Legal assistants are the backbones of any good law firm. But, let’s be honest—being a legal assistant can be one of the most stressful jobs out there. Dealing with tight deadlines, difficult clients, and demanding attorneys all day is taxing at the best of times.
You shouldn’t have to worry about creating the perfect resume, too.
We analyzed countless legal assistant resumes. Our analysis revealed what resume components are absolutely critical for catching the eye of hiring managers and, more importantly, the most common mistakes to avoid on your resume.
Read through these five free legal assistant resume samples and complimentary resume writing tips to help get you more interviews in 2023.
Why this resume works
- Easily determine whether or not you’d like to include a career objective on your legal assistant resume using the following tips:
- We recommend a career/resume objective when you’re going through a career change, or are just starting out and need to fill some white space on your resume. If this isn’t describing you, or your resume’s beginning to look a little cluttered, go ahead and skip the objective.
- If you decide to add one, the key is to make it highly specific to each job for which you apply.
- Include the job title you’re applying to, the name of the company, and very specific, relevant skills for that job.
- Having a blanket career objective that you crank out with all your applications can hurt your chances of landing an interview. Instead, use your prime resume space wisely by packing a meaningful punch with a tailored career objective for each application.
Why this resume works
- When writing your senior legal assistant resume, few things are more important than including quantifiable metrics.
- Metrics are numerical measures of performance. When used well, they effectively and efficiently show (rather than tell) your capacity to perform on job expectations.
- Fortunately, sprinkling in some stats isn’t hard.
- You could potentially include numbers on client satisfaction ratings, the types of legal documents you provided, how many times you earned awards, any time you saved the firm by improving general organization, and numerous other ways you improved the firm’s efficiency, profit margins, or client experience.
- Crafting your perfect resume isn’t easy, but getting started is the hardest part!
- If you need a little help making the process easier while enhancing the quality of your finished resume, we’ve got your back with plenty of great resume examples for your perusal.
Why this resume works
- When you’re just starting out in your career, or are going through a career change, it can be tough to explain why hiring managers should give you a chance. Making your entry-level legal assistant resume compelling, however, doesn’t have to be hard.
- Almost any work experience can effectively demonstrate your value as a legal assistant.
- Sales jobs, restaurant work, administrative work, internships, and volunteer experience can effectively show key skills needed for the job like communication, teamwork, and organization.
- If you’ve just graduated and are light on professional work experience, you can even list school projects or relevant courses on your resume.
- When you include job titles that aren’t the legal assistant variety, just highlight your stellar reliability, organization, collaboration, and leadership abilities to show employers that your skills transfer to the legal world seamlessly.
Why this resume works
- “To create something exceptional, your mindset must be relentlessly focused on the smallest detail.”—Giorgio Armani
- Employers look for people who possess the necessary experience for the job and the qualities of a detailed, exceptional employee.
- Highlighting your attention to detail shouldn’t be limited to your resume skills section. Instead, take the time to bring your resume to grammatical flawlessness, and your resume formatting to a higher standard with the following tips:
- Keep punctuation consistent on your real estate legal assistant resume.
- For example, if you end some of your bulleted work experience with periods, you should end them all with periods.
- Similarly, keep tenses consistent, and avoid personal pronouns, except within your resume objective or resume summary.
- Start your work experience bullet points with strong action verbs like “collaborated,” “generated,” and “researched”, to name just a few.
- Use the active voice for a resume that’s easier to read and keeps the reviewer reading!
Why this resume works
- Wondering whether or not a resume summary will help you stand out from the crowd?
- If you boast at least ten years of expertise in an industry, have unique certifications or specializations, and are willing to tailor it to the business (mention them by name) you’re applying to, we say go for it!
- Standing out from the crowd is important when it comes to your resume because:
- Employers use a tool called “Applicant Tracking Systems” (ATS) to weed out candidates before they even look at your personal injury legal assistant resume.
- They select keyword skills that are especially important to the job. Resumes that have some of these selected words will automatically be filtered into the “review group,” while those without enough matches get filed in “no man’s land.”
- To be in the winning pile, we suggest incorporating six to ten relevant key skills in your skills section from the job description, provided they truly describe you!
