Here's why: as 1Ls apparently we won't even be able to meet with Career Services until November, after the 2Ls go through their OCI and everything. It's against the rules. And as such, we will be gearing up for finals when the proverbial poop hits the fan. I don't know about you, but I'd personally rather worry about getting good grades than figuring out what firms will have SA positions open for 1Ls...you can't get an SA position anywhere if you bomb all your exams!
But, if you don't worry about firms and résumés and all the good stuff then, you'll be seriously behind the curve, and probably won't be able to get any interest from potential employers. No bueno. It's a real Catch-22.
...Unless...You get a head start during the summer leading into 1L!
Sure you don't know your GPA, or class standing, but you won't know that in November and December, when you should start sending out your letters and résumés, anyway. You can still learn about the different firms that you might be interested in targeting, look at geographic areas where you'd be likely to find a job or where you'd be interested in living, determine judges that might take you on as an intern or clerk, etc. That's all stuff you can do poolside with a little internet searching and a margarita in hand...and will be a future 0L Prep post on the blog.
Another thing that's super important to do is to reformat and update your résumé. It's not enough just to add your summer employment onto the bottom, or change your degree from "expected" to official (no matter how satisfying that may be). Legal résumés are a very different, very specific animal, and you will most likely have to completely overhaul your current résumé.
The best way to get a jump start on this is to just generally reformat. The Career Services office at your school will help you with the particulars, but it will be easier to do that if you at least have the correct bare-bones there to work with. I've found two or three guidelines particularly helpful when it comes to drafting a legal résumé:
- The Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has prepared this little write up all about what a legal résumé is, should do, and should look like. It doesn't have any samples or examples, but is still good.
- Syracuse University College of Law has done something similar, if a little more exhaustive. They have a good list of action verbs that may be helpful, especially to people who haven't ever really prepared a résumé before. They also have a couple of different sample résumés at the end, which is both helpful and entertaining (the student is named Elle Woods Secondyear. It made me giggle).
- The George Washington University Law School Career Development Office has a power point presentation that they gave all about the legal résumé. It's helpful to take a look at, even though it does repeat a lot of the same information.
Overall, it seems to me that a lot of the fluff from normal undergrad résumés needs to be cut out. Legal résumés tend to be much more conservative than résumés in other fields, and as such need to strictly follow the conventional and accepted guidelines.
No silly "skills" section (I would say only language fluency or something that will really catch the eye of an interviewer without casting aspersions on your commitment to education/legal work). No crazy fonts -- no matter how pretty (sad face). Don't put any sort of high school education or achievements on there. And definitely DON'T go over two pages -- in fact, try your very hardest to get it down to one page.
You only get a first impression on a résumé, and that first impression only lasts about twenty seconds, so you really need to make sure that your legal résumé is easy to read and aesthetically pleasing. Getting it down to a good format and decent length now will make your life so much easier come November, when your Career Services will sit down and go over it with you.
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