Legal Assistant Resume: Free Template & Real Examples

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As a Legal Assistant, you know how to prepare a legal case. However, can you make a case for being hired? Luckily, our well-written resume template will provide the perfect defense for you. With it, you can create an organized resume perfect for anyone in the legal field.

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ResumeGiants » Examples » Legal Assistant Resume

If you want to stand out from the crowd, it’s imperative that you have an impressive resume from the get-go. When it comes to the law – be it the judge or the HR – there’s nothing like making a solid and professional first impression.

Competition is fierce in this industry, and you’ll want to start off on the right note. Certain skills can set you apart and send you higher up a prospective list when lawyers are looking to hire assistants.

But if your resume turns out well, you could have a lucrative, fast-paced, and fulfilling career ahead of you as a legal assistant. 

This ResumeGiants guide explains everything you need to know to create a killer resume as a legal assistant, including: 

• How to create a resume that goes beyond your recruiter’s expectations
• Things you should know about legal assistant qualifications for resume writing
• Using work experience and job descriptions to optimize your document
• How to incorporate your skill set
• How to use a sample legal assistant resume as a guide

To take even more advantage of our expert advice, remember to use our handy resume builder.

Do you need some additional help with your resume’s structure, content, or organization?

Check out our legal assistant resume sample, which we’ve put together to give you a better sense of what a good resume should look like.

Resume Example

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[Alex McDeere]

[Legal Assistant]

[12, Bendini Avenue, Memphis, TN 37501  |  945-726-7281 |   mcdeere.a@gmail.com]

Summary

Solution-oriented legal assistant with experience in research, writing, and patent infringement. Worked as a legal secretary at Watson, Watson & Holmes, and later as a legal assistant at Grisham & John’s. Have been a legal assistant for 2 years and have witnessed around 20 cases. Published pieces in Metro magazine and The Michigan Mail as a freelance and law journalist. Seeking to use my knowledge and expertise to provide a unique approach to Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.

Experience

Legal Assistant

08/2019 to Current

Grisham & John’s | Memphis, TN

• Prepared pleadings and motions, organized paperwork, filed court documents, and arranged depositions.
• Maintained calendar for filing deadlines, videoconferences and appointments, depositions, and court dates.
• Drafted discovery requests, including those for jury duty, interrogations, court admissions, and copies.
• Communicated effectively with clients, paralegals, attorneys, court officials, law clerks, and judges.
• Transcribed dictation and reviewed all incoming and outgoing mail.

• Prepared and formatted 6 litigation briefs. 
• Drafted 400+ professional letters, ensuring 100% accuracy.
  

Legal Secretary

01/2017 to 07/2019

Watson, Watson & Holmes | Memphis, TN

• Maintained calendars and oversaw heavy client call volume
• Prepared litigation papers and closed paperwork for settled claims
• Communicated constantly with attorneys to prep documentation for pleading
• Organized and maintained legal assistants’ schedules, seeing a 23% decrease in missed appointments

Education

Paralegal Studies

Duckworth Community College | Springtown, IL

2013 – 2016

• Graduated with honors at 3.6 GPA.
• Relevant Coursework: Legal Research Certificate Course, Court Management and Documentation, Intellectual Property Infringement Class

Skills

• Collaboration
• Time management
• Organization
• Legal Document Preparation
• Transcription
• Legal Terminology
• Spreadsheets
• Videoconferencing
• Scheduling

Conferences

• NALS Conference 2021 – IP & Patent Panel
• NALS Conference 2020

Publications

• Abiding in Hiding – Article on patent mix-ups in Metro magazine (2019)
• Interviewed by Harvey Specter on the Suits blog – spoke about IP theft (2021)

You’re welcome to use the free downloadable template above along with plenty of other pointers below.

Consider spending time look at similar samples for more inspiration if you feel you need it, like our Paralegal Resume writing guide.

If you want your job application to make a significant impression, you’ll need to pick a professional resume format that’s right for you.

What skills or qualities do you have that make you a good Legal Assistant?

Answering that question will help you pick the ideal format for your resume.

For example, you may want to show off your legal experience or different research and document filing skills. If you’re more experienced you can highlight that first, if not, skills is probably the way to go.

Unless you have decades of experience that you must present and fill up space, most resumes should, preferably, be no more than one page long.

Your resume should contain all the key details about you that you want a prospective employer to know, such as:

• Personal information and how to get in touch with you (this should be quite prominent on your resume)
• A resume overview
• Your qualifications and experience
• Your soft skills and hard skills
• Additional material demonstrating your suitability for the position

A reverse-chronological arrangement, according to most individuals, makes it straightforward to arrange each of these parts consistently and clearly.

In reverse chronological structure, you begin each section by listing your latest employment details, followed by your second most recent, and so on.

The Specifics of Formatting

Here are a few additional things to consider when you create your resume:

• Fonts: 
  • Choose a legible, sophisticated, and tidy font style and size. While fonts might help you customize your resume, they must never overpower it; make it clean and easy to read.

• Margins: 
  • A standard 1″ margins will be sufficient. Make sure your resume has breathing space from the edges so that the text doesn’t seem cluttered or cramped. A wall of text may seem like it makes your resume more robust, but it can actually turn off some people from taking the time to read all of it.

• Line spacing: 
  • If the information on your resume is difficult to see or if it feels like the text blends together, you could try using a greater line spacing number. Some individuals may use double spacing if they have less information to fill up the page. As a general rule of thumb, however, single spacing is usually sufficient to achieve this purpose.

• File type: 
  • Unless the firm you’re applying to has specified otherwise, you should save and email your resume as a PDF file. This is the golden standard to keep the layout consistent regardless of how the reader views it. It can also help when your resume is read by ATS systems before being passed on to the HR team.

If you want to dive even deeper into how to write the perfect resume for a legal assistant post, we’ve got you covered. We’ve designed a plethora of simple yet attractive resume templates, each of which can be customized to build an effective document.

Irrespective of which one you write, you’ll want your legal assistant resume summary or objective to be unique and attention-grabbing.

Your resume summary or objective is often the first thing potential employers see. It also provides an at-a-glance section for them and is often your resume in a nutshell.

A resume summary describes your previous professional accomplishments and experiences, making it ideal for people who are already working in the area.

The emphasis of a resume objective, on the other hand, is on what a prospective employer is searching for and how your abilities may help. 

In order to write either one, you’ll need to figure out how to compress your essential arguments into a few, strong phrases.

It may take some time and practice to get it right. We recommend putting all of your thoughts in one section, which will appear to be somewhat lengthy at first, but you can easily narrow it down from there, and you’ll get better at it over time.

You’ll need to to rewrite or tweak this text each time that you update your resume when you change position.

Legal Assistant Resume Summary Example

Note that an excellent resume summary for a legal assistant’s resume accomplishes precisely what its name implies: it compiles all a recruiter wants to know about your work experience, education and qualifications.

It’s preferable if you can offer more particular instances and facts. Of course, you don’t want things to get overly verbose, so concentrate on the most important points.

We’ve prepared some wrong and right legal assistant resume summary examples to demonstrate how tangible evidence of your accomplishments may create a great final result.

Take notice of both the poor examples and the stronger ones in each case, and put yourself in the shoes of a potential employer – Does it describe legal assistant responsibilities and demonstrate that the individual in question is one that stands out from the crowd? Or does it leave a recruiter wanting more?

There’s something missing here in this summary and that’s data. If you decide to write a summary, you should include a success rate or number of cases successfully closed or other similar statistics. 

Without a piece of data like that the summary lacks clarity when it comes to how successful the candidate was in their 4 years as a Legal Assistant.

In this case, the candidate explains exactly what they did and included all the necessary data. The example even shows how successful they were in their previous position.

How to Write an Entry-Level Resume Objective

If you are an entry-level candidate, resume objectives are ideal since they don’t rely on previous work experience or achievements to demonstrate your worth.

The objective is targeted to what a recruiter is seeking and what you can provide in response, regardless of if you do not have any relevant work experience just yet.

So what is a good objective for a Legal Assistant resume? How should you write one?

Pay close attention to what is required from candidates while writing your resume for a legal assistant position.

For example, stressing that you have the specific talents they are looking for, might help you stand out as a potential candidate even if you have no prior legal practice experience.

Examples: Entry-Level Legal Assistant Objective

Let’s look at some more instances of resume objectives that work and those that don’t. Keep in mind that the style you want to achieve is one that is precise and clear.

Here are the problems with this objective. It lacks a clear career goal and specificity about unique experiences or skills. Additionally, it includes irrelevant skills and does not show an eagerness to contribute.

This is a much better example. It provides specific examples of the candidate’s experience, such as volunteering at a specific law firm and serving as a notary for two years. 

It also quantifies their accomplishment (maintaining approximately 400 transactions), which gives concrete proof of their ability to handle responsibilities. The objective also doesn’t forget to show off the candidate’s administrative competencies.

When it comes to your resume, the work experience section is where things get really competitive – and diverse. The key component of your resume where you may demonstrate your qualifications and achievements is the experience section.

You don’t know where your competitors have had their work experience, so you’ll want to make a good pitch for yourself here.

However, you should also take notice of the precise qualities your potential employer values in order to convey this information in a way that increases your chances of landing an interview or appointment letter.

In general, one of the best things you can do before applying for a job is research the firm you will be working for and figure out what type of values they are looking for on their team. You could even consider reaching out to current or former members of the firm on LinkedIn.

Describing your job descriptions and experiences in a manner that connects to these criteria can help portray you the ideal candidate for interview.

Legal Assistant Resume Examples: Experience

Here are some examples of work experience sections, one that is well-written and the other that isn’t as detailed.

Neither can really be called poor, but one does a superior job of detailing exactly what you did instead of just giving a general summary.

Although this entry includes some good keywords, it is missing key details. Just like in your opening statement, you have to be specific and provide data too. Unfortunately, this example just doesn’t cut it.

Any employer reading this will have a clear idea of what the candidate’s responsibilities were in their previous position (‘Managed’, ‘Coordinated’). What’s more, the numbers demonstrate they can efficiently contribute to the law firm that they are applying to. 

If you are an experienced Legal Assistant make sure that your experience section looks like this

An Entry-Level Resume: The Experience Section

You don’t need a ton of experience to produce an eye-catching final result when making a legal assistant resume.

Use your experience area to highlight your areas of expertise. Focusing on what has helped you become an excellent potential legal assistant is what you want to target, so try and ensure your job descriptions reflect that.

Here are a couple of examples to help you achieve that:

Here’s what you shouldn’t do: only add minimal info about any of your previous internship or volunteer job.

It’s essential to show off your capabilities, even for unpaid positions, and this example doesn’t do that.

As you can see, there’s much more information present in the description. There is data, which shows how the candidate was effective in organizing legal documents and conducting interviews. 

These pieces of information give an employer a better idea about what the candidate currently does that makes them valuable to a law firm.

Education sections may be difficult to handle; after all, how can one make experiences from years ago feel relevant to a current resume?

While it may not appear so, your education is important. It demonstrates that you’re not just competent, but also that you’ve dealt with a variety of problems and tasks.

Most positions in law require a college diploma, so emphasizing your education and any strengths there could prove to be very beneficial. This is because, in a law firm, you will use many similar skills to education, such as organization, reading, writing, and study.

Some companies may even demand a high school certificate or similar educational experience as a prerequisite. Any additional projects, relevant coursework from college, or other training you might have should be included on your legal assistant resume.

Let’s look at a few extra things you might want to consider adding to yours:

• Specify any coursework that is relevant. Demonstrate how the classes you completed helped you develop skills that you can use in the job.
• Describe your key accomplishments. You’re likely to get extra credit  if any particular achievements are related to the tasks and abilities shown in your resume.
• Write down any noteworthy participation or involvements. Demonstrating that you can manage a range of responsibilities in a real-life circumstance proves that you’re a flexible professional.

Examples: Education Section

If you’re looking to keep the resume’s education section interesting and informative for the recruiter to increase your chances of potential employment, consider the following examples:

This is not clear enough. If you are an employer you have no idea which relevant courses the candidate took, so why mention it at all?

Remember to be specific.

This is much more like it. Here, the candidate not only lists their high GPA but the specific relevant legal courses that they completed.

Skills are absolutely crucial when it comes to creating a professional legal assistant resume. 

Any Legal Assistant or other type of legal professional writing their resume might wonder “How do you write up your legal skills on a resume?”

You should include a range of hard and soft talents. Hard skills are ones that are relevant to your industry and are typically gained on the job, while soft skills are more general skills that usually apply to most, if not all, jobs.

We recommend including 5 to max.10 skills; if you try to put too many skills and attributes on your resume, it could come across as crowded and disorganized – something you definitely don’t want to convey when applying for a legal assistant.

Take time to think. Have you developed good analytical skills that you could add to this resume section? What about organization, time management and teamwork? Here are some examples that you might inlude for this profession.

While a strong legal assistant resume will include all the elements we’ve just discussed, the best will need to exceed expectations, and it’s often the one that gets its maker hired.

Going above and beyond to involve things like “Other” sections on your resume, can go a long way when trying to impress a recruiter as it adds more value and shows more about who you are.

Sample “Other” Sections for a Legal Assistant Resume

When writing an “Other” section, try to approach it with the same mindset and seriousness as you would the rest of your resume. That is to say, precise facts, precision, and relevancy are the most important considerations when writing this section.

Don’t look at this section as simply a miscellaneous or bonus section.

It’s equally important and is often more closely looked at than you might think; once recruiters have realized you put in the extra effort to spruce up your legal assistant resume, they’ll appreciate your work ethic and determination.

This will put you at an advantage and set you apart from the other candidates. However, don’t be tempted to exaggerate or lie on this part of your resume, or any other part of it for that matter. You’ll only regret it if you make the interview and they ask you further details!

Consider also adding links to this section so that anyone reading your resume can click on your articles, pages, or portfolios and read them if they’d like.

If you decide to list your publications it would be a good idea to explain what the subject matter was, unlike in this example.

This is a good example of how to explain any publications that you may want to list on your resume as they explain exactly what they are about.

A common question that many aspiring legal assistants ask is: What sort of additions can I make to my legal assistant resume to make it stand out?

Well, here are some common examples, but don’t be afraid to incorporate whatever seems right to you, especially if you feel it enhances your skill set and knowledge of the law.

Conferences

In the field of law, tens of hundreds of company conferences take place over the year.

These are often compulsory to go to once you are part of a firm, so if you already have a few conferences under your belt, putting them down on your application already gives you a head start.

Publications

If you have any kind of published or freelance work in a journal, blog, or any other form of academia, you can go ahead and add it to your resume. Don’t forget to mention the topic or theme you’ve written or spoken about.

If it relates to the position you’re applying for, be sure to highlight that fact.

Additional Activities

If you partake in any additional activities which you feel are relevant to a new job, like being a member of a club, moot court, or volunteering for any organizations, write them down.

You can also mention activities like reading and writing since they heavily influence this sort of position.

• Refer to our sample legal assistant resume above and download the template in Word if you would like some guidance with the format.
• A resume summary or objective (if you’re an entry level candidate) , experience, education, and bonus “Other” sections should all be included in a legal assistant resume that exceeds expectations.
• Use powerful action words and vocabulary, concise wording, and include detailed examples to make a strong, appealing resume.
• When it comes to communicating legal assistant work experience on a resume, the format matters; a reverse-chronological format helps you to focus on the most relevant and important information first.
• Adhering to a clean, straightforward resume layout binds everything together and allows your resume’s content to make for easy, valuable viewing. It also showcases your professionalism as a legal assistant.

We hope you found these resume tips and techniques helpful and that they will help you get that legal assistant job that you are going for!

If you want to make life easier for yourself and take your resume writing to the next level, our resume builder can help you build the ideal legal assistant resume with just a few clicks!