We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
Thanks in advance and any help is appreciated :)
2. Don't fill your CV with isolated instances like "volunteered with hospitality in 2018 sports fest", "attended legal literacy program in 2019". No one cares. If you have consistently done it year after year (such as attended 20+ legal literacy programmes, incharge of hospitality for sport fest for 4 years) then it makes sense. One single isolated volunteering experience over a matter of 2-3 days does not.
Be as clear as possible. Reverse chronological order through out. Make the names of places you’ve worked at and the dates bold. If you only assisted in something say you assisted in doing x,y,z. Tell us what was the result of your work- a pil, a transaction, a research paper whatever. Use bullet points and not paragraphs. Group academics/ work experience/ research and writing and extra curricular work separately.Don’t lie- it’s so easy to catch the lies. Keep it simple and only give out pertinent information. Update it regularly- cut info that happened too long ago that doesn’t add value. No one needs to know you won some debate competition in high school, or that you like to travel and do amateur photography- this stuff takes up valuable real estate and adds nothing. And after you graduate and get your first job- you should cut all the internships straight out.
No fancy design stuff. No real need for Colors or other design elements. TNR12 line spacing 1.5, justify the body and left align the dates. maintain the same font throughout. No borders. If it’s more than 1 page at the start of your career- you need to cut. Maybe if you’re a mid level academic it can be more than 2 pages with all your publications but other than that there’s no reason to drag on for too long. No faff basically.
My suggestion is, unless your marks put you in the above average percentile, just don't include them (unless specifically asked for). So many people forget that providing your marks is not a necessity. Just format your CV in a way that education column is your college name, batch year and specialisation.
I was a way below average score getter in college but had a good internship and publication record - there was no way I would put by marks up top for the recruiter to get biased. If they really need to see your marks, they will come back and ask for it. In my case (3 tier 1 job switches later), no one has so far :)
(For context, I am a first generation lawyer with no family & friends in the field. Got my internship through lots of pestering and networking)