Document Review #6 - Resumes:The HARD, CLEAN and QUICK (sm) way Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

This is the sixth installment of the Crab Media Document Review series. Document Review #6 deals with document review resumes - the HARD, CLEAN and QUICK (sm) way. This guide is currently in beta format and will be undergoing typographic and stylistic modifications in the coming days.
Read more...
In a prior essay, I discussed how document review work fits into an overall legal career. This essay deals with the converse concept: how an overall legal career fits into a document review contract attorney profile and how to market that career on a document review resume, with particular emphasis on the DC metropolitan area market.

The prime purpose of a resume is to impress an interviewer or hiring committee quickly. In the case of document review contract work, the hiring committee is usually one recruiter who has a massive stack of resumes to review. You should assume that your interviewer has attention deficit disorder; I state this not to make light of a defined disorder but to know that the demand for your interviewer's full attention will exceed her supply. This is true in most resume review contexts but is EXTREMELY true in the era of email bombardment.

In every resume, you need to hit HARD, CLEAN and QUICK. Anything else is sheer idiocy in practice. But it's especially brutal if you fail to do so in this market. HARD, CLEAN and QUICK.

HARD: what do they want to know? In most cases, they want to know your name, your general location and that you are licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia. When they get your resume, they will have a file to open for you, perhaps paper or electronic (or both.) Your name, your practical availability by geography and your bar affiliations will be among the most important questions for them to answer for that file, perhaps the only questions in a rush case. Accordingly, the top of the resume should have your name, your location and your bar memberships prominently.

In DC, your location matters because the Bar is large and they don't have any interest in an attorney who lives in Topeka. or Seattle. If you are not local, you need to establish an address and a phone number within about 50-60 miles of DC. 540 and 410 area codes work fine for the outer reaches of the DC suburbs/exurbs; interviewers comprehend that people commute daily some distances by rail, long bus or whatever. A local footprint is critical; they cannot sell a law firm on you if there is a substantial risk that you won't post at work on two days' notice.

CLEAN: DC Licensure is what every agency wants, every law firm wants and many law firms demand. DC pending a waive-in is next best but still not as good. If you are contemplating filing for the DC Bar, get it DONE; you are a spectator until you have at least a transmittal of receipt from the DC Clerk's office proving your filing with the Bar. Your DC Bar status, however it may be, should be at the top of your resume, prominently if not garishly visible. It's more important than any other achievement.

QUICK: After your Bar status (DC and then other Bars applicable), you should list your document and contract attorney experience FIRST. They do not give a damn about your Moot Court experience or your journal experience, as the law firms already have appellate attorneys and blue-bookers on partner-track payroll. You should list it anyway, of course, just at the bottom and NOT ahead of what's important.

For your document review and contract experience, list each project by project name (if appropriate and unless secret - see below), agency, dates, general type of work INCLUDING the software packages used, termination date and reason for termination.

Do NOT list the individual law firms at which you were placed unless you have been given express permission to do so in a resume context, and if you do so, state bluntly that the law firm authorized the reference/disclosure. Do NOT reveal the name of the project or especially of the ultimate legal client of the law firm unless you were authorized to do so; this is a resume killer. In practice, most agencies will know that if you worked on a multi-lingual antitrust case for agency XYZ from June to November, you worked on "Project Oktoberfest" anyway. The important thing is to not look like the stupidest, sloppiest resume in the stack. It's OK to say "Project Name Withheld/Confidential".

For the type of work for each project, identify the very general industry, legal issues and legal work involved. Example: "Multi-lingual review of antitrust discovery documents for responsiveness, significance and privilege for German corporate transportation/industrial/media/retail client" or "Document review in response to DOJ Second Request for proposed merger of competitors in the U.S. adult novelty industry."

Listing the dates accurately is important. If you have a gap of over 29 days (or even fewer), state that you were aggressively seeking contract work from multiple agencies during the gap unless that's a lie. If it appears that you were working two projects at once, you may get blackballed unless you can explain it very simply. If you get let go or fired on a project, be upfront but positive in your explanation. E.g. "Project contracted for unstated reasons" or "Project contracted in volume; received feedback regarding project-specific privilege definitions." If you had a truly bad experience on a project, whether it's "your fault" or "their fault", you should have a sit-down with your agency for a debriefing and "exit interview" to formulate a strategy for going forward.

After your name, your location, your licenses and your relevant experience, you should also put your irrelevant experience and credentials along with three references. Don't do the "references available upon request" game; put them down on the first strike at the bottom of the resume. Not having three references in hand is a turn-off and an inconvenience; they will save the resume and don't particularly want to save a second document in your "file" whether paper or electronic. The best references are prior document review supervisors from other law firms in DC but it is awkward to ask for those, i.e. if you get lucky one will volunteer to be a reference if you and/or your team are very solid workers. TAKE THAT OFFER UP - repeatedly. It's your best insurance against unemployment. Barring that, anyone with supervisory or collegial experience with you works very well.

The resume should be in Word format; it's acceptable to translate it over to WordPerfect but almost no one uses that format in this line of work in my experience. Most agencies want the resume submitted electronically, though a few still take faxes. You should feel free to submit and resubmit your updated resume even to agencies that know you well; they get that your resume grows with experience and more projects and that's a good thing. You should keep an updated resume available in a format that you can deliver to an agency by email without going home. This may mean keeping it on a laptop that you can open at Caribou Coffee during lunch when you get wind of a new project as your current one ends. It may mean emailing a copy of it to your BlackBerry and forwarding that copy to an agency on a break or when the network is down. It may mean having a spouse at the ready to take care of you when you call him/her. If a great project opens for resumes at 10:00 AM, the Posse List puts it out by 10:40 AM, and you get the buzz on your BlackBerry by 11:05, you should have th resume in the mailbox of the agency no later than 12:30 PM. QUICK.

Best wishes for success with your resume work in this unusual field.