Paralegal Resume Example
An early-career litigation paralegal in Chicago with an ABA-approved certificate, two years as a legal assistant and about eighteen months billing as a paralegal.
A fictional resume written by our team. The person, employers and numbers are invented; the tools, licenses and schools are real.
Why it works
- 1
“Litigation paralegal at a 45-attorney Chicago firm supporting two partners in commercial disputes. Docketed 320 deadlines in CompuLaw with none missed and billed 1,510 hours against a 1,450 target in 2025.”
Opens with practice area, firm size and who the paralegal supports, which is how a hiring partner decides in seconds whether the experience transfers.
- 2
“Ran first-level review of 180,000 documents in Relativity for a contract case and built a 2,300-entry privilege log”
Document count and the tool name give the scale of the matter. A privilege log is a specific work product, not a vague 'assisted with discovery.'
- 3
“Drafted first-pass responses to 11 sets of interrogatories, 9 of them filed with only light associate edits”
Says how much of the draft survived review. For a paralegal, writing that attorneys file is the best evidence of drafting skill.
- 4
“Prepared 210 exhibits and 4 witness binders for a 6-day federal bench trial (N.D. Ill.) that ended in a defense verdict”
Trial support is rare at entry level, so it gets its own line with the court, the length and the volume of exhibits.
- 5
“Cite-checked 18 briefs in Westlaw to Bluebook, catching 60+ citation errors before filing”
The resume is read as a writing sample, so a line about catching errors only works if the page itself is clean. Counting the errors makes the claim concrete.
How it scored
We ran this example through the same free roast you can use, three times, and kept the middle result. The roast ranks a resume against a typical applicant pile and grades hard: even a resume with a number in nearly every bullet usually lands in the B range.
Copy the text
Use it as a skeleton, then replace every line with your own work. A copied bullet with someone else's numbers is the fastest way to fail an interview question.
Avery Okafor Litigation Paralegal, Commercial Disputes Chicago, IL | avery.okafor@example.com SUMMARY Litigation paralegal at a 45-attorney Chicago firm supporting two partners in commercial disputes. Docketed 320 deadlines in CompuLaw with none missed and billed 1,510 hours against a 1,450 target in 2025. EXPERIENCE Litigation Paralegal, Hollis Varga LLP | Jun 2024 - Present - Ran first-level review of 180,000 documents in Relativity for a contract case and built a 2,300-entry privilege log - Drafted first-pass responses to 11 sets of interrogatories, 9 of them filed with only light associate edits - Docketed 320 court and discovery deadlines in CompuLaw across 26 active matters with zero missed dates - Prepared 210 exhibits and 4 witness binders for a 6-day federal bench trial (N.D. Ill.) that ended in a defense verdict - Billed 1,510 hours in 2025 against a 1,450 target, with under 2% of time written off Legal Assistant, Brandt & Coyle Law Group | Sep 2022 - May 2024 - E-filed 400+ pleadings and motions in Cook County and federal CM/ECF with zero rejections in the second year - Cite-checked 18 briefs in Westlaw to Bluebook, catching 60+ citation errors before filing - Summarized 35 deposition transcripts, averaging 4 pages per 200-page transcript, for trial prep EDUCATION AND CREDENTIALS Paralegal Certificate (ABA-approved), Roosevelt University, 2024 NALA Certified Paralegal (CP), 2025 B.A. Political Science, University of Illinois Chicago, 2022 SKILLS Relativity, CompuLaw docketing, Westlaw and Lexis, iManage, E-filing (CM/ECF), Privilege logs, Deposition summaries, Bluebook
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