How does one turn a CV into a law school app resume? Forum

[ljalba]

When I was applying for grad school, my adviser helped me change my resume—one stacked with work experience in IT—into a CV that appealed to grad school admission committees. The transition left me with a modest, mostly empty, CV since I eliminated all the work experience not related to academia—but academia is used to fledgling scholars and short CVs, so there was no problem. Fast forward a year, and I'm finishing up my Masters and applying to law school this fall. Here's my predicament. My CV is packed with a lot of national conference presentations, teaching experience, some publications—the content a CV emphasizes. How do I translate that into a resume for applying to law school? Do I maintain a "Conference Presentations," "research," and "publications" section or do I forgo them to focus on the work experience before the MA? Do I combine my pre-grad school resume with my CV? Do I condense both? Reading the webs I found a lot of advice on emphasizing the academics since this is a resume for law school and not a job. However, I found nothing that guided me on how to deal with a CV. Any help would be much appreciated, especially from grad students who made the jump from academia into law school.

Thanks!

[A. Nony Mouse]

Did a PhD before law school. I pretty much just used my cv for law school applications, though it may have been easier for me because all my work experience was academic. Unless the school imposes a page limit, I wouldn't worry about length.

Personally I would suggest:
- combine conference presentations and publications (you can't have done SO MANY of these in one year that's it's unwieldy).
- don't have a "research" section distinct from work or presentations/publications; they don't need to know about any research agenda/ongoing projects.
- have a "work" section ("experience" probably sounds better) that includes your pre-grad school work experience and your teaching (and anything else you did for pay like RA or whatever).

I feel like cvs also tend to give lengthier descriptions of what you did and you can probably pare those down if you want?

If you have seriously tons of presentations/publications, you could have that section on your resume and state "12 conference presentations and 6 publications between dates X-Y; see addendum" and list them on a separate page at the end of the resume (on the theory that someone who doesn't care can ignore it easily).

[NonTradHealthLaw]

I condensed a 10 year career in the sciences into one page through the following steps.

1. Condense CV through "fit to page" to see how ridiculous it looked.
2. Limit header/address to two lines - name and contact info.
3. List only first or senior author, peer reviewed publications in mega-shorthand: Name, et al, Journal Name, Citation, Year. Title will mean nothing to admissions. Second and lower author and conference presentations were on a single subbullet as a tally (290 co-authorships, 140 domestic presentations; 350 international presentations) (obviously facetious).
4. Work experience only listed as necessary. Bartending and waiting tables can be a listed miscellaneous work experience line. Location isnt relevant.
5. 4-6pt spacing between sections. Use headers and fonts strategically while being judicious about white space. White space gives the eyes a rest. Be kind to your reviewer, but a minimal break is sufficient.

Law is about brevity (notwithstanding the above list). You can and should do one page. If it's two, be impressive. Feel free to send me a version, formatted or not, redacted or not, if you'd like an aggressive editing hand.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Just to be clear: I think 1 page is correct when applying for jobs. I don't think it matters at all for law school applications - that resume isn't intended to be the same as a job application resume.

[ljalba]

Thanks a lot! And I will definitely take up the editing offer!