Format and Appearance of a Resume
An LL.M. student resume follows a fairly standard format. Education should come first, followed by experience and then other activities, skills, and/or interests.
Legal resumes should always be printed on 8½'' x 11'' paper. Use heavy bond paper that is white or off-white. Do not use dark-colored paper, because many employers will make copies of your resume to distribute to others and dark-colored paper does not copy well. Your resume does not need to be professionally printed, but it should be done on a quality printer. Georgetown Law Library has laser printers available for student use.
Consider using different methods (fonts, underline, bold, italics and caps) to highlight certain items in your resume. Doing so will often guide employers more quickly to relevant information. Be judicious, however, because too many font changes can make a resume look cluttered or distracting. Your ultimate objective is to make your resume easily readable, because most employers do not spend a lot of time on first reviews of resumes.
Note: Do not use resume templates that are available in some word-processing programs. They are not formatted with a legal resume in mind and are not always readable by Georgetown Law's online interview scheduling program (Symplicity).
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