How to Craft a Strong Resume as a Junior Associate

Your first few years as an associate can feel like a balancing act—learning the ropes at your firm while also thinking about how to set yourself up for long-term career growth. One of the most practical tools you have at this stage is your resume. Even if you’re not planning to make a move immediately, crafting a strong, clear resume now ensures you’re ready when opportunities arise.

Here’s how to approach it as a junior associate.

Make Legal Experience the Core of Your Resume

At this stage, your resume should be about 70% legal experience. You may not have decades of practice under your belt, but you do have meaningful experiences that demonstrate your legal skills. Focus on:

• Your associate work so far. Be specific about the matters you’ve touched, whether drafting motions, preparing for depositions, conducting due diligence, or supporting trial teams. Avoid broad summaries like “assisted attorneys in litigation matters.” Instead, show concrete contributions.

• Summer associate experience. Don’t treat this as filler—it counts. Highlight the type of projects you worked on and the practice groups you supported. Recruiters know this is substantive legal work.

Include Bar Admissions and Numbers

Bar admissions are not just formalities—they’re key credentials. Include your admission status prominently, along with your attorney registration number if your jurisdiction uses one. This helps employers verify your qualifications at a glance.

Highlight Clinical Experience as Real Practice

If you participated in a law school clinic, give it its own section. Clinics often provide some of the most hands-on experiences before full-time practice, whether:

• Representing tenants in housing disputes,

• Assisting prosecutors at a U.S. Attorney’s office, or

• Drafting agreements in a transactional law clinic.

These experiences count as real practice and should be written up like any other legal job—listing responsibilities, outcomes, and skills developed.

Be Specific, Not Broad

As a first-year, you may not yet have pages of major deals or trial victories, but that’s okay. The key is specificity. Instead of saying you “worked on corporate transactions,” say you “drafted sections of a stock purchase agreement and prepared closing documents for a $50M acquisition.” Precision shows you’ve contributed in tangible ways.

Bring It All Together

Your resume as a junior associate should reflect the foundation of your legal career: concrete experiences, early accomplishments, and credentials. By focusing 70% on legal work, including bar admissions, summer and clinical experiences, and using specifics over generalities, you’ll present yourself as a capable and growing attorney.