In a CV, the most dynamic and important section is your ‘Professional Experience’. As experienced lawyers ourselves, we share with you five tips that many of us have personally adopted to great effect in our own legal careers.
- Keep a Factsheet about your deals
Our number one recommendation would be to start a Factsheet (which can be in casually-worded bullet points) and update it regularly when you complete a significant task, deal or case. For example, (i) noting down the deal size and parties involved when a deal is signed, (ii) listing the different contracts, corporate resolutions or regulatory submissions you have drafted, (iii) describing complicated legal issues you have researched on. This ensures that when it comes to updating your CV, you can easily refer to your Factsheet to help you recall key deals, cases or accomplishments from some time ago.
- Ready at least two learning points for each cited deal
Whenever a deal or a day at work throws up an important (legal) learning point, add that to your Factsheet while it is still fresh in your mind. This can be (i) a negotiation masterstroke from your Partner that helped resolve a deadlock in your client’s favour, (ii) a drafting mistake or oversight that was corrected by a teammate or (iii) a discovery you made during due diligence that led to major changes in the transaction documents. A common question during interviews is “What did you learn/do for this deal?” and you should be ready to quickly discuss in detail at least two points for each deal. This will provide assurance to the interviewer that the deals cited in your CV accurately represent ones which you have had gained significant experience from.
- Do not blindly pad your CV with mega-deals
Size matters – while high-value transactions are more eye-catching, you should resist the temptation to fill your CV with mega-deals which you were only minimally involved in (alternatively, be upfront about it by describing your role). For headline deals, it is more likely that your interviewer may himself be interested or aware of certain issues surrounding this deal from media coverage or even colleagues/friends who worked on it. We have been in awkward moments when an interviewee struggled to talk about a well-known complication within a public deal and finally admits he only assisted with a small part of the due diligence work. As mentioned above, such a slip casts doubt on whether you have exaggerated your accomplishments and is not a risk worth taking.
- Personalize your deals
At an interview, the focus is sometimes more on your personality and fit rather than your work experience (as failing the latter would mean not even scoring the interview). While this can be addressed via direct questions like “Describe your work style” or “Tell me about a time you resolved a disagreement with your teammate”, a trick is to bring these into discussions about your deals. Within your Factsheet, note down career milestones or challenges that you faced and improved from, e.g. (i) first all-nighter, (ii) first time as lead associate, (iii) a major disagreement with a teammate, (iv) coping with multiple urgent deadlines, (v) managing a client that demands hand-holding despite a tight fee cap, etc. Tagging on such stories to a deal often makes describing it more natural and more interesting.
- Curate the best deals for each application
When applying for a role (or at least, the ones you are particularly keen on), tailor your CV to the role. While we touch on this in a separate article, maintaining a Factsheet is critical to this process. It encourages you to bring a fresh pair of eyes to skim through and pick the most relevant experiences to front-load onto your CV, where they are most noticeable and more likely to be discussed. In contrast, people who only maintain a single CV tend to be influenced and constrained by their previous selection of deals (often based on deal size) and also retain more irrelevant information out of habit. Based on the personality preferred by the employer (e.g. a team player, independent decision-maker, strong initiative, etc), you can also include deals with personal stories that support a good culture fit.
We trust that these tips will help you put together a compelling ‘Professional Experience’ section. That said, it is equally important to bring these words to life and be able to discuss your work experience in an engaging and personal way during the interview. With our extensive experience sitting at both ends of the interview table, we are well-positioned to coach you through this process. If you would like us to represent you, reach out to us at hello@lexmatch.co.