10 Tips to Advocate for Family-Friendly Policies at Your Firm
10 helpful and actional tips for advocating for family-friendly policies at your firm, with Lori Mihalich-Levin of Mindful Return.
Since the launch of the Lateral Hub platform, we’ve seen thousands of resumes. Some are great. Some are… not so great.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed personally is that a decent chunk of resumes are missing the easy stuff, even when the resume and experience otherwise looks really good. It’s missing the low-hanging fruit, so to speak.
The reality is that, when you leave key information off of your resume, you are leaving it to the imagination of the firm. If a firm is looking at several strong candidates, but your resume is missing your bar admission for the relevant state, the firm will likely just move forward with the other ones and assume you are not licensed (or wonder why you left it off). Sure, the firm *could* follow up with you to ask, but why should a busy recruiting manager spend that extra time when there are other strong candidates?
In-depth advice for crafting a resume is the subject of another blog post. Instead, this blog post covers the easy stuff – a checklist of things you might forget, but should absolutely be included every time:
1/ Bar Admission Status – Always include your bar admission status for all of the states, including USPTO (if you are a patent attorney or agent), in which you are licensed. If you are applying to an opening in another state, then you should mention your plans to become licensed: if you are eligible to waive in to the state, mention that with a quick note (“Bar exam score eligible to waive in for admission in [State]”). If you are planning to sit for that state’s bar exam, include a note (“Planning to sit for February 2025 [State] Bar Exam”). If you have a science background and haven’t taken the USPTO bar yet, but are eligible and plan to, it is also recommended to include “USPTO Bar Eligible” on your resume.
Being licensed in the applicable jurisdiction is a requirement for every single lateral posting. You’d be surprised how many candidates leave this information out.
(For specific bar admission situations that require explanation, you can use your cover letter to provide that information.)
2/ Locations of Your Work Experiences – Many candidates include their work experiences, with nice bullet points describing their work, but without their work location. Even if your experience is at a large firm with many offices that all work together, this information is important. First, if you worked in the same city as the job you are applying to, you want to show that. Second, firms have different practices in different offices, and including your prior/current office locations is an extra data point about your experience for your resume review and interview. Having M&A experience in New York is very different from M&A experience in the Bay Area, for example.
3/ Where You Live – It is important to include the city you live in on your resume. No, you do not need to include your actual home address if you don’t feel comfortable doing that. But, at the very least, your resume should have the city you live in. Even “New York, NY” would suffice, for example.
The firm wants to know that you have ties to the office you are applying to – if you don’t have any location information, the firm may assume you are applying from another city without being targeted in your search. (If you are, you should include a cover letter that includes a note about your plans to relocate and your interest in that location.)
Note that if your work experiences all list their locations (see above) and are in the same location you’re applying to, then this is less critical – the idea is the firm is comfortable that you are local or are planning to relocate.
(Note: If it’s indeed important to show where you live, then you do not need to the specific town you live in. For example, if you live in a suburb of Los Angeles but for some reason do not want to include that, you can simply include “Los Angeles Area, CA.”)
4/ Law School Honors and Extracurriculars – Although law school is in the past, firms still like to know about your law school experience, especially for juniors (and midlevels) – just see how many firms require law school transcripts from laterals as proof of this. If you had honors in law school (such as Dean’s List, or cum laude), you should absolutely include that. (Don’t just rely on your transcript to provide this information – if your resume is passed along to a hiring partner or practice group leader, they will likely be glancing at your resume for a few seconds and their eyes will catch “cum laude” – they are less likely to want to parse through your resume counting the As and Bs, without even knowing where you landed in your class rank.)
If you were part of any student groups or affinity groups, especially in leadership positions, include those… especially if those student groups are relevant to the job you are applying for. Even for laterals, firms want to see that candidates are well-rounded and take initiative, and you can show that through your law school experience. (Membership in general interest law school groups without a leadership position may be less relevant for midlevel and senior candidates who are a few years removed from law school.)
5/ Non-Legal Work Experience – If you have work experience before law school, this should still be included on your resume, assuming it won’t make your resume too long. (If you have been out of law school for a long time, with several legal experiences, then this is less critical.) If you went “straight through” from college to law school, you can still include your experiences during your law school summers and any notable experiences during college (only those that are notable, not every college internship you had). This is especially the case if those experiences are relevant to the job you are applying to, or otherwise interesting.
All of your experiences (legal and non-legal alike) compound on each other, and firms know that.
**
As I mention above, more in-depth resume advice is the subject of another post. But, from seeing thousands of resumes and what is commonly (and interestingly) left off, I hope this serves as a helpful guide for the easy stuff that should be included every single time.
10 helpful and actional tips for advocating for family-friendly policies at your firm, with Lori Mihalich-Levin of Mindful Return.
In response to interview questions, focus on positive forward-looking aspects about the potential new opportunity as opposed to negative aspects about your current job.
Being up-front about your plans to apply and your interest in the firm puts you in the best position.
Tips on how to leave your job professionally when it's time to make a move.