CV Review for a Postgraduate Law Student
in Careers Advice, CV Writing

CV Review for a Postgraduate Law Student

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment provides free CV reviews, provided you are happy for your CV to be posted on the internet with our advice.

This is a review for postgraduate law student in Bristol.

Postgraduate_Law_Student_CV

Length of CV

A note on length – it is unnecessary now to keep CVs strictly to 2 pages. Most CVs are viewed online these days. It should be as long as needed and will get longer as career progresses. 3 to 4 pages is quite normal as long as it is clear, concise and not full of waffle.

Personal details – good, nice to see inclusion of LinkedIn link

Personal profile

“An enthusiastic, hard-working and committed postgraduate law student with an interest in property law” – good description that tells a potential employer what they need to know. Must remember to amend depending on what role you are applying for as wouldn’t sound good if you were applying for family roles for instance.

“I successfully secured and completed five work experience placements.” I’d leave this out as makes you sound a bit big-headed.

“I am capable of working in a fast-paced environment and meeting strict deadlines. I possess great research, organisational and communication skills” – this is too subjective, anyone could say this, no proof and I’d miss this line out too.

Final sentence is fine.

Core qualifications

I wouldn’t have this separate as repeated in your education section plus you’ve already said what you are in your personal profile.

Key Skills – again danger is that this is all very subjective and unless you give evidence anyone can say it to pad out a CV. Better would be to incorporate these into your Work Experience section. If there are key skills which you can evidence emphasise them under the relevant role. For instance you mention about “organised and helped a team of trainees in order to achieve maximum efficiency” – put this under the relevant job.

Education

Consider putting this as the first section of your CV under your personal profile. Leave out the percentage grade and instead indicate you got a 2:1. As your career/post grad education progresses won’t be necessary to list all your modules but if you did an interesting and relevant dissertation topic can be worth adding in.

You haven’t mentioned any A Levels or GCSEs. Might want to put a note about secondary school as at the moment I’m suspicious as to what you did prior to college. Not necessary to list all subjects and grades – just something along the lines of 9 GCSE’s grades A to C.

Work Experience

Split the section up into 2 sections: Legal Work Experience and Non-Legal Work Experience. Put the Legal Work Experience section first. Put as much detail as you can into this section (use some of what you wrote under Key Skills. Read through and make sure it is clear to the reader what sector of law you were working in.

Non-Legal Work Experience section

Keep details here to a minimum as not relevant to a legal career.

Consider adding in 2 further sections:

Additional Skills

You can add into this section details of any languages your are fluent in, computer skills and in particular any legal software packages/case management systems relevant to law you may have used, typing speed if greater than around 50 wpm (loads of free typing tests online – just Google them), plus add in is you have a driving licence.

Interests

An important section as adds colour to a CV, makes you more human and can make you stand out from the crowd. Also you never know who a particular interest strikes a cord with. BUT not enough to put things like reading, keeping fit – need to add a bit more e.g what genre you like reading/fav book, how do you keep fit – are you in any sports team etc

Finally, triple-check CV for spelling errors, missed apostrophes and errant spaces. Get someone else to check it as well.

For details of our paid and free CV services please click the link below.

Jonathan Fagan

Jonathan Fagan LLM FIRP is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment. He has been recruiting solicitors and legal support staff for law firms and in house legal departments for over 20 years and handles roles from junior fee earners through to partners and law firm sales/purchases. A non-practising solicitor on the Roll since 2000, he is also the author of a number of legal career books, which are available at www.ten-percent.uk. You can contact Jonathan at cv@ten-percent.co.uk