Field guide
How ATS screens legal and compliance resumes
Legal roles are screened on bar admission, practice area and the systems a team uses. Postings for attorneys usually require admission in a named state; paralegal and compliance roles look for certificates and tools such as Relativity or iManage.
What recruiters filter and search on
- Bar admission and state, or a paralegal certificate for support roles
- Practice areas named in the posting: litigation, corporate, employment, privacy, regulatory
- Tools: e-discovery and document management (Relativity, iManage, Westlaw, Lexis)
Name things the way the posting does
- State bar admission precisely: "Admitted to practice, State of Illinois"
- Use the posting's practice area names and the regulations you worked under (GDPR, HIPAA, SOX)
- Put the J.D., school and graduation year in Education
What trips up parsers in this field
- Matters described with no type, size or outcome
- Bar admission listed only in a cover letter
- Long paragraphs instead of bullets, which parsers and readers both skim past
How PassMyResume scores this field
Keywords 40%, credentials 30%, formatting 15%, content alignment 15%. Credentials only count when the posting requires one; otherwise that weight moves to keywords. The full formula.
The scanner knows 200 terms specific to this field, such as Westlaw, LexisNexis, Bloomberg Law, PACER, Fastcase, and credentials like Bar Admission, Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, Uniform Bar Examination.
Check your resume against a real posting
Free, unlimited, no sign-up. Paste a job link and see the hard requirements, your score and what moves it.
Scan my resume for free