Counsel Practice
classicLawyer CV template with admissions, practice areas, matters, transactions and court experience. Free ATS-ready format for legal roles.
8 templates · free, no signup
Legal CVs are conservative on purpose. Bar admission, jurisdiction and practice areas are checked before the chronology, and matter descriptions have to show value, forum, responsibility and outcome without breaching confidentiality.
These lawyer resume templates use a serif, traditional hierarchy — the document a law-firm or in-house recruiter already knows how to read — with admissions above the timeline and selectable text throughout.
8 layouts that fit how lawyer hiring actually reads a CV. Open a card to preview, or start in the builder — the same content reflows if you switch template later.
Lawyer CV template with admissions, practice areas, matters, transactions and court experience. Free ATS-ready format for legal roles.
Legal resume with a split header, serif rules and small-caps section headings for attorneys, counsel and paralegals, with selectable text.
Academic classic with deep burgundy rules, centered serif header and scholarly typography for professors and attorneys.
Paralegal resume template with practice areas, caseload, research, filings and legal systems. Free ATS CV for law firm and in-house roles.
Timeless single-column classic resume with warm brown accents and centered header. Built for corporate, legal and business analyst roles.
Refined serif resume with stone palette, terracotta accents and centered grand header for traditional industries.
Academic resume with centered serif header, burgundy accent and publication formatting for professors and researchers.
Boardroom resume with a charcoal header, boxed mustard section titles and a serif split header for C-suite executives and partners.
Layout, not adjectives
The right template for this field is the one that puts the evidence a lawyer screen checks first in a document a parser can still read. Style is secondary.
Match the market
What belongs on the page
Jurisdiction and year. In-house roles still check this. Foreign qualifications need a one-line equivalence.
Corporate, employment, litigation, regulatory — the nouns in the advert. Paraphrases miss keyword searches.
Value, forum, your responsibility, outcome. "Advised on a cross-border acquisition in the £X–Y range" is usually enough.
Where they are genuine. Over-claiming a language in this field is easy to expose on a call with counsel.
From template to file
The market has a house style. Matching it is part of looking like a safe hire.
Then practice areas, then the chronology. Do not bury a practising certificate in education.
Skip adjectives. Partners read for substance and for whether you understand confidentiality.
Confirm admissions are selectable text, then send.
Questions
It helps in this market. Oxford Classic and Counsel Practice already do. A heavily designed sans-serif CV is not what most legal recruiters expect to open.
Sector, value band, forum, your role, outcome. If a client can be named, the engagement letter is the authority — not the CV.
The same layouts work. In-house CVs should make reporting line, business unit and commercial outcomes more obvious; private practice should make practice area, originations and matter value more obvious.
In a short block after experience if they are recent and relevant. They should not push admissions or practice areas off the first page.
Open a template, replace the sample history with your own, and export a PDF or Word file. No account.