Legal Secretary CV Example

A legal secretary CV that's well-written, engaging and showcases the most relevant skills and experience gives you the best chance of progressing to the next stage of the recruitment process. Let’s break down the core components of a CV and examine how to build them effectively.

Key sections for a legal secretary CV

How you approach writing your legal secretary CV will vary according to your experience, your level and the details outlined in the job description.

However, regardless of your years of experience, a legal secretary CV needs to connect the dots of your career into a cohesive story. In the following sections, we’ll dive into the specific chapters of your CV step-by-step, showing you how to refine everything from your initial introduction to your long-term achievements.

CV Header

At the top of your legal secretary CV, add a header that establishes the design language of the document. Include the necessary contact information: your full name, email address, phone number and location. It's not typically necessary to include your full address. If you have a LinkedIn profile, consider adding a URL to this in your header, to help the reader easily find more information on your career and credentials.

For jobs in the UK, a personal photo is usually not required on your CV. That, along with any other personal details such as age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, are generally discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010, which aims to reduce and eliminate discriminatory practices, such as recruitment bias.

CV Summary

Under your header, write a brief CV summary or CV objective, outlining a few of your key skills, qualities and achievements. This short paragraph can help employers to quickly assess your suitability for the role, setting the tone for your legal secretary CV. While a CV summary showcases your key skills and achievements in the context of your career to date, a CV objective provides an alternative approach. It focuses instead on your ambitions for the future, making it ideal for junior candidates without much work experience.

In your summary or objective, write two or three sentences introducing your key skills, unique qualities and career achievements, making sure they match the key requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary will highlight one or two key skills that match those listed in the job description, and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to set yourself apart from other candidates by focusing on unique qualities or particular areas of strength that have shaped your career to date. See below for an example of a strong legal secretary CV summary, featuring quantifiable evidence of your impact and concise, easy-to-read sentences.

Above is an example of CV summary that doesn't follow best practice, with some subtle shortcomings and failings. For a summary to make less of an impact, it might include generic or vague information, lack evidence of your impact, or fail to highlight specific personal qualities that make you stand out from other candidates. It may also lack tailoring to the job description or include long, poorly structured sentences.

Employment History

The work experience section of a CV is usually the most important part. Employers look for evidence of how you've developed and used your skills to good effect in your career to date, as an indication of your likely future performance. Remember, it's essential to tailor this section to match the job description, including keywords and phrases to help employers see how you'll fit the role, and how you might put the required skills to good use in the future.

List only your most relevant jobs, and go back up to 10 or 15 years, depending on your experience levels. List your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Also include bullet points for each entry, highlighting how you used your skills to add value for the employer.

What differentiates one CV work experience section from all the others is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence in your bullet points. It should showcase how your actions led to positive outcomes for the employer, and show a progression in your skills throughout your career. See below for an example of how to put the work experience section best practice into action:

Above you'll find a less effective example of a legal secretary CV work experience section. An unengaging work experience section could be too generic, focusing too much on day-to-day duties rather than skills and achievements. It could also fail to address the job description or lack evidence to show the impact you've made in your career to date.

Key Skills

The skills section of a legal secretary CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. For a legal secretary CV, it's valuable to highlight essential skills from your skill set, such as discretion and legal document drafting expertise, to grab the attention of hiring managers and show you're qualified for the legal secretary position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are the specialist skills required for completing the everyday duties of the role, such as the use of certain software or equipment, or specialist industry knowledge. You can develop these skills through study, training, on-the-job or through completing industry certifications. For legal secretary roles, key hard skills you've gained, such as legal document drafting expertise, and MS office suite proficiency, are typically among the most critical for the job. Review the job description, and include four or five key hard skills in your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The best hard skills section would be based around skills listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. To give yourself the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer, and your hard skills list should reflect this.

Below, you can find the types of skills typically featured in the hard skills section of a legal secretary CV:

Soft Skills

Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that show employers how well you'll fit into the role and complement other members of the team. Soft skills tend to be more transferable and applicable to different roles than hard and technical skills. As a result of rapid technological changes in the world of work, soft skills are becoming ever-more valued by employers. Soft skills can also be particularly valuable for junior or entry-level roles where candidates haven't necessarily had the time to develop hard skills and career achievements.

As with your legal secretary CV hard skills list, review the job description to learn the key soft skills for the role. Include the best soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Create a list of four or five transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with the skills that help you to stand out as a unique and compelling candidate for the position.

Explore the examples below to identify soft skills commonly presented in a legal secretary CV.

Education

Your education section should showcase your most recent and highest qualifications, paying particular attention to anything that's specifically required for the role.

Legal secretary roles typically require candidates to have a relevant university degree, and you'll want to showcase this in your CV to confirm your eligibility. Add your Bachelor of Laws or another related degree that makes you an eligible candidate for the position, in your CV. If you have any other degrees or qualifications that highlight lexisnexis legal research proficiency, court filing systems knowledge or your most relevant skills, you could also add these.

Creating the education section of your CV means selecting the most relevant and highest qualifications, and listing them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent achievements and working back from there. For each qualification, add its name and level, the awarding body or institution, its location (if necessary) and your dates of attendance or graduation. If you want to emphasise your education in your CV, include bullet points showing specialist areas of study, projects, awards, society memberships or anything else that helps show you've got the necessary skills for the job.

Specialist licences or certifications can also be a valuable addition to your CV's education section. If these are essential for the job and are referenced in the job description, it's a good idea to include them here rather than further down your CV. Include any expiration or renewal dates for certifications, if applicable.

Certifications and Training

If you've invested your time and resources into gaining extra qualifications beyond the minimum requirements for the role, you could highlight these in a certifications section. It can be a valuable way of differentiating yourself from other candidates and showing employers your dedication, motivation and commitment to professional development. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your legal secretary CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

These example certifications and licences are ideal for candidates applying for legal secretary roles:

Language Skills

Including a section on language skills can be beneficial, if you speak at least one language to a reasonable level of competency, in addition to your mother tongue. This is true even if language skills aren't a requirement for the role, as foreign language abilities often correlate to other valuable soft skills. Under this section, list any foreign languages you speak to a professional standard, with an indicator of your competency level for each.

There are several ways to cite your proficiency in foreign languages. Firstly, you could use a simple descriptive word to indicate your abilities, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could otherwise use an internationally recognised language standard, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns your language skills a standardised level of competence, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Optional Sections

Adding optional sections to the end of your legal secretary CV is a good way of showing you have the necessary skills for the job. Consider including a few optional sections to your CV if you think you need to provide extra information to prove your credentials. These sections can be particularly valuable if you lack relevant work experience, such as for entry-level roles, or if you're changing careers to a completely new field or specialism.

And if you'd like more tips on making your CV stand out, explore our career resources. They’re designed to help you showcase your strengths and boost your chances of landing the job.

Hobbies and Interests

If you have any hobbies and interests that can showcase skills relevant to the job description, it might be worth including them. In addition, hobbies and interests can showcase your personality, helping to differentiate you from other candidates. However, it's important to only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant, or related to, the role you're applying for. If your hobbies don't help you to show skills required for the role, that are missing elsewhere in your CV, it's best to leave this section out.

Volunteer Roles

Another valuable optional section for your CV is volunteering. This section can offer a great alternative showcase for your skills and experience, if you don't have much relevant work experience. Consider adding this section if you have any relevant unpaid experience, either as a junior candidate or a career changer. Your volunteering section should follow much the same structure as your work experience section.

Add a description of the volunteer role or a job title if you had one, the name of the organisation, its location and the start and end date of your volunteering. List bullet points that show how you put relevant skills to good use to create positive results for the organisation.

References

References aren't usually required on a UK CV, so leave them out in most cases. However, it's always worth checking the job advert and being ready to include them if requested. If you need to add them to your CV, include two or three references, adding their name, job title, organisation and contact details.

Be sure to ask their permission before you include anyone as a reference in your legal secretary CV. Alternatively, you could simply add a line to your CV indicating you can provide references when necessary, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Top action words to use in a legal secretary CV

Adding strong action verbs to the bullet points in your CV's work experience section is a great way to focus on the key skills required for the job, while showing the impact you've made. Start each bullet point with an action word that reflects the job description, so the reader can easily identify your best qualities. Always remember to back up any action verbs you use with evidence that shows the impact it made and the achievements that it led to. Use past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, and present tense for your current position.

Legal secretary CV example

Now we've shown you everything that needs to go into your legal secretary CV, we can take a look at how it comes together in its final form in the following example:

If you're not sure what your one-page, finalised CV design might look like, check out our examples.

Tips for optimising your CV for ATS

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are a valuable tool for many recruiters and employers, helping them manage the recruitment process by scanning and assessing CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. This saves recruiters and hiring managers the time and effort of reading every CV in detail. With many vacancies often receiving hundreds of applications, ATS software can really relieve the burden on hiring teams and free them up to focus only on the most suitable candidates.

With ATS apps becoming more prominent, it's essential for candidates to optimise their CVs to increase their chances of passing the initial screening stage. You can read a list of the top tips for ATS optimisation below:

• Include keywords and phrases from the job description that are easy for ATS apps to identify, and help make you appear a strong fit for the role.
• Use standard CV headings that make your CV easier to navigate, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout that avoids the use of any special design elements that might make your CV less compatible with ATS scanning software.
• Select a font that can enhance the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, with size 10 to 12 for body text and 14 to 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points in place of full sentences and paragraphs. This can reduce the overall length of the document, make the keywords stand out and make it easier for ATS apps to scan.

You might feel there are a lot of things to remember when writing an ATS-compatible CV, but with just a few small tweaks, you can ensure yours passes this stage. Use one of our expert-designed, ATS-compatible CV templates to avoid the stress of adapting your CV for ATS screening.

Key takeaways for a winning legal secretary CV

To stand out from the crowd with your CV, tailor your approach to each individual application, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the job description. Select a suitable CV format for your experience level, and show the reader how you've used skills relevant to the role, to create a positive impact in your career to date.

Finally, creating your CV using one of Jobseeker's expert-designed CV templates can give your application the edge, placing you among the leading candidates and positioning you for success with your job applications.

Sources:

1. JobHelp (UK Department for Work & Pensions campaign), No work experience? Focus on what you do have
2. Jobseeker, Hiring Trends