Lawyer / Legal Associate CV example

What recruiters expect

Before writing anything, it helps to know what the person reading is checking for. In this field that is usually a short, specific list:

• Admission status and jurisdiction, stated exactly, plus post-qualification experience in years.
• Practice area, with the sub-areas you have genuine exposure to.
• Matter types and value bands, described without identifying clients.
• Drafting experience specifically: which documents you produce as first draft and which you review.
• Supervision level - what you run yourself and what a partner signs.

Recommended CV structure

This is the running order the example uses. It is a starting point rather than a rule, but the order reflects what tends to be read first in this profession.

1. Profile — Three or four lines positioning you for the role.
2. Admission & Qualifications — Completed certifications with the issuing body.
3. Practice Areas & Skills — Grouped skills, for example "Languages" and "Tooling".
4. Professional Experience — Paid roles, in reverse chronological order.
5. Education — Degrees, diplomas and school-leaving qualifications.
6. Professional Memberships — Bodies you belong to, with membership numbers where relevant.
7. Languages — Spoken languages with CEFR levels.

Sections worth adding

• Publications — Client briefings and practitioner articles are valued, particularly for specialist roles.
• Pro Bono — Pro bono and law centre work is genuinely relevant experience and is looked upon well.
• Continuing Competence — Use for SRA continuing competence records or specialist accreditation courses.

Skills worth including

Grouped rather than listed in one block. Grouping makes a long list readable and shows that you can tell the difference between the things you use daily and the things you have touched.

Beyond the technical list: Client communication under time pressure, Negotiating with opposing counsel, Supervising trainees, Managing a matter budget, Explaining risk in commercial terms. These belong inside your experience bullets, demonstrated, rather than in a list of adjectives.

Example professional summary

Three or four lines, positioned for the role rather than describing your personality. Two versions you can adapt:

Corporate and commercial solicitor with three years PQE, admitted in England and Wales in 2022. Practice covers private company acquisitions between £2m and £15m, commercial contract drafting and corporate governance. Draft first-draft transaction documents, run due diligence with paralegal support, and handle three to five commercial contracts a month from instruction to signature.

Commercial solicitor with two years PQE in a regional practice, handling supply agreements, terms of business and shareholder arrangements for owner-managed businesses. Working towards a specialism in technology contracts.

Writing your experience

The difference between a CV that gets a call and one that does not is almost always in the bullet points. Each pair below shows a real rewrite of the kind of line that appears on most CVs in this field.

Taken from the example

The sample CV for this profession is fully written. A few sections from it, so you can see the level of specificity that works:

Experience

Associate, Corporate & Commercial, Ashcombe Hale LLP

• Drafted first-draft share purchase agreements and disclosure letters on eight private company acquisitions with values between £2m and £15m, running the disclosure exercise directly with the client on five.
• Ran legal due diligence on three acquisitions, supervising two paralegals and producing the red flag report; on one matter the employment findings supported a £340k reduction in the headline price.
• Draft and negotiate standard-form supply and services agreements for clients in manufacturing and logistics, typically three to five contracts a month from instruction to signature.
• Prepared the advisory note on change of control provisions in a target’s key supply contracts, which identified a consent requirement resolved by side letter before exchange.

Education

• LLB (Hons) Law, University of Bristol — First Class Honours

Certifications and registration

• Admitted as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales — Solicitors Regulation Authority
• Legal Practice Course (LPC) with Distinction — University of Law

Common mistakes

ATS considerations

Applicant tracking systems behave differently by sector, and generic advice is often wrong for a given field. These points are specific to lawyer / legal associate applications:

• State post-qualification experience in the standard form: "3 years PQE". It is the primary filter in legal recruitment.
• Spell out "mergers and acquisitions (M&A)" once so both forms match.
• Name the jurisdiction explicitly - "admitted in England and Wales" - because legal recruitment is jurisdiction-bound.
• Include the research platforms by name; they appear in a surprising number of adverts.

The Minimal ATS layout is built for this, and the ATS guide covers what parsers do to a file in more detail.

Guides that go deeper

This page applies general CV advice to one field. The full treatment of each part is here:

• How to Describe Work Experience — The difference between listing duties and demonstrating impact, and a repeatable way to rewrite any weak bullet point.
• How Long Should a CV Be? — Two pages for most people, and a clear method for getting there when you have more experience than space.
• How to Write a Professional Summary — Four lines at the top of the page that decide whether the rest gets read. A method, and the three ways they usually go wrong.

Questions about lawyer / legal associate CVs