Law Careers
Law CV Guidance for Early-Career Applications
A complete guide to structuring a law CV, writing bullet points that demonstrate real skills, and presenting your experience in the way law firm recruiters actually assess it.
EO Careers Team
If you are preparing applications for training contracts or vacation schemes, our Law Careers hub covers everything from firm types and salaries to the skills and strategies that make the difference in competitive applications.
Most law CVs that fail do not fail because the candidate lacks experience. They fail because the experience is framed badly, structured inconsistently, or presented in a way that makes a recruiter work too hard to find the evidence they are looking for. A strong law CV is not a list of things you have done. It is a curated, precisely framed argument that you are the kind of candidate this firm should interview.
This guide covers everything: structure, sections, length, bullet point technique, how to handle non-legal experience, and the specific mistakes that cost candidates interviews at competitive firms.
What recruiters are actually doing when they read your CV
Law firm recruiters at competitive firms read hundreds of CVs in a short window. The average time spent on a first read is seconds, not minutes. In that time, they are not absorbing every detail. They are scanning for signals: a strong academic record, relevant experience, evidence of the skills the role requires, and the absence of red flags (gaps, inconsistencies, sloppy formatting).
The implication is that your CV needs to work at two levels. At the scanning level, the structure and formatting should make the most important information immediately visible. At the reading level, the content of each bullet point should give the recruiter something specific and credible to hold onto.
A CV that passes the scan but fails on content will get you an interview and then let you down. A CV that has strong content buried in poor structure may not get a first read at all. Both levels need to be right.
Length and format
One page for students and recent graduates. This is not a suggestion. It is a professional norm in UK law firm recruitment. A second page at this stage almost always means the first page has not been edited tightly enough.
Use a clean, simple format:
Font: Times New Roman, Garamond, or Cambria at 10.5pt to 11pt. These read as professional in legal contexts. Avoid sans-serif fonts (Arial, Calibri) for formal legal CVs, and avoid anything decorative.
Margins: Standard (2.5cm) or slightly narrower (2cm). Do not go below 1.5cm or the page looks cramped.
Spacing: Consistent throughout. Use a small amount of space between sections to help the eye navigate.
Headers: Bold and slightly larger than body text. No need for colour or graphic elements.
No photo, no date of birth, no personal profile box unless explicitly requested.
A well-formatted CV in a standard word processor, structured clearly and edited tightly, consistently looks more professional than an over-designed template with coloured sidebars and skill rating bars. The latter signals that you are trying to compensate for weak content with visual noise. Recruiters notice.
Sections to include and in what order
The standard structure for a law CV at graduate or near-graduate level is:
Contact details
Education
Legal work experience (if you have any)
Work experience
Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility
Skills
Interests (optional)
The order reflects what law firm recruiters prioritise. Education comes first because academic record is a primary filter at this stage. Legal work experience comes before general work experience because it is more directly relevant. The structure signals that you understand what the firm is looking for.
Section by section: what to include and how to write it
Contact details
Name (larger, at the top), email address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile URL if your profile is complete and professional. No home address. No date of birth. No headshot.
Your email address should be professional. A university email or a firstname.lastname@gmail.com format is fine. A nickname-based address from secondary school is not.
Education
List in reverse chronological order (most recent first). For each entry include:
Institution and degree (or A-levels)
Dates
Classification or grades
Relevant modules or dissertation, if strong
University degree:
Include your degree classification (or predicted classification). If you have strong grades in specific modules relevant to the role (company law, contract, competition law for a commercial firm; public law or EU law for a government role), list them. A dissertation title is worth including if it is analytically strong and relevant.
If your overall classification is not as strong as you would like, consider whether strong individual module grades or a strong dissertation can provide more nuanced evidence of academic capability.
A-levels:
Include subjects and grades. If your A-level results are strong (ABB or above), list them in full. If they are mixed, list them but do not hide them. A gap where A-levels should be is more suspicious than modest grades.
GCSEs:
For most candidates, one line is enough: "10 GCSEs including Mathematics and English (grades A to B)" or equivalent. If your GCSEs include a high proportion of top grades, a slightly more detailed listing adds modest value. If they are weaker than your A-levels, a summary line is the right approach.
GDL, PGDL, or LPC:
If you have completed or are completing a conversion course or LPC, include it here with the institution, the year, and your grade or predicted grade. SQE preparation courses are worth listing if the provider is recognised.
Legal work experience
If you have any legal work experience, give it its own section above your general work experience. The separation signals to the recruiter that you have sought out legally relevant experience, which matters.
List in reverse chronological order. For each entry include:
Firm or organisation name
Your role
Dates (month and year)
Two to four bullet points describing what you did
The bullet points are where most candidates fall short. The default is to write job description language: "assisted with research," "observed client meetings," "supported the team." This tells the recruiter nothing they cannot infer from the job title.
Strong legal work experience bullets describe what you did specifically and what it demonstrates:
Weak: Assisted with legal research during a vacation scheme at Clifford Chance.
Strong: Researched the English law position on force majeure clauses in long-term supply contracts following recent post-pandemic case law, producing a research memo for a senior associate ahead of a client call. Identified a relevant Court of Appeal decision from 2023 that the team had not seen, which was incorporated into the advice.
The second version shows what you researched, why it mattered, what judgment you exercised (identifying a new case), and what the outcome was (it changed the advice). That is the difference between describing an activity and demonstrating a skill.
Types of legal work experience worth including:
Vacation schemes (by far the most valuable, list prominently)
Open days and insight events
First-year diversity and access schemes
Paralegal or legal assistant roles
Pro bono and legal clinic work
Shadowing at a solicitor's or barrister's office
Mini-pupillages
For each, be specific about what you did rather than what the programme involved generally. Recruiters know what a vacation scheme is. They want to know what you did on yours.
Work experience
Include all significant work experience, legal or otherwise. Retail, hospitality, customer service, tutoring, charity work, and any other employment all belong here if they provide genuine evidence of relevant skills.
The common mistake is listing the job title and dates with generic bullets that describe the role rather than what you demonstrated in it. The framing principle is the same as for legal experience: describe what you did specifically, the judgment or skill you applied, and the outcome where measurable.
For non-legal roles, the translation task is explicit: you need to identify the professional skill your retail, hospitality, or service experience demonstrates and describe it in those terms. "Worked at a coffee shop" is not useful. "Managed the morning queue during peak hours as the most experienced member of the opening team, maintaining service speed while handling three simultaneous complaints without supervisor involvement" demonstrates communication, composure under pressure, and judgment.
For a detailed guide to framing non-legal experience, see our article on turning retail experience into career-ready skills.
How much detail for older or less relevant roles:
A role from four or more years ago, or one that was brief and provides little transferable evidence, can be reduced to a single line (employer, role, dates) without bullet points. The goal is completeness without padding.
Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility
This section is where many strong candidates differentiate themselves, and where many others waste space on activities listed without any evidence of what they involve or what you contributed.
Include:
Mooting and advocacy competitions. Name the competition, your role, and any notable result. Mooting is directly relevant to legal practice (oral argument under pressure, responding to judicial questioning) and should be foregrounded.
Debating. Similar value to mooting. Include if you have competed at a meaningful level.
Legal clinics and pro bono work. Demonstrates commitment and, where client-facing, provides direct evidence of professional communication skills.
Student societies. Include if you held a meaningful role or contributed to a notable achievement. List the society, your role, the dates, and one or two bullets that describe what you did specifically.
Sports and teams. Team sports demonstrate collaborative working. A captaincy demonstrates leadership. Include if you played to a meaningful standard or held a position of responsibility.
Student publications and writing. If you have written for a student newspaper, law journal, or legal blog, include it. It demonstrates written communication and the ability to produce clear, audience-appropriate work to deadline.
For each activity, the same principle applies as everywhere else: specific over generic. "Member of the law society" tells a recruiter nothing. "Secretary of the law society, responsible for coordinating a panel event with three Magic Circle partners that attracted 200 students" tells them something.
Skills
A brief section covering:
Languages: List each language and your proficiency level (native, fluent, conversational, basic). Be honest. Claiming fluency in a language and then being unable to hold a conversation at interview is a significant problem.
Technical skills: Legal research databases (Westlaw, LexisNexis), document management systems, Excel, PowerPoint. Only include skills you can actually use competently.
Professional certifications: Any relevant qualifications (first aid, data protection, financial services) if applicable to the roles you are applying for.
Do not include generic claims like "strong communication skills," "excellent attention to detail," or "team player" in this section. These belong in your bullet points, demonstrated through specific experiences. In the skills section, they read as filler.
Interests
Optional. Include if your interests are genuine, specific, and add something to your profile that is not already covered. Two to three interests is plenty.
Good interests entries are specific: "following M&A deal activity in the technology sector" is more useful than "business news." "Competitive road cycling, currently training for a sportive" is more interesting than "sport." "Reading modern legal history, currently working through Joshua Rozenberg's writing on the Supreme Court" signals genuine intellectual engagement with the profession.
Avoid interests that are clearly included to seem well-rounded rather than because they are real. Recruiters can tell.
How to write bullet points that work
The bullet point is the basic unit of a CV. Every bullet should do three things:
State what you did (the task or action)
Show how you did it (the skill or judgment applied)
Give the outcome (what resulted, ideally with a concrete measure)
Not every bullet needs all three elements, but the more of them you include, the stronger the point. Here are worked examples across different types of experience:
Academic:
Weak: Wrote a dissertation on commercial arbitration.
Strong: Wrote a 12,000-word dissertation on the enforceability of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts under English law, arguing that the current judicial approach underweights consumer protection concerns. Awarded a distinction and cited by a tutor in subsequent teaching materials.
Legal work experience:
Weak: Attended client meetings during a vacation scheme.
Strong: Sat in on three client meetings across the corporate and finance seats during a two-week vacation scheme at Linklaters, drafting a post-meeting attendance note for the associate after each and identifying two follow-up questions from the client that had not been addressed, which the associate incorporated into the client email.
Extracurricular:
Weak: Participated in a mooting competition.
Strong: Reached the semi-final of the university's open mooting competition, arguing for the respondent in a negligence case involving pure economic loss. Received written feedback from the judge praising the cross-examination technique and the structure of the closing submission.
Part-time work:
Weak: Worked as a sales assistant at Boots.
Strong: Managed the customer services desk during weekend shifts, handling returns, complaints, and prescription enquiries simultaneously in a high-volume environment, and training two new starters during a period of high staff turnover.
The most common CV mistakes at competitive firms
Inconsistent formatting
Inconsistent bullet styles, mixed tenses, varying font sizes, and misaligned dates all signal a lack of attention to detail. In a profession where document accuracy is fundamental, this is taken seriously. Proofread your CV multiple times. Ask someone else to proofread it too.
Claiming skills without demonstrating them
"Excellent communication skills" in a skills section is not evidence of communication skills. Neither is "strong attention to detail" in a bullet point about a role where you processed invoices. Every skill claim needs to be backed by a specific, credible example somewhere in the CV.
Using job description language
"Responsible for," "assisted with," "involved in," and "supported the team" are job description phrases. They describe a role, not a contribution. Every bullet point should be in the first person, active voice, and describe what you specifically did rather than what your role involved generically.
Leaving out non-legal work experience
Students sometimes omit retail, hospitality, or other non-legal work experience from their CVs on the assumption that it is irrelevant. This is almost always the wrong decision. Non-legal experience often provides the best evidence of communication, resilience, and commercial judgment available. Omitting it creates gaps and wastes evidence.
Starting a personal statement with a cliché
If your CV has an opening paragraph beginning "I am a highly motivated and ambitious law student," remove it entirely. A summary or personal profile at graduate level almost always weakens rather than strengthens a CV. Use the space for additional experience or achievement.
Applying the same CV to every firm without tailoring
Your CV should be reviewed before each significant application. The content does not need to change dramatically, but the ordering and emphasis of bullet points can be adjusted to highlight the experience most relevant to each firm's practice areas and culture. A CV applying to a finance-focused firm should lead with analytical and numerical experience. One applying to a disputes-focused firm should foreground mooting and research skills.
A complete worked example
Here is how the same candidate's experience might look before and after applying the principles in this guide.
Before
Clifford Chance Vacation Scheme, Summer 2025
Spent two weeks in the corporate and finance teams
Attended meetings and helped with research
Worked on a live deal
Tesco, Sales Assistant, 2022 to present
Served customers
Worked as part of a team
Helped train new staff
University Law Society, Member, 2023 to present
Attended events
After
Clifford Chance Vacation Scheme, Corporate and Finance (Summer 2025)
Assisted a senior associate on a live leveraged buyout transaction, researching the English law treatment of earn-out provisions and drafting a summary memo that was shared with the client team.
Attended three client calls across corporate and finance seats, drafting attendance notes after each and identifying follow-up points that were incorporated into subsequent client correspondence.
Presented a short commercial awareness presentation on a recent FCA regulatory development to the graduate recruitment team as part of the vacation scheme assessment, receiving written feedback praising the clarity and depth of analysis.
Tesco Metro, Sales Assistant (September 2022 to present)
Managed customer complaints and returns as first point of contact during weekend shifts in a high-volume environment, resolving the majority without supervisor escalation.
Took primary responsibility for onboarding two new team members during a period of high staff turnover, producing a brief induction checklist that reduced the time before new starters could work independently.
Balanced consistent weekly shifts throughout three years of a law degree, including during examination and assessment periods, without missing commitments on either side.
University Law Society, Events Secretary (October 2023 to June 2025)
Coordinated a panel event with three Magic Circle partners and a senior in-house counsel, managing venue logistics, speaker liaison, and promotion to achieve an attendance of 180 students, the highest for any society event in two years.
Introduced a post-event feedback process that identified the topics students most wanted covered, which shaped the programme for the following academic year.
The difference is not the experience but the specificity and the framing. Every bullet in the second version tells a recruiter something concrete.
Want to put your CV to work in interviews?
Our Interview Question Bank contains the competency, motivational, and commercial awareness questions most commonly used at law firm assessment centres and partner interviews, with guidance on what strong answers look like for each. The strongest candidates are those who can speak to their CV with the same specificity and confidence in the room that it conveys on paper.
Related Articles
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Law Careers
Law CV Guidance for Early-Career Applications
A complete guide to structuring a law CV, writing bullet points that demonstrate real skills, and presenting your experience in the way law firm recruiters actually assess it.
EO Careers Team
If you are preparing applications for training contracts or vacation schemes, our Law Careers hub covers everything from firm types and salaries to the skills and strategies that make the difference in competitive applications.
Most law CVs that fail do not fail because the candidate lacks experience. They fail because the experience is framed badly, structured inconsistently, or presented in a way that makes a recruiter work too hard to find the evidence they are looking for. A strong law CV is not a list of things you have done. It is a curated, precisely framed argument that you are the kind of candidate this firm should interview.
This guide covers everything: structure, sections, length, bullet point technique, how to handle non-legal experience, and the specific mistakes that cost candidates interviews at competitive firms.
What recruiters are actually doing when they read your CV
Law firm recruiters at competitive firms read hundreds of CVs in a short window. The average time spent on a first read is seconds, not minutes. In that time, they are not absorbing every detail. They are scanning for signals: a strong academic record, relevant experience, evidence of the skills the role requires, and the absence of red flags (gaps, inconsistencies, sloppy formatting).
The implication is that your CV needs to work at two levels. At the scanning level, the structure and formatting should make the most important information immediately visible. At the reading level, the content of each bullet point should give the recruiter something specific and credible to hold onto.
A CV that passes the scan but fails on content will get you an interview and then let you down. A CV that has strong content buried in poor structure may not get a first read at all. Both levels need to be right.
Length and format
One page for students and recent graduates. This is not a suggestion. It is a professional norm in UK law firm recruitment. A second page at this stage almost always means the first page has not been edited tightly enough.
Use a clean, simple format:
Font: Times New Roman, Garamond, or Cambria at 10.5pt to 11pt. These read as professional in legal contexts. Avoid sans-serif fonts (Arial, Calibri) for formal legal CVs, and avoid anything decorative.
Margins: Standard (2.5cm) or slightly narrower (2cm). Do not go below 1.5cm or the page looks cramped.
Spacing: Consistent throughout. Use a small amount of space between sections to help the eye navigate.
Headers: Bold and slightly larger than body text. No need for colour or graphic elements.
No photo, no date of birth, no personal profile box unless explicitly requested.
A well-formatted CV in a standard word processor, structured clearly and edited tightly, consistently looks more professional than an over-designed template with coloured sidebars and skill rating bars. The latter signals that you are trying to compensate for weak content with visual noise. Recruiters notice.
Sections to include and in what order
The standard structure for a law CV at graduate or near-graduate level is:
Contact details
Education
Legal work experience (if you have any)
Work experience
Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility
Skills
Interests (optional)
The order reflects what law firm recruiters prioritise. Education comes first because academic record is a primary filter at this stage. Legal work experience comes before general work experience because it is more directly relevant. The structure signals that you understand what the firm is looking for.
Section by section: what to include and how to write it
Contact details
Name (larger, at the top), email address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile URL if your profile is complete and professional. No home address. No date of birth. No headshot.
Your email address should be professional. A university email or a firstname.lastname@gmail.com format is fine. A nickname-based address from secondary school is not.
Education
List in reverse chronological order (most recent first). For each entry include:
Institution and degree (or A-levels)
Dates
Classification or grades
Relevant modules or dissertation, if strong
University degree:
Include your degree classification (or predicted classification). If you have strong grades in specific modules relevant to the role (company law, contract, competition law for a commercial firm; public law or EU law for a government role), list them. A dissertation title is worth including if it is analytically strong and relevant.
If your overall classification is not as strong as you would like, consider whether strong individual module grades or a strong dissertation can provide more nuanced evidence of academic capability.
A-levels:
Include subjects and grades. If your A-level results are strong (ABB or above), list them in full. If they are mixed, list them but do not hide them. A gap where A-levels should be is more suspicious than modest grades.
GCSEs:
For most candidates, one line is enough: "10 GCSEs including Mathematics and English (grades A to B)" or equivalent. If your GCSEs include a high proportion of top grades, a slightly more detailed listing adds modest value. If they are weaker than your A-levels, a summary line is the right approach.
GDL, PGDL, or LPC:
If you have completed or are completing a conversion course or LPC, include it here with the institution, the year, and your grade or predicted grade. SQE preparation courses are worth listing if the provider is recognised.
Legal work experience
If you have any legal work experience, give it its own section above your general work experience. The separation signals to the recruiter that you have sought out legally relevant experience, which matters.
List in reverse chronological order. For each entry include:
Firm or organisation name
Your role
Dates (month and year)
Two to four bullet points describing what you did
The bullet points are where most candidates fall short. The default is to write job description language: "assisted with research," "observed client meetings," "supported the team." This tells the recruiter nothing they cannot infer from the job title.
Strong legal work experience bullets describe what you did specifically and what it demonstrates:
Weak: Assisted with legal research during a vacation scheme at Clifford Chance.
Strong: Researched the English law position on force majeure clauses in long-term supply contracts following recent post-pandemic case law, producing a research memo for a senior associate ahead of a client call. Identified a relevant Court of Appeal decision from 2023 that the team had not seen, which was incorporated into the advice.
The second version shows what you researched, why it mattered, what judgment you exercised (identifying a new case), and what the outcome was (it changed the advice). That is the difference between describing an activity and demonstrating a skill.
Types of legal work experience worth including:
Vacation schemes (by far the most valuable, list prominently)
Open days and insight events
First-year diversity and access schemes
Paralegal or legal assistant roles
Pro bono and legal clinic work
Shadowing at a solicitor's or barrister's office
Mini-pupillages
For each, be specific about what you did rather than what the programme involved generally. Recruiters know what a vacation scheme is. They want to know what you did on yours.
Work experience
Include all significant work experience, legal or otherwise. Retail, hospitality, customer service, tutoring, charity work, and any other employment all belong here if they provide genuine evidence of relevant skills.
The common mistake is listing the job title and dates with generic bullets that describe the role rather than what you demonstrated in it. The framing principle is the same as for legal experience: describe what you did specifically, the judgment or skill you applied, and the outcome where measurable.
For non-legal roles, the translation task is explicit: you need to identify the professional skill your retail, hospitality, or service experience demonstrates and describe it in those terms. "Worked at a coffee shop" is not useful. "Managed the morning queue during peak hours as the most experienced member of the opening team, maintaining service speed while handling three simultaneous complaints without supervisor involvement" demonstrates communication, composure under pressure, and judgment.
For a detailed guide to framing non-legal experience, see our article on turning retail experience into career-ready skills.
How much detail for older or less relevant roles:
A role from four or more years ago, or one that was brief and provides little transferable evidence, can be reduced to a single line (employer, role, dates) without bullet points. The goal is completeness without padding.
Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility
This section is where many strong candidates differentiate themselves, and where many others waste space on activities listed without any evidence of what they involve or what you contributed.
Include:
Mooting and advocacy competitions. Name the competition, your role, and any notable result. Mooting is directly relevant to legal practice (oral argument under pressure, responding to judicial questioning) and should be foregrounded.
Debating. Similar value to mooting. Include if you have competed at a meaningful level.
Legal clinics and pro bono work. Demonstrates commitment and, where client-facing, provides direct evidence of professional communication skills.
Student societies. Include if you held a meaningful role or contributed to a notable achievement. List the society, your role, the dates, and one or two bullets that describe what you did specifically.
Sports and teams. Team sports demonstrate collaborative working. A captaincy demonstrates leadership. Include if you played to a meaningful standard or held a position of responsibility.
Student publications and writing. If you have written for a student newspaper, law journal, or legal blog, include it. It demonstrates written communication and the ability to produce clear, audience-appropriate work to deadline.
For each activity, the same principle applies as everywhere else: specific over generic. "Member of the law society" tells a recruiter nothing. "Secretary of the law society, responsible for coordinating a panel event with three Magic Circle partners that attracted 200 students" tells them something.
Skills
A brief section covering:
Languages: List each language and your proficiency level (native, fluent, conversational, basic). Be honest. Claiming fluency in a language and then being unable to hold a conversation at interview is a significant problem.
Technical skills: Legal research databases (Westlaw, LexisNexis), document management systems, Excel, PowerPoint. Only include skills you can actually use competently.
Professional certifications: Any relevant qualifications (first aid, data protection, financial services) if applicable to the roles you are applying for.
Do not include generic claims like "strong communication skills," "excellent attention to detail," or "team player" in this section. These belong in your bullet points, demonstrated through specific experiences. In the skills section, they read as filler.
Interests
Optional. Include if your interests are genuine, specific, and add something to your profile that is not already covered. Two to three interests is plenty.
Good interests entries are specific: "following M&A deal activity in the technology sector" is more useful than "business news." "Competitive road cycling, currently training for a sportive" is more interesting than "sport." "Reading modern legal history, currently working through Joshua Rozenberg's writing on the Supreme Court" signals genuine intellectual engagement with the profession.
Avoid interests that are clearly included to seem well-rounded rather than because they are real. Recruiters can tell.
How to write bullet points that work
The bullet point is the basic unit of a CV. Every bullet should do three things:
State what you did (the task or action)
Show how you did it (the skill or judgment applied)
Give the outcome (what resulted, ideally with a concrete measure)
Not every bullet needs all three elements, but the more of them you include, the stronger the point. Here are worked examples across different types of experience:
Academic:
Weak: Wrote a dissertation on commercial arbitration.
Strong: Wrote a 12,000-word dissertation on the enforceability of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts under English law, arguing that the current judicial approach underweights consumer protection concerns. Awarded a distinction and cited by a tutor in subsequent teaching materials.
Legal work experience:
Weak: Attended client meetings during a vacation scheme.
Strong: Sat in on three client meetings across the corporate and finance seats during a two-week vacation scheme at Linklaters, drafting a post-meeting attendance note for the associate after each and identifying two follow-up questions from the client that had not been addressed, which the associate incorporated into the client email.
Extracurricular:
Weak: Participated in a mooting competition.
Strong: Reached the semi-final of the university's open mooting competition, arguing for the respondent in a negligence case involving pure economic loss. Received written feedback from the judge praising the cross-examination technique and the structure of the closing submission.
Part-time work:
Weak: Worked as a sales assistant at Boots.
Strong: Managed the customer services desk during weekend shifts, handling returns, complaints, and prescription enquiries simultaneously in a high-volume environment, and training two new starters during a period of high staff turnover.
The most common CV mistakes at competitive firms
Inconsistent formatting
Inconsistent bullet styles, mixed tenses, varying font sizes, and misaligned dates all signal a lack of attention to detail. In a profession where document accuracy is fundamental, this is taken seriously. Proofread your CV multiple times. Ask someone else to proofread it too.
Claiming skills without demonstrating them
"Excellent communication skills" in a skills section is not evidence of communication skills. Neither is "strong attention to detail" in a bullet point about a role where you processed invoices. Every skill claim needs to be backed by a specific, credible example somewhere in the CV.
Using job description language
"Responsible for," "assisted with," "involved in," and "supported the team" are job description phrases. They describe a role, not a contribution. Every bullet point should be in the first person, active voice, and describe what you specifically did rather than what your role involved generically.
Leaving out non-legal work experience
Students sometimes omit retail, hospitality, or other non-legal work experience from their CVs on the assumption that it is irrelevant. This is almost always the wrong decision. Non-legal experience often provides the best evidence of communication, resilience, and commercial judgment available. Omitting it creates gaps and wastes evidence.
Starting a personal statement with a cliché
If your CV has an opening paragraph beginning "I am a highly motivated and ambitious law student," remove it entirely. A summary or personal profile at graduate level almost always weakens rather than strengthens a CV. Use the space for additional experience or achievement.
Applying the same CV to every firm without tailoring
Your CV should be reviewed before each significant application. The content does not need to change dramatically, but the ordering and emphasis of bullet points can be adjusted to highlight the experience most relevant to each firm's practice areas and culture. A CV applying to a finance-focused firm should lead with analytical and numerical experience. One applying to a disputes-focused firm should foreground mooting and research skills.
A complete worked example
Here is how the same candidate's experience might look before and after applying the principles in this guide.
Before
Clifford Chance Vacation Scheme, Summer 2025
Spent two weeks in the corporate and finance teams
Attended meetings and helped with research
Worked on a live deal
Tesco, Sales Assistant, 2022 to present
Served customers
Worked as part of a team
Helped train new staff
University Law Society, Member, 2023 to present
Attended events
After
Clifford Chance Vacation Scheme, Corporate and Finance (Summer 2025)
Assisted a senior associate on a live leveraged buyout transaction, researching the English law treatment of earn-out provisions and drafting a summary memo that was shared with the client team.
Attended three client calls across corporate and finance seats, drafting attendance notes after each and identifying follow-up points that were incorporated into subsequent client correspondence.
Presented a short commercial awareness presentation on a recent FCA regulatory development to the graduate recruitment team as part of the vacation scheme assessment, receiving written feedback praising the clarity and depth of analysis.
Tesco Metro, Sales Assistant (September 2022 to present)
Managed customer complaints and returns as first point of contact during weekend shifts in a high-volume environment, resolving the majority without supervisor escalation.
Took primary responsibility for onboarding two new team members during a period of high staff turnover, producing a brief induction checklist that reduced the time before new starters could work independently.
Balanced consistent weekly shifts throughout three years of a law degree, including during examination and assessment periods, without missing commitments on either side.
University Law Society, Events Secretary (October 2023 to June 2025)
Coordinated a panel event with three Magic Circle partners and a senior in-house counsel, managing venue logistics, speaker liaison, and promotion to achieve an attendance of 180 students, the highest for any society event in two years.
Introduced a post-event feedback process that identified the topics students most wanted covered, which shaped the programme for the following academic year.
The difference is not the experience but the specificity and the framing. Every bullet in the second version tells a recruiter something concrete.
Want to put your CV to work in interviews?
Our Interview Question Bank contains the competency, motivational, and commercial awareness questions most commonly used at law firm assessment centres and partner interviews, with guidance on what strong answers look like for each. The strongest candidates are those who can speak to their CV with the same specificity and confidence in the room that it conveys on paper.
Law Careers
Law CV Guidance for Early-Career Applications
A complete guide to structuring a law CV, writing bullet points that demonstrate real skills, and presenting your experience in the way law firm recruiters actually assess it.
EO Careers Team
If you are preparing applications for training contracts or vacation schemes, our Law Careers hub covers everything from firm types and salaries to the skills and strategies that make the difference in competitive applications.
Most law CVs that fail do not fail because the candidate lacks experience. They fail because the experience is framed badly, structured inconsistently, or presented in a way that makes a recruiter work too hard to find the evidence they are looking for. A strong law CV is not a list of things you have done. It is a curated, precisely framed argument that you are the kind of candidate this firm should interview.
This guide covers everything: structure, sections, length, bullet point technique, how to handle non-legal experience, and the specific mistakes that cost candidates interviews at competitive firms.
What recruiters are actually doing when they read your CV
Law firm recruiters at competitive firms read hundreds of CVs in a short window. The average time spent on a first read is seconds, not minutes. In that time, they are not absorbing every detail. They are scanning for signals: a strong academic record, relevant experience, evidence of the skills the role requires, and the absence of red flags (gaps, inconsistencies, sloppy formatting).
The implication is that your CV needs to work at two levels. At the scanning level, the structure and formatting should make the most important information immediately visible. At the reading level, the content of each bullet point should give the recruiter something specific and credible to hold onto.
A CV that passes the scan but fails on content will get you an interview and then let you down. A CV that has strong content buried in poor structure may not get a first read at all. Both levels need to be right.
Length and format
One page for students and recent graduates. This is not a suggestion. It is a professional norm in UK law firm recruitment. A second page at this stage almost always means the first page has not been edited tightly enough.
Use a clean, simple format:
Font: Times New Roman, Garamond, or Cambria at 10.5pt to 11pt. These read as professional in legal contexts. Avoid sans-serif fonts (Arial, Calibri) for formal legal CVs, and avoid anything decorative.
Margins: Standard (2.5cm) or slightly narrower (2cm). Do not go below 1.5cm or the page looks cramped.
Spacing: Consistent throughout. Use a small amount of space between sections to help the eye navigate.
Headers: Bold and slightly larger than body text. No need for colour or graphic elements.
No photo, no date of birth, no personal profile box unless explicitly requested.
A well-formatted CV in a standard word processor, structured clearly and edited tightly, consistently looks more professional than an over-designed template with coloured sidebars and skill rating bars. The latter signals that you are trying to compensate for weak content with visual noise. Recruiters notice.
Sections to include and in what order
The standard structure for a law CV at graduate or near-graduate level is:
Contact details
Education
Legal work experience (if you have any)
Work experience
Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility
Skills
Interests (optional)
The order reflects what law firm recruiters prioritise. Education comes first because academic record is a primary filter at this stage. Legal work experience comes before general work experience because it is more directly relevant. The structure signals that you understand what the firm is looking for.
Section by section: what to include and how to write it
Contact details
Name (larger, at the top), email address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile URL if your profile is complete and professional. No home address. No date of birth. No headshot.
Your email address should be professional. A university email or a firstname.lastname@gmail.com format is fine. A nickname-based address from secondary school is not.
Education
List in reverse chronological order (most recent first). For each entry include:
Institution and degree (or A-levels)
Dates
Classification or grades
Relevant modules or dissertation, if strong
University degree:
Include your degree classification (or predicted classification). If you have strong grades in specific modules relevant to the role (company law, contract, competition law for a commercial firm; public law or EU law for a government role), list them. A dissertation title is worth including if it is analytically strong and relevant.
If your overall classification is not as strong as you would like, consider whether strong individual module grades or a strong dissertation can provide more nuanced evidence of academic capability.
A-levels:
Include subjects and grades. If your A-level results are strong (ABB or above), list them in full. If they are mixed, list them but do not hide them. A gap where A-levels should be is more suspicious than modest grades.
GCSEs:
For most candidates, one line is enough: "10 GCSEs including Mathematics and English (grades A to B)" or equivalent. If your GCSEs include a high proportion of top grades, a slightly more detailed listing adds modest value. If they are weaker than your A-levels, a summary line is the right approach.
GDL, PGDL, or LPC:
If you have completed or are completing a conversion course or LPC, include it here with the institution, the year, and your grade or predicted grade. SQE preparation courses are worth listing if the provider is recognised.
Legal work experience
If you have any legal work experience, give it its own section above your general work experience. The separation signals to the recruiter that you have sought out legally relevant experience, which matters.
List in reverse chronological order. For each entry include:
Firm or organisation name
Your role
Dates (month and year)
Two to four bullet points describing what you did
The bullet points are where most candidates fall short. The default is to write job description language: "assisted with research," "observed client meetings," "supported the team." This tells the recruiter nothing they cannot infer from the job title.
Strong legal work experience bullets describe what you did specifically and what it demonstrates:
Weak: Assisted with legal research during a vacation scheme at Clifford Chance.
Strong: Researched the English law position on force majeure clauses in long-term supply contracts following recent post-pandemic case law, producing a research memo for a senior associate ahead of a client call. Identified a relevant Court of Appeal decision from 2023 that the team had not seen, which was incorporated into the advice.
The second version shows what you researched, why it mattered, what judgment you exercised (identifying a new case), and what the outcome was (it changed the advice). That is the difference between describing an activity and demonstrating a skill.
Types of legal work experience worth including:
Vacation schemes (by far the most valuable, list prominently)
Open days and insight events
First-year diversity and access schemes
Paralegal or legal assistant roles
Pro bono and legal clinic work
Shadowing at a solicitor's or barrister's office
Mini-pupillages
For each, be specific about what you did rather than what the programme involved generally. Recruiters know what a vacation scheme is. They want to know what you did on yours.
Work experience
Include all significant work experience, legal or otherwise. Retail, hospitality, customer service, tutoring, charity work, and any other employment all belong here if they provide genuine evidence of relevant skills.
The common mistake is listing the job title and dates with generic bullets that describe the role rather than what you demonstrated in it. The framing principle is the same as for legal experience: describe what you did specifically, the judgment or skill you applied, and the outcome where measurable.
For non-legal roles, the translation task is explicit: you need to identify the professional skill your retail, hospitality, or service experience demonstrates and describe it in those terms. "Worked at a coffee shop" is not useful. "Managed the morning queue during peak hours as the most experienced member of the opening team, maintaining service speed while handling three simultaneous complaints without supervisor involvement" demonstrates communication, composure under pressure, and judgment.
For a detailed guide to framing non-legal experience, see our article on turning retail experience into career-ready skills.
How much detail for older or less relevant roles:
A role from four or more years ago, or one that was brief and provides little transferable evidence, can be reduced to a single line (employer, role, dates) without bullet points. The goal is completeness without padding.
Extracurricular activities and positions of responsibility
This section is where many strong candidates differentiate themselves, and where many others waste space on activities listed without any evidence of what they involve or what you contributed.
Include:
Mooting and advocacy competitions. Name the competition, your role, and any notable result. Mooting is directly relevant to legal practice (oral argument under pressure, responding to judicial questioning) and should be foregrounded.
Debating. Similar value to mooting. Include if you have competed at a meaningful level.
Legal clinics and pro bono work. Demonstrates commitment and, where client-facing, provides direct evidence of professional communication skills.
Student societies. Include if you held a meaningful role or contributed to a notable achievement. List the society, your role, the dates, and one or two bullets that describe what you did specifically.
Sports and teams. Team sports demonstrate collaborative working. A captaincy demonstrates leadership. Include if you played to a meaningful standard or held a position of responsibility.
Student publications and writing. If you have written for a student newspaper, law journal, or legal blog, include it. It demonstrates written communication and the ability to produce clear, audience-appropriate work to deadline.
For each activity, the same principle applies as everywhere else: specific over generic. "Member of the law society" tells a recruiter nothing. "Secretary of the law society, responsible for coordinating a panel event with three Magic Circle partners that attracted 200 students" tells them something.
Skills
A brief section covering:
Languages: List each language and your proficiency level (native, fluent, conversational, basic). Be honest. Claiming fluency in a language and then being unable to hold a conversation at interview is a significant problem.
Technical skills: Legal research databases (Westlaw, LexisNexis), document management systems, Excel, PowerPoint. Only include skills you can actually use competently.
Professional certifications: Any relevant qualifications (first aid, data protection, financial services) if applicable to the roles you are applying for.
Do not include generic claims like "strong communication skills," "excellent attention to detail," or "team player" in this section. These belong in your bullet points, demonstrated through specific experiences. In the skills section, they read as filler.
Interests
Optional. Include if your interests are genuine, specific, and add something to your profile that is not already covered. Two to three interests is plenty.
Good interests entries are specific: "following M&A deal activity in the technology sector" is more useful than "business news." "Competitive road cycling, currently training for a sportive" is more interesting than "sport." "Reading modern legal history, currently working through Joshua Rozenberg's writing on the Supreme Court" signals genuine intellectual engagement with the profession.
Avoid interests that are clearly included to seem well-rounded rather than because they are real. Recruiters can tell.
How to write bullet points that work
The bullet point is the basic unit of a CV. Every bullet should do three things:
State what you did (the task or action)
Show how you did it (the skill or judgment applied)
Give the outcome (what resulted, ideally with a concrete measure)
Not every bullet needs all three elements, but the more of them you include, the stronger the point. Here are worked examples across different types of experience:
Academic:
Weak: Wrote a dissertation on commercial arbitration.
Strong: Wrote a 12,000-word dissertation on the enforceability of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts under English law, arguing that the current judicial approach underweights consumer protection concerns. Awarded a distinction and cited by a tutor in subsequent teaching materials.
Legal work experience:
Weak: Attended client meetings during a vacation scheme.
Strong: Sat in on three client meetings across the corporate and finance seats during a two-week vacation scheme at Linklaters, drafting a post-meeting attendance note for the associate after each and identifying two follow-up questions from the client that had not been addressed, which the associate incorporated into the client email.
Extracurricular:
Weak: Participated in a mooting competition.
Strong: Reached the semi-final of the university's open mooting competition, arguing for the respondent in a negligence case involving pure economic loss. Received written feedback from the judge praising the cross-examination technique and the structure of the closing submission.
Part-time work:
Weak: Worked as a sales assistant at Boots.
Strong: Managed the customer services desk during weekend shifts, handling returns, complaints, and prescription enquiries simultaneously in a high-volume environment, and training two new starters during a period of high staff turnover.
The most common CV mistakes at competitive firms
Inconsistent formatting
Inconsistent bullet styles, mixed tenses, varying font sizes, and misaligned dates all signal a lack of attention to detail. In a profession where document accuracy is fundamental, this is taken seriously. Proofread your CV multiple times. Ask someone else to proofread it too.
Claiming skills without demonstrating them
"Excellent communication skills" in a skills section is not evidence of communication skills. Neither is "strong attention to detail" in a bullet point about a role where you processed invoices. Every skill claim needs to be backed by a specific, credible example somewhere in the CV.
Using job description language
"Responsible for," "assisted with," "involved in," and "supported the team" are job description phrases. They describe a role, not a contribution. Every bullet point should be in the first person, active voice, and describe what you specifically did rather than what your role involved generically.
Leaving out non-legal work experience
Students sometimes omit retail, hospitality, or other non-legal work experience from their CVs on the assumption that it is irrelevant. This is almost always the wrong decision. Non-legal experience often provides the best evidence of communication, resilience, and commercial judgment available. Omitting it creates gaps and wastes evidence.
Starting a personal statement with a cliché
If your CV has an opening paragraph beginning "I am a highly motivated and ambitious law student," remove it entirely. A summary or personal profile at graduate level almost always weakens rather than strengthens a CV. Use the space for additional experience or achievement.
Applying the same CV to every firm without tailoring
Your CV should be reviewed before each significant application. The content does not need to change dramatically, but the ordering and emphasis of bullet points can be adjusted to highlight the experience most relevant to each firm's practice areas and culture. A CV applying to a finance-focused firm should lead with analytical and numerical experience. One applying to a disputes-focused firm should foreground mooting and research skills.
A complete worked example
Here is how the same candidate's experience might look before and after applying the principles in this guide.
Before
Clifford Chance Vacation Scheme, Summer 2025
Spent two weeks in the corporate and finance teams
Attended meetings and helped with research
Worked on a live deal
Tesco, Sales Assistant, 2022 to present
Served customers
Worked as part of a team
Helped train new staff
University Law Society, Member, 2023 to present
Attended events
After
Clifford Chance Vacation Scheme, Corporate and Finance (Summer 2025)
Assisted a senior associate on a live leveraged buyout transaction, researching the English law treatment of earn-out provisions and drafting a summary memo that was shared with the client team.
Attended three client calls across corporate and finance seats, drafting attendance notes after each and identifying follow-up points that were incorporated into subsequent client correspondence.
Presented a short commercial awareness presentation on a recent FCA regulatory development to the graduate recruitment team as part of the vacation scheme assessment, receiving written feedback praising the clarity and depth of analysis.
Tesco Metro, Sales Assistant (September 2022 to present)
Managed customer complaints and returns as first point of contact during weekend shifts in a high-volume environment, resolving the majority without supervisor escalation.
Took primary responsibility for onboarding two new team members during a period of high staff turnover, producing a brief induction checklist that reduced the time before new starters could work independently.
Balanced consistent weekly shifts throughout three years of a law degree, including during examination and assessment periods, without missing commitments on either side.
University Law Society, Events Secretary (October 2023 to June 2025)
Coordinated a panel event with three Magic Circle partners and a senior in-house counsel, managing venue logistics, speaker liaison, and promotion to achieve an attendance of 180 students, the highest for any society event in two years.
Introduced a post-event feedback process that identified the topics students most wanted covered, which shaped the programme for the following academic year.
The difference is not the experience but the specificity and the framing. Every bullet in the second version tells a recruiter something concrete.
Want to put your CV to work in interviews?
Our Interview Question Bank contains the competency, motivational, and commercial awareness questions most commonly used at law firm assessment centres and partner interviews, with guidance on what strong answers look like for each. The strongest candidates are those who can speak to their CV with the same specificity and confidence in the room that it conveys on paper.