Top 12 Associate Attorney Skills to Put on Your Resume

Crafting a standout associate attorney resume means threading sharp legal analysis with people-savvy instincts. Show the brainwork. Show the bedside manner. Make it obvious you can dig into the law, calm a client, and shape strategy with a team that moves fast and argues clean.

Associate Attorney Skills

1. LexisNexis
2. Westlaw
3. CaseMap
4. Time Matters
5. Clio Manage
6. Legal Research
7. Litigation Support
8. Contract Drafting
9. Negotiation
10. Trial Preparation
11. Document Review
12. E-Discovery

1. LexisNexis

LexisNexis delivers deep legal research and business intelligence—cases, statutes, regulations, news, treatises—organized to support fast, defensible analysis and clean citations.

Why It's Important

It compresses hours of digging into minutes, helps validate authorities, and keeps you current so your arguments land and your strategy holds.

How to Improve LexisNexis Skills

Level up by doing the following:

1. Training: Take product trainings and short refreshers to sharpen search syntax, filters, and post-search tools.
2. Customization: Tune your home page, sources, and filters to match your practice. Save searches. Save time.
3. Alerts: Create topic, docket, and publication alerts so changes hit your inbox before they hit your case.
4. Mobile Access: Use the mobile app for quick checks and cite lookups when you’re out of pocket.
5. Integrations: Connect with drafting tools to streamline citations and pull authorities without breaking focus.
6. AI Features: Explore new AI-assisted search and drafting features—then verify every output against primary sources.

How to Display LexisNexis Skills on Your Resume

2. Westlaw

Westlaw is a research platform packed with primary law, secondary sources, and validation tools like KeyCite—built for fast precision and trustworthy updates.

Why It's Important

When authorities shift, you need to know. Westlaw helps you find the right case, check if it still stands, and stitch the analysis together without guesswork.

How to Improve Westlaw Skills

1. Structured Training: Take periodic feature trainings; new tools roll out often.
2. Advanced Searching: Use Boolean, proximity connectors, field restrictions, and filters to narrow to what matters.
3. Practice Pages: Work from practice-area hubs to cut noise and surface gold faster.
4. KeyCite Mastery: Shepardize-equivalent on Westlaw means KeyCite—check flags, history, and citing references every time.
5. Personalization: Save favorite sources, set alerts, and keep a curated history for repeat issues.
6. Integrations and AI: Draft, cite, and verify from within your word processor; test new AI search tools but confirm results with primary law.

How to Display Westlaw Skills on Your Resume

3. CaseMap

CaseMap helps you wrangle facts, issues, evidence, and people into a single, searchable, defensible case file with timelines that tell the story cleanly.

Why It's Important

It turns messy facts into a structured narrative, links proof to claims, and speeds collaboration so your team rows in the same direction.

How to Improve CaseMap Skills

1. Feature Fluency: Practice tagging, linking, issue coding, and timeline building until it’s second nature.
2. Custom Fields: Shape the database to the case—custom issues, facts, and document types reduce friction and missed threads.
3. Research Integration: Pull in authorities and attach them directly to issues and facts. Keep context tied to evidence.
4. Collaboration: Standardize conventions for naming, tagging, and status so multiple reviewers don’t create chaos.
5. Exports: Build tight exports for outlines, witness kits, and motion packs. Reuse what works.
6. Iterate: After each case, refine your templates. Small tweaks pay off.

How to Display CaseMap Skills on Your Resume

4. Time Matters

Time Matters is practice management software for calendars, matters, contacts, documents, and time—designed to tighten workflows and keep work visible.

Why It's Important

Deadlines don’t forgive. This keeps tasks tracked, billing captured, and client touchpoints timely, which preserves trust and revenue.

How to Improve Time Matters Skills

1. Workspace Setup: Arrange dashboards, lists, and filters around your day-to-day. Remove clutter ruthlessly.
2. Templates: Build matter, document, and email templates to standardize and speed recurring work.
3. Shortcuts: Learn hotkeys and quick actions; seconds saved add up across a docket.
4. Billing Automation: Turn on timers, batch pre-bills, and standardized narratives to reduce leakage.
5. Mobile Access: Log time and check matters on the go so entries don’t vanish.
6. Training: Schedule short, regular refreshers—new features and better workflows appear often.

How to Display Time Matters Skills on Your Resume

5. Clio Manage

Clio Manage is a cloud platform for matters, time, billing, calendaring, tasks, and client communications—clean interface, strong integrations, accessible anywhere.

Why It's Important

It smooths the grind: track deadlines, capture time as you work, and keep clients in the loop without hunting through inboxes.

How to Improve Clio Manage Skills

1. Dashboard Personalization: Pin what you use most—upcoming tasks, billables, trust balances—front and center.
2. Task Flows: Use task lists and automations for common matter types. Consistency beats memory.
3. Time Capture: Record from emails, docs, and calendar events. Shorten the distance between doing the work and billing for it.
4. Integrations: Connect your document system, accounting, and email so data moves once and stays synced.
5. Mobile: Track calls, notes, and time from your phone. Minutes matter.
6. Training and Certifications: Work through academy modules to unlock features you didn’t know you needed.

How to Display Clio Manage Skills on Your Resume

6. Legal Research

Legal research means finding, validating, and applying the right authority—statutes, regs, cases, and persuasive sources—to drive strategy and writing that holds up.

Why It's Important

It’s the spine of the work. Good research narrows issues, avoids dead ends, and powers arguments that earn deference.

How to Improve Legal Research Skills

1. Frame the Question: Break issues into elements and keywords before you type a single search term.
2. Primary First: Start with controlling authorities, then layer in treatises and practice guides for context.
3. Search Discipline: Use connectors, fields, and filters. Iterate quickly. Save what works.
4. Track Your Trail: Keep a research log and tag sources; future-you will thank present-you.
5. Validate: Always cite-check and update—no exceptions.
6. Keep Current: Take short CLEs and product trainings; new tools (including AI-assisted search) change the game.

How to Display Legal Research Skills on Your Resume

7. Litigation Support

Litigation support covers the technology, workflows, and people that move cases: document review, databases, evidence organization, and courtroom presentation.

Why It's Important

It lets attorneys focus on legal strategy while the machinery behind the scenes keeps discovery tight and trial materials crisp.

How to Improve Litigation Support Skills

1. Tool Stack: Learn your firm’s review, database, and presentation tools in depth. Fewer clicks, better output.
2. Playbooks: Write short SOPs for intake, coding, QC, and production so teams stay coordinated.
3. Communication: Use secure team channels and clear status updates; ambiguity is expensive.
4. Metrics: Track throughput, error rates, and rework. Improve where the bottlenecks live.
5. Ongoing Training: Technology and rules evolve—short, frequent sessions beat marathon catch-ups.

How to Display Litigation Support Skills on Your Resume

8. Contract Drafting

Contract drafting means translating business goals into precise, enforceable language—allocating risk, clarifying duties, and leaving no space for confusion to breed.

Why It's Important

Strong contracts prevent disputes, speed deals, and protect clients when pressure hits.

How to Improve Contract Drafting Skills

1. Foundations: Revisit formation, interpretation, and remedies regularly. Doctrine shapes every clause.
2. Model Smart: Build clause banks and checklists. Start from vetted language, then tailor.
3. Plain English: Cut bloat. Make obligations obvious. Ambiguity is the enemy.
4. Issue Spotting: Scan for indemnities, limitations, IP, confidentiality, termination, and governing law early.
5. Client Context: Learn how the client makes money and where risk actually bites; draft to that reality.
6. Peer Review: Ask for targeted feedback. One sharp edit can lift the whole document.
7. Stay Current: Track market terms, new regs, and industry quirks so your positions aren’t stale.

How to Display Contract Drafting Skills on Your Resume

9. Negotiation

Negotiation is the art of trade-offs—finding the zone of agreement, sequencing concessions, and locking value without poisoning the relationship.

Why It's Important

Cases settle. Deals close. Your ability to move parties toward mutual gain, or hold firm when you must, changes outcomes.

How to Improve Negotiation Skills

1. Prep Ruthlessly: Define interests, walk-away points, and ask-list. Know your facts cold.
2. Listen Actively: Surface hidden interests by listening beyond the words.
3. Frame Clearly: Use simple language, fewer issues at once, and summaries that anchor the conversation.
4. Concession Strategy: Plan gives and gets. Trade low-cost items for high-value returns.
5. Emotional Control: Regulate your tone and pace; calm thinking beats heat.
6. Reps and Reviews: Practice with mock sessions and debrief afterward. Small adjustments compound.

How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume

10. Trial Preparation

Trial prep means mastering the record, sharpening themes, organizing exhibits, drafting motions, and preparing witnesses—so the story lands when it counts.

Why It's Important

Surprises happen. Preparation shrinks them and gives you options in the moment.

How to Improve Trial Preparation Skills

1. Case Architecture: Build timelines and fact matrices early. Update them relentlessly.
2. Theme and Theory: Commit to a simple story and test it with colleagues who will push back.
3. Witness Work: Run focused preps and mock exams. Outline goals, not scripts.
4. Exhibit Control: Number, track, and pre-admit when possible. Prepare backup formats.
5. Motion Readiness: Draft key motions and pocket briefs ahead of likely evidentiary fights.
6. Tech Check: Test presentation hardware and software before you step into court.
7. Moots: Rehearse openings, crosses, and closings. Tighten transitions.
8. Self-Care: Sleep, hydrate, and schedule breaks. Clarity wins.

How to Display Trial Preparation Skills on Your Resume

11. Document Review

Document review is the disciplined pass through records to decide relevance, privilege, confidentiality, and responsiveness—at scale and under deadlines.

Why It's Important

It shapes discovery strategy, surfaces your best evidence, and avoids costly mistakes in production.

How to Improve Document Review Skills

1. Technology: Learn your platform’s advanced search, threading, clustering, and analytics features.
2. Protocols: Write clear coding manuals and escalation rules. Consistency beats speed until speed is consistent.
3. Sampling and QC: Build layered quality checks and metrics to catch drift early.
4. Privilege Discipline: Standardize privilege tagging and logs; err on clarity.
5. Team Coordination: Use structured status updates and dashboards to align reviewers.

How to Display Document Review Skills on Your Resume

12. E-Discovery

E-Discovery covers the lifecycle of electronically stored information—identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and production—guided by legal standards and defensible processes.

Why It's Important

Most evidence is digital. Getting it right mitigates risk, controls costs, and strengthens the record you take to court or the negotiating table.

How to Improve E-Discovery Skills

1. Process Framework: Map your workflow from hold notices to production. Make each step auditable.
2. Tool Proficiency: Master processing, search, analytics, and production settings in your platform.
3. Data Security: Apply least-privilege access, encryption, and secure transfer protocols. Document it.
4. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Coordinate with IT, vendors, and clients early to prevent data surprises.
5. Continuous Learning: Follow evolving guidance, case law, and best practices; consider certifications to formalize skills.
6. Early Case Assessment: Use sampling and analytics to scope volume, issues, and cost before you dive deep.

How to Display E-Discovery Skills on Your Resume