LLM Applicants: Organizing Resume Sections

There are three primary differences that separate the LLM resume from resumes for other programs: the ordering of sections, the inclusion of additional sections, and the overall length of the document.

1) Ordering the Sections on the Page

Your academic background and performance is a very important part of your overall LLM application. In some cases that I have seen it is even more directly related to the LLM experience that recent working experience. For this reason, I have often suggested to former clients that they emphasize their academic accomplishment by featuring the education section at the top of the resume, just underneath the contact information and before the professional experience - even if this puts the entire document out of reverse chronological order.  The difference may not seem like a lot - after all both education and experience will appear in the document - but the impact is to me strong and especially so for applicants with a strong academic background. Reordering in this way can lead to a very good first impression for the resume reader.

2) Inclusion of additional sections

The LLM resume should be made up of the same sections that would be found in a normal resume, namely: contact information, education, professional experience and additional.  However a strong LLM resume can also include additional sections, each of which add value by being relevant to the academic rigors of the LLM.  These sections can include Academic Publications or Academic Presentations.  Each will give the reader a strong understanding of the applicant's academic experience. They can also help the reader to see the particular legal fields in the which the applicant has academic experience or focuses on in their work.

3) Length

I feel strongly that a good resume is a 1-page document, as I have written before.  I feel the same is true for the LLM resume: a strong presentation of professional and academic skills is best done over one single page, where just the most relevant accomplishments are included. A resume that goes slightly over 1 page can be cut down by reformatting or simply removing some additional section contents (which are sometimes less important for LLM applications). However, I have in my experience seen some applicants with enough content spanning education, professional experience, academic publications and presentations to warrant a 2-page document, and so certainly the resume can be formatted to achieve this in a way that is pleasing to the eye and easy to read.  

John Couke

john.couke@gmail.com

Mixing Responsibilities and Accomplishments in the Resume

This post is cross-posted in my new "Next Step Resumes" blog, that is focused on providing resume advice for people aiming for the next step (job or school) in their life.

I am often asked how to combine accomplishments with responsibilities in a well-organized and easy-to-read resume.

Accomplishments are the attention-grabbing and impactful things you have done. Describing your responsibilities, on the other hand, helps to make the nature and scope of your job clear. 

Describing Responsibility:

Let's use a management consulting position as an example. In this case, the job description is obvious, something like "provide management consulting to clients".  This information is not necessary on your resume.  But detailing the nature of clients, for instance, could be more useful, and add a new layer of detail: "responsible for planning strategy for automotive supply companies; specialize in cross-border acquisition cases".  In this case, the explanation of the responsibility that comes with this particular job serves to add detail and focus. So, thus far we have this information ready for the resume:

Management ConsultantResponsible for planning strategy for domestic heavy equipment and automotive manufacturers; specialize in cross-border acquisition cases

Describing an Accomplishment:

This is the core of your resume.  In any job, you want to show the key accomplishments you have had that impacted your customers and organization.  This is the best way for you to represent what you have done, and provides the most effective basis for the reader of your resume to assess your career. Using the same management consulting example, our consultant may have helped a client purchase an overseas parts supplier:  "Led multinational team of 4 completing due diligence on target as key part of US$35M purchase of French automotive parts supplier". This would give us this:

Management Consultant

Responsible for planning strategy for domestic heavy equipment and automotive manufacturers; specialize in cross-border acquisition cases

• Led multinational team of 4 completing due diligence on target as key part of US$35M purchase of French automotive parts supplier

The completed example leads with a title, and then offers a description (i.e. job responsibility) and then has accomplishments as bullet points.  This is one effective way to include both types of information on the resume.

Questions:

1) Doesn't listing both responsibilities and accomplishments create too much overlap between the two?

Answer: It is natural for there to be some overlap, as your responsibilities should be connected to your accomplishments in some way. If you feel that the responsibility line is totally and completely redundant, obviously you can remove it, and just focus on the accomplishments.

2) Won't this method take up a lot of space on the resume?

Answer: It is most effective to list responsibility for recent positions, positions where the responsibility is important detail, or for positions in which the nature of the work may be unclear.  I'd recommend not listing detailed responsibility for older positions, especially starting positions.  If you were a "Junior Marketing Analyst" 5 or 6 years ago, for instance, I think the responsibility description would be less necessary, although the accomplishments would still be important.

John Couke

john.couke@gmail.com