most recent role. Very senior attorneys with a long trial record or a book of business may run to two pages, but never longer. Keep the roles and results that matter for the job you are targeting, and summarize or drop older, unrelated positions to make room for caseload, filings, and the systems the posting names.