Top 12 Attorney Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the competitive field of law, crafting an impactful resume is critical for standing out among other candidates. Highlighting the top attorney skills on your resume not only showcases your legal expertise and proficiency but also proves you’re ready to grapple with the realities of modern practice.

Attorney Skills

1. Litigation
2. Negotiation
3. Research
4. Drafting
5. Analysis
6. Advocacy
7. Westlaw
8. LexisNexis
9. Mediation
10. Compliance
11. CaseMap
12. Time Matters

1. Litigation

Litigation is the process of taking legal action, where an attorney represents a party in a lawsuit to resolve disputes or enforce rights through a court judgment.

Why It's Important

Litigation provides a formal path to resolve disputes, enforce rights, and uphold the rule of law. It protects clients’ interests and secures binding outcomes when settlement isn’t enough.

How to Improve Litigation Skills

Sharpening litigation skills means stronger preparation, cleaner execution, and better outcomes. Try these focused moves:

1. Continuing Legal Education: Keep pace with new rules, cases, and local practices through CLE and bar programs.

2. Effective Communication: Build crisp briefs and persuasive arguments. Public speaking groups like Toastmasters can help courtroom delivery.

3. Smart Technology: Use modern case management and research tools for filings, discovery tracking, and evidence organization.

4. Time Management: Work in focused blocks, triage deadlines, and systematize checklists for motions, discovery, and trial prep.

5. Network and Collaborate: Engage with bar sections, practice groups, and local Inns of Court for strategy tips and referrals.

6. Client Care: Set expectations early, give regular updates, and translate legalese into plain language.

7. Ethics First: Follow your state’s professional conduct rules and ABA guidance; calibrate strategy without risking sanctions.

Invest in these habits and your casework gets tighter, faster, and far more convincing.

How to Display Litigation Skills on Your Resume

2. Negotiation

Negotiation is the disciplined, strategic dialogue that drives parties toward agreement—settlements, deals, stipulations—while advancing your client’s interests.

Why It's Important

Strong negotiation shortens disputes, trims costs, reduces risk, and often lands better outcomes than rolling the dice at trial.

How to Improve Negotiation Skills

Keep it tight and deliberate:

1. Prepare Relentlessly: Know the facts, law, numbers, and your BATNA. Anticipate pressure points on both sides.

2. Listen for Interests: Beneath positions lie needs. Surface them. That’s where trades happen.

3. Communicate Cleanly: Be clear, credible, and concise. No fluff. No posturing you can’t back up.

4. Read the Room: Manage your tone, tempo, and reactions. Emotional control keeps leverage intact.

5. Trade Smart: Prioritize asks, stage concessions, and link gives to gets.

6. Rehearse, Debrief, Adjust: Run simulations. After each negotiation, dissect what worked and what dragged.

Bar association materials and negotiation courses can deepen technique; practice makes it stick.

How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume

3. Research

Research is the disciplined hunt for authority and insight—cases, statutes, regs, legislative history, secondary sources—that shapes your strategy and anchors your arguments.

Why It's Important

Accurate, current research keeps you aligned with controlling law and persuasive authority, reducing surprises and strengthening every filing and conversation.

How to Improve Research Skills

Work faster, think sharper:

1. Master Major Databases: Learn advanced filters, citators, and alerts in top legal research platforms and use Google Scholar thoughtfully for quick scans.

2. Track Updates: Subscribe to practice-area news and read recent decisions weekly.

3. Cite Right: Follow Bluebook or state style guides precisely.

4. Analyze Deeply: Distill holdings, compare fact patterns, and map jurisdictional splits.

5. Find Mentors: Ask senior attorneys how they frame searches and build authority ladders.

6. Organize Notes: Use a consistent system for snippets, quotes, and case maps so reuse is painless.

7. Train Often: Attend workshops from bar associations or your research provider.

Consistency breeds speed. Speed with accuracy wins.

How to Display Research Skills on Your Resume

4. Drafting

Drafting is the careful construction of contracts, pleadings, motions, and agreements so intent is clear, risks are managed, and rights are enforceable.

Why It's Important

Good drafting prevents disputes, persuades decision-makers, and protects clients when things go sideways.

How to Improve Drafting Skills

Make your writing do the heavy lifting:

1. Write Constantly: Variety builds range—contracts, memos, briefs, letters.

2. Know Your Audience: Client, court, or counterparty—calibrate tone, detail, and structure accordingly.

3. Prefer Plain English: Cut jargon, tighten sentences, choose verbs that move.

4. Seek Feedback: Peer review exposes blind spots. Trade edits with colleagues.

5. Targeted CLE: Take courses in legal writing, contract drafting, and local motion practice.

6. Read the Masters: Books like “Legal Writing in Plain English” by Bryan Garner sharpen clarity and style.

7. Edit Hard: Trim redundancies, verify citations, test definitions, and fix cross-references.

8. Stay Current: Track statutory changes and market terms in your practice area.

Clean, precise documents save clients grief—and you time.

How to Display Drafting Skills on Your Resume

5. Analysis

Analysis means dissecting facts, law, and risk to build strategies and arguments that hold up under pressure.

Why It's Important

It’s the backbone of judgment. Strong analysis spots issues early, marshals authority, and turns messy records into coherent, winning themes.

How to Improve Analysis Skills

Upgrade your thinking toolkit:

1. Deepen Research Fluency: Know your platforms cold—filters, citators, jurisdictional nuances.

2. Work Case Studies: Practice with hypotheticals and past decisions; compare outcomes to your predictions.

3. Take CLE in Your Niche: The more domain knowledge you have, the faster you pattern-match.

4. Write to Clarify: Short issue statements, tight rule syntheses, clean application—writing exposes gaps.

5. Invite Critique: Partner reviews, bar-section roundtables, and moot practice sharpen reasoning.

6. Use Modern Tools: Legal analytics and AI-supported research in major platforms can surface trends, splits, and likely outcomes—use them carefully and verify.

Clear structure, transparent logic, and rigorous sources—nonnegotiable.

How to Display Analysis Skills on Your Resume

6. Advocacy

Advocacy is the craft of persuading judges, juries, and decision-makers—through voice, paper, and presence.

Why It's Important

Clients need a champion who can be heard, understood, and believed. That’s advocacy—rights defended, stories told, outcomes moved.

How to Improve Advocacy Skills

Build credibility and punch:

1. Speak with Purpose: Practice oral argument, witness exams, and openings. Record, review, refine.

2. Write Like an Advocate: Powerful headings, clean record cites, and tight fact sections do heavy persuasive lifting.

3. Know Your Audience: Research judges’ preferences and local customs. Adjust structure and emphasis.

4. Craft a Narrative: Frame issues as a compelling story anchored in law and fairness.

5. Continuous Learning: Trial skills programs, CLEs, and clinics keep edges sharp.

6. Ethics Always: Be forceful without overreaching. Credibility once lost is hard to regain.

7. Mentorship: Shadow experienced litigators; invite post-hearing feedback.

8. Leverage Technology: Use visual aids, timelines, and clean slide decks when appropriate.

9. Rehearse: Mock hearings and moot courts reveal weak seams before it counts.

10. Mind and Body: Clarity, stamina, calm—rest and routines matter.

Effective advocacy is preparation plus presence. Both can be trained.

How to Display Advocacy Skills on Your Resume

7. Westlaw

Westlaw is a comprehensive legal research platform for cases, statutes, regs, treatises, and analytics—plus citator tools to verify authority.

Why It's Important

It accelerates accurate research, surfaces relevant authority fast, and helps ensure you’re citing good law.

How to Improve Westlaw Skills

Work smarter inside the tool:

1. Search Like a Pro: Use Boolean, field, and proximity connectors; apply filters aggressively.

2. Live in KeyCite: Check validity, track treatment, and read depth-of-discussion signals before you rely on a case.

3. Customize Workspace: Pin frequent sources and practice materials for one-click access.

4. Set Alerts: Monitor new authorities in your jurisdictions and practice areas automatically.

5. Use Practice Guides: Start with checklists and annotated forms when time is tight.

6. Take Trainings: Short webinars and reference guides can shave minutes off every search.

7. Explore Litigation Analytics: Judge and motion analytics can inform strategy and expectations.

A few workflow tweaks compound into major time savings.

How to Display Westlaw Skills on Your Resume

8. LexisNexis

LexisNexis delivers legal research, analytics, and practice tools spanning primary law, secondary sources, and practical guidance.

Why It's Important

It consolidates sources, accelerates analysis, and supports faster, better-informed decisions.

How to Improve LexisNexis Skills

Dial in your workflow:

1. Refine Search: Use terms-and-connectors, filters, and segment searching for precise results.

2. Leverage Practice Areas: Start with specialized content tuned to your domain.

3. Create Alerts: Track new cases and changes without constant manual checking.

4. Go Mobile: Use the app for quick checks in court or on the move.

5. Train Up: Webinars and tutorials spotlight features you might be missing.

6. Customize: Save favorite sources, build folders, and reuse searches.

7. Integrate: Connect with your doc management or practice tools to reduce duplication.

Master the platform and your research curve flattens—fast.

How to Display LexisNexis Skills on Your Resume

9. Mediation

Mediation is a confidential, voluntary process where a neutral helps parties negotiate a resolution they own—often faster and cheaper than court.

Why It's Important

It preserves relationships, invites creative terms, and trims risk and cost. Clients appreciate options that avoid a long, public fight.

How to Improve Mediation Skills

Be the steady hand in the room:

1. Listen Actively: Reflect interests, not just positions. Validate concerns without conceding substance.

2. Build Emotional Intelligence: Spot triggers, de-escalate tension, and pace the process.

3. Know Negotiation Playbooks: From principled negotiation to bracketing, broaden your toolkit.

4. Mind Procedure and Law: Understand confidentiality, enforceability, and local mediation norms.

5. Create Rapport: Trust opens doors to candid problem-solving.

6. Be Patient and Persistent: Movement can be incremental; keep momentum without forcing it.

7. Keep Learning: Workshops and mediator trainings sharpen technique and ethics.

Calm structure plus creative options often unlock settlement.

How to Display Mediation Skills on Your Resume

10. Compliance

Compliance means aligning conduct and operations with applicable laws, regulations, and professional rules—yours and your clients’.

Why It's Important

It prevents penalties, protects reputations, and anchors ethical practice. Trust depends on it.

How to Improve Compliance Skills

Build a sturdy system that lasts:

1. Stay Current: Track rulemaking, guidance, and enforcement trends in your sectors.

2. Targeted CLE: Prioritize ethics, privacy, data, anti-corruption, and industry-specific courses.

3. Solid Policies: Draft clear procedures, accountability lines, and escalation paths.

4. Right-Sized Tech: Use compliance and matter management tools for audits, workflows, and documentation.

5. Audit and Train: Run periodic checks and teach teams what the rules require, with examples.

6. Consult Specialists: Bring in experts for complex regimes or high-stakes reviews.

7. Safe Reporting: Maintain an anonymous, no-retaliation channel for concerns.

8. Iterate: Update policies as laws and operations shift. Document changes.

Compliance done well is preventive law in action.

How to Display Compliance Skills on Your Resume

11. CaseMap

CaseMap helps organize facts, issues, people, and evidence so your theory of the case is coherent and searchable.

Why It's Important

It streamlines case prep, clarifies what matters, and strengthens presentations with traceable support.

How to Improve CaseMap Skills

Turn chaos into structure:

1. Master Core Features: Import documents, link facts to issues and sources, and maintain consistent naming conventions.

2. Train with Purpose: Short tutorials and user guides accelerate adoption.

3. Customize Fields: Add tags, statuses, and custom views that reflect your team’s workflow.

4. Integrate Suite Tools: Use timelines and transcript tools to round out your record.

5. Practice Regularly: Build templates you can reuse across matters.

6. Join Communities: Share tips with other users and borrow what works.

7. Stay Updated: New features can trim steps—review release notes.

Consistent data entry yields powerful, reliable outputs.

How to Display CaseMap Skills on Your Resume

12. Time Matters

Time Matters is legal practice management software for organizing matters, contacts, calendars, documents, and timekeeping—keeping work visible and on track.

Why It's Important

It centralizes case details, deadlines, and communications, improving responsiveness and reducing missed steps.

How to Improve TimeMatters Skills

Make the system fit your practice:

1. Keep It Current: Update to the latest version for performance and security improvements.

2. Customize Thoughtfully: Tailor fields, matter types, and automated workflows to mirror how your team actually works.

3. Integrate Tools: Connect email, calendars, billing, and document systems to cut duplicate entry.

4. Use Training Resources: Tap webinars and tutorials to learn features you haven’t touched yet.

5. Protect Data: Schedule backups, apply role-based access, and review security settings regularly.

6. Call in Pros: For complex customizations, consider a certified consultant.

When your platform mirrors your process, efficiency jumps.

How to Display TimeMatters Skills on Your Resume