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Legal

The Perfect Legal Resume From A To Z

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A: (ASCII) ASCII Text is basic text that you would use in an email message or online resume database. You should use a Plain Text or ASCII version of your legal resume to copy and paste into online forms or post in online resume databases. ASCII Text resumes are the most widely used format for posting a resume to an online job board or sending it through an email.

B: (Bar Admission) your legal resume should include a separate section that includes your bar admission. Be sure to include the year of admission for each jurisdiction you were admitted to. Including dates of admission will indicate eligibility for waiver into other jurisdictions, which can be helpful information to potential employers.

C: (Contact) Your contact information should include a name, phone number, email, and mailing address. Be sure to include at least one phone number, either your home, cell, or both. Never include your work number or work email address on the resume. If you have created a LinkedIn profile, you should consider adding a hotlink of your LinkedIn profile on your resume.

D: (Do-It-Yourself) While the do-it-yourself approach to creating a legal resume seems to be the most popular approach; its not always the most successful. In today’s competitive legal job market, a professional resume is the single most important tool in getting your foot through the door. Therefore, you may want to consider hiring a professional resume writing service that specializes in legal resumes. You will find that working with a professional resume writer is worth the investment.

E: (Education) You should list the schools of higher education you attended in reverse chronological order. Begin with the name of the law school and college from which you received your higher education degree. Next, include your degree, the date it was received, and include the city and state of your school for consistent formatting.

F: (Format) While there is no one-size fits all in terms of formatting your legal resume, there are a couple of rules of thumb you should keep in mind in terms of formatting and editing your legal resume. Your legal resume should be on neutral tone paper, either white or ivory. You should use a traditional black 12-point font, either Times, Arial, or Verdana. In other words, you need to stick to the basics. See: Building Your Lawyer Resume for more information on how to properly format your legal resume.

G: (Gaps) If you are sending your legal resume while you are currently unemployed, are you filling the gaps? Most attorneys simply dont fill the gaps on their legal resume. At best, they provide the end date of their employment and send out their legal resume as-is. Thats a mistake. Whether the gap is created when a candidate is no longer employed by his or her former employer, or because of unaccounted time between jobs, these gaps need to be addressed. See: Filling The Gaps On Your Legal Resume for more information.

H: (Hobbies) Unless your hobbies or activities relate to the position you are applying to, leave them out, no matter how interesting they might appear to you. These are better off addressed during an interview rather than on a resume. However, if you are a member of an association that relates to your legal practice or practice focus, include it in the resume. This may include publications, articles, lectures, and speaking engagements.

I: (Inaccuracies) That may seem like an obvious no-no, but you might be surprised to find out how many applicants stretch the truth or simply lie or their legal resume. The most common offense usually involves some type of misrepresentation or misleading statement concerning degrees, grades, class standing, academic honors, and participation on scholarly publications, work history or relevant work experience. Today, employers have access to a number of tools to verify resume information through both formal and informal channels. Therefore, avoid making factual misrepresentations of any kind on your legal resume. You should always aim to represent your qualifications, skills, experience, and interests fully and accurately.

J: (Job Postings) If you want to land the perfect job, take the time to check out legal job listings, and use them to create a powerful legal resume. You will find that by mining this resource to create your legal resume, you will come up with some excellent results. See: Using Job Postings To Build Your Lawyer Resume for more information on this subject.

K: (Keywords) To draft an effective legal resume based on keywords from job postings, you have to us identified keywords and phrases to create your summary, skill, and work history sections. By incorporating keywords and phrases identified in job postings into your legal resume, you will make your resume stand out to employers. There will be an element of instant recognition, as keywords will be picked up immediately, either by live recruiters or resume-scanning databases, reviewing your legal resume.

L: (Legal Resume) A legal resume is a constantly evolving document that has to be updated and customized. Be sure to add new skills, accomplishments, or relevant training or publications youve been involved in since you last updated your resume. This is also an opportunity to delete information that is no longer as relevant or useful in advancing your candidacy.

M: (Make it Perfect) I cannot emphasize enough the important of proofreading your resume. Nearly 9 out of 10 legal resumes I read every day contain at least one typographical error. When it comes to a legal resume, that’s not something you want to take lightly. Spell-checkers can be your best friend and your worst enemy. In other words, they miss a lot of errors. So before you send out your legal resume, print out a copy, and read it carefully word by word. When it comes to typos, you can never be too careful.

N: (Not Using Templates) A template can often be a good place to begin the initial information collection process; however I would caution legal professionals from solely relying on them for layout, structure, wording, and content. There are many websites that offer free resume templates, including our own. If you think they are easy to find and use, you are not alone. Imagine a recruiter who is required to sift through hundreds of resumes on a daily basis, looking at similar resumes based on the same template. The last thing you want is for your legal resume to look like everyone elses. So beware of using templates.
O: (Omitting) Omitting your graduation date, employment dates, or other relevant information is a big dont for legal resumes. If you are omitting a date, you are now making an employer guess what that date might be. Worst, it clearly shows that you are hiding something, and if it is something as innocuous as a graduation date, an employer can only guess what else you might not have been upfront about in your legal resume. Doubt creates questions, and questions create doubt. This is the last thing you want your legal resume to do.

P: (Professional Resume Writers) If you lack the time or are unsure about how to create an effective legal resume, don’t worry; there is plenty of help available. Writing a great legal resume isn’t necessarily a skill that you need to have, so take some time, and spend the money to have it professionally drafted for you. Hiring a professional resume writer to craft your legal resume may be the best investment youve ever made.

Q: (Quantifying Your Experience) Quantifying your experience on your legal resume is one of the most important steps you can take to improve its overall substance. Whenever possible, include numerical figures that demonstrate progress or accomplishments resulting directly from your work. How does quantifying your resume improve it? Supposed you’re reading a resume and you see the following statement: “Handled the discovery of a large products liability case and obtained a favorable settlement.” Sounds nice, but this statement does not make much of an impact. Consider this statement instead: “Handled the discovery of a products liability case, including the review of over 5,000 documents, and obtained a favorable $10M plaintiff settlement together with attorneys fees in the amount of $500K.” Now thats a statement with impact! Why? Because it provides enough details that an employer will want to know more about this story and about your accomplishments in general.

R: (References Upon Request) Including References Available Upon Request on your legal resume is a waste of space and states the obvious. Employers are assuming that you can provide references upon request, so dont waste precious resume space on something thats unnecessary.

S: (Summary) Your legal resume should start with a clear and concise summary section that highlights your practice areas and skills. This section can be named a number of things such as Profile, Overview or Summary. The most important thing to remember when drafting this section is to keep it brief and to the point.

T: (Tailor Your Resume) A one-size-fits-all legal resume is like junk mail. They are not personalized toward an employers needs. When you receive junk mail that does not address you by your name or your needs, what do you do? Probably toss it. Employers are no different. If you are planning to apply to more than one position, your legal resume should be drafted specifically for each position you are applying to. If you dont tailor your legal resume to the position you are applying to, you will most likely obtain few positive responses from your resume.

U: (Unreadable Fonts) Formatting your legal resume properly is almost as important as the information it contains. If you present an employer with a dense, hard to read document requiring a magnifying glass, you may find that your legal resume will not be getting the attention it deserves, even if its content is outstanding. Use a font the employer can read easily, such as a 12-point font with variable spacing such as Times New Roman or Arial. While you may have to compromise on font size and style to keep your resume to two pages or less, try not to go below a 10-point font on the major sections of your resume.

V: (Verbs) You should use action verbs in your legal resume because they make sentences and statements more concise and persuasive. In order to make a striking first impression, use action verbs as the first word of each bullet point to emphasize a skill. Using action verbs will allow you to highlight the tasks you can do. Choosing the right verb to describe your skills and accomplishment is critical in effectively describing what you have done, and in persuading potential employers to interview you. For a list of legal resume action verbs, see Using Active Verbs in Your Legal Resume.

W: (Work History) Your professional experience should begin with the full legal name of the company, law firm, or organization you have worked for. This will immediately allow an employer to determine if you have the industry or background that would be a good match for his or her organization. Next, provide your full title, as well as your dates of employment and the city and state where you practiced. Finally, provide a short description of the organization you are worked for, a description of your responsibilities, and bullets to highlight your various accomplishments. Most legal employers prefer to hire from their competitors, so identifying the organization that you are currently working for or worked for in the past is very important to signal at the beginning of the work history section of your legal resume.

X: (X-traneous Information) Your resume is a marketing tool designed to land you an interview. It is not a biography. Because the modern resume is a marketing tool, it’s best to keep personal interests, hobbies, and other non-essential materials for the interview process as a way to “break the ice. If you are keen on listing organizations, affiliations, volunteer work, or extracurricular activities on your legal resume, only list those that are relevant to your practice as a legal professional, or that are directly related to your targeted job. Again, if its not related to your practice or the position, do not include it.

Y: (Yin and Yang) While it is usually easier for job seekers to focus on what to do right on their legal resume, many tend to forget what they may be doing wrong with their resume. When we put on blinders about potential faults in our resumes, we can miss critical errors that can make the difference between getting an interview and getting the heave-ho. In The Yang Of Legal Resume Writing, we discuss the yang, or must-do elements, to create an effective legal resume. To find out about the yin of resume writing, or what not to do, when drafting a legal resume, see: The Yin Of Legal Resume Writing.

Z: (Zone In) You may already know the resume basics when it comes to drafting your legal resume: how to use the right keywords, where to put the most important information, how to use bullets with active verbs, etc. But are you also zoning in on the small stuff? A missing period or a different sized hyphen might not make or break your resume, but when you realize that your legal resume is also considered a writing sample by most employers, the small stuff can take on a whole new level of importance. To see a list of details most often overlooked in legal resumes, read the following article: Sweating The Small Stuff On Your Lawyer Resume.

Legal

Legal Loopholes In Credit Card Debt, Do They Exist

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Credit card debt loopholes, do they really exist?

This article is based on my experience of the credit industry in the UK. It may or may not be relevant to those living outside the UK that should make entertaining reading all the same.

There is much talk of loopholes in the Consumer Credit Act which allegedly allows a person to get out of paying their credit card debt without paying. Many companies have sprung up offering, for a fee, to analyse your credit card agreements and where appropriate applied to have your debt quashed.

Since many of these companies charge upfront fee it makes no difference to them whether or not they are successful. The question is, is it true that a person can get out of debt without paying?

The answer is yes.

I write from personal experience, a long time ago prior to the Internet revolution huge, well-known finance companies, made a very risky decision in that they chose not to comply with the specific terms of the consumer credit act. They did this because they thought the legal jargon that was required to be added to for example, a credit card application form, would scare people off.

What they didn’t realise was, with the advent of the Internet, the sharing of knowledge, would bring about a revolution. Today thousands of people are successfully challenging the legality of their credit card and other unsecured debt agreements.

This is because many of the agreements and lack essential legal terms and the consumer credit act specifically states that no judge is allowed to find in favour of the creditor should the case come to court.

If you have ever received a small slip of paper tucked into your newspaper telling you to sign here for a credit card or loan, you will know the type of inadmissible consumer credit agreement I am talking about.

The reason consumer credit agreements need to contain specific information is because they are an important legally binding document and the person signing it needs to be made aware of their contractual obligations.

I personally was in debt by more than 50,000 and by sending a series of letters and challenging debt collectors, solicitors, finance and credit card companies I was able to bring about a situation whereby for almost 2 years now I’ve not made a single payment not received a single letter, no court summons, no solicitors letters, no contact from debt collectors and no phone calls. The method used is completely legal and it is also possible to maintain a clean credit record in many cases.

The laws I called upon included the Consumer Credit Act the Protection from Harassment Act, the Fraud Act and the Limitations Act amongst others.

I can assure you that it is entirely possible to get out of debt without paying in a huge number of cases, especially if you’re agreements dated prior to 2007.

For more information on this subject search any major search engine for the term credit card debt loopholes

Legal

Us Waivers Of Admissibility Help Canadians Cross The Border Legally

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If you are a Canadian citizen with a criminal record you may not be allowed to cross the United States border legally; in fact you will be branded as inadmissible to the United States. Some people in this situation are under the misguided impression that applying for a Canada pardon will enable them to cross legally in the US, however this is not the case; Canada pardons are not globally recognized and the US is a country, which does not place any value on them. The only way to make legal entry into the US is to apply for a US waiver of inadmissibility.

US waiver for Canadians is a time consuming process, which takes around a year from start to finish. The first step is to fill out an I-192 waiver Form down-loadable at the Legal Canada Community website. Other forms that need to be completed are Form G-28 if you use legal representation to file your application and Form G-325A for your biographical information. All of these forms can be downloaded from the Legal Canada Community website.

Next each applicant must get hold of a copy of their criminal record from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). This can only be done by submitting your fingerprints on form C216C something that needs to be done for the US authorities too (on form FD-258). If you have any form of criminal record in another country you must also get hold of a copy of the criminal record or a letter from an official source stating why there is no record. Its no good thinking that you can sweep foreign crimes under the carpet the US authorities search many global databases looking for records and falsifying your record will result in instant denial for a US waiver and thus further blot your copybook. To further increase the US waiver paper trail, you must also contact every court where you have been sentenced and obtain the official court record detailing your crime, your plea and your sentence etc. Finally everyone who applies for a US waiver has the chance to state their version of events by making a personal declaration outlining the events of the crime and detailing efforts to reform such as rehabilitation courses. The aim of this declaration should be to prove to the US authorities that you are now a respected law abiding citizen.

Once you have gathered together all of these documents you can go to a US port of entry or a Customs and Border Protection Preclearance office in Canada the one in Toronto is located at Pearson International Airport; you can call for an appointment on 905-676-2606. If you present your documents here in person they will fill out your FBI fingerprint chart. Once 90 days have passed you can check out the status of your application online at inquiry.waiver., but realistically dont expect any significant progress even if you crime was of a minor nature; it takes around a year to make a decision on most US waivers of admissibility, but the peace of mind and the ability to cross the border legally that a US waiver brings is well worth it.

Legal

Legal costs basics Understanding the role of legal costs draftsman and their responsibilities

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Legal costs consultants can help individuals caught up in legal proceedings deal effectively settle the financial implications of their proceedings. Contracting cost reduction consultants can give you the peace of mind that these experienced professionals will deal with your case and guide you towards reaching appropriate agreements.

Ideally, a legal costs draftsman, according to UK law, deals with everything revolving around the cost aspect of any Lawsuit. Usually, they deal with detailed assessment of costs that touches on three main areas: cost payable to the solicitor by the client, cost payable between parties involved in the case and publicly funded costs or legal aid.

Where litigation is involved, there is always the winning party and the losing one. The losing party is usually required to pay the inter parties or the winning party’s cost. In an event that the parties fail to agree on these costs, then the legal cost negotiators usually come in to facilitate the assessment of these costs until the court can determine the appropriate sum to be paid. This is often common when insurance claims are involved hence the need for legal insurance cost negotiators.

Lawyers who represent clients expect compensation for their services. These lawyers are usually expected to provide their clients with written information about the cost of their services so the clients can be aware of everything before signing any contracts. Again, a law costs draftsman can draw up the lawyer’s bill of costs, indicating the service charges along with any disbursements paid to third parties that are working alongside the lawyer on the case.

Sometimes, a lawyer may represent a publicly funded client. In such situations, costs consultants are tasked to prepare a detailed bill for the services provided by the lawyer for the court’s assessment. Once the bill is approved, the lawyer can then be paid from public funds.

Legal costs negotiators can make the process of assessing and computing accurate costs for group, family or civil action litigation quite easy and more convenient for clients who are often preoccupied with the events surrounding their legal proceedings. These legal experts provide professional guidance in a wide range of matters from retainers to complex disputes between clients and their solicitors.

Being involved in a legal proceeding can be very stressful. You need to contract the services of skilled costs consultants to help take care of the cost aspect of your case. With the help of a good law costs draftsman, you can expect to receive full support in the process of cost recovery and be charged only the correct considerable fees.

Robins Cost Consultants Ltd is a highly reputed and experienced Law Costs Consultancy based in Grays, Essex. Our legal cost consultants are highly qualified and experienced. We offer an inclusive bill drafting service. We have particular expertise in high value and complex legal costs litigation.

Legal

Download Bolt Animation For Free – Legal Way

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This Christmas season you can give your children a special gift- Bolt animated movie. Bolt is brought to the theaters by Walt Disney pictures from 21st November. This movie will be screened in flat as well as 3D formats.
**To Download Bolt Animation for Free visit the link in the resource box under this article.

Your kids will definitely like this animated adventure with its visual stimulations enhanced by the latest technology. This movie also spreads the messages of honesty, faith and loyalty. It can be classified as a mild action adventure and you can watch it with your kids at home.

In this animation movie, Bolt (voice of John Travolta), a white German shepherd dog, acts in a hit TV show along with Penny (Miley Cyrus). Bolt believes that, he posses some extraordinary powers, like the character he plays in the TV show. Bolt gets accidentally shipped to New York City and is thrown in the road to face the rude ways of life.

Thus Bolt unfolds the frustrations of the dog that is thrown to the street from the comforts of the studio. Bolt befriends with an Alley cat (Susie Essman) and a house Hamster (Mark Walton) who helps Bolt to reunite with Penny. James Lipton plays the role of the director of the TV show. It is better to watch the 3D form because of the amazing special effects.

Your kids may be anxiously awaiting the release of Bolt. Just download Bolt animation for free and give a pleasant surprise to your kids. Getting Bolt downloaded is better because of the following reasons:
Your kid may not want to sit in the theatre for more than one and a half hours.
Adults as well as kids may want to see it many times and going to the theater every now and then is not possible.
Once you register in a legal download site you can download Bolt animation for free.
By spending less money and less time, you can fully enjoy the movie with your family and friends.
You can make a collection of downloaded movies once you pay a nominal membership fee.
So, grab your chance to download bolt animation for free and enjoy this Kiddies classic whenever you or your child wants. Your kid may wish to see it even after two or three years. All that you have to do to own the latest 3D animation movie is to download Bolt animation for free from a reputed site like the following site (in the resource box).

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