Working Remotely

Since the arrival of COVID, we’ve seen more and more attorneys working remotely.  That makes sense, but we are now starting to see attorneys get hired in one market and working in another.  For example, an associate in Minneapolis gets hired to work for a firm’s New York City office, but the position is fully remote, and the attorney will continue to work from her home in the Twin Cities and will never have the opportunity to get a truly good bagel at any of the Midtown NYC delis.

More and more, we are seeing this fact pattern play out and we are being asked how this should be reflected on the resume.  It’s a great question and one that doesn’t have a complete answer yet, but at Legal Resume Review, we believe that the remote status should be noted, but the office to which you are assigned should be highlighted.

One way to show this is as follows:

Mantle, Berra & DiMaggio, LLC                                                         New York, New York
Associate Attorney (remote from Minneapolis)                                       August 2020-Present

Our thought is that a format like this allows the reader to get the full impact of the work you are doing, because clearly the demands of an Associate in the NYC office are significant, but also allows the reader to understand that it is a remote position. This way, if the attorney wants to pivot to another position in the Twin Cities, it won’t look like she left the market AND she will get the “credit” for being at a firm in a larger metropolitan market.

It also seems more honest than leaving the fact out that she is working form Minnesota.  A reader should know that the attorney is not, in fact, living on the East Coast.  

While the representation of remote work on resumes is not established, we feel confident that this is the best way to handle this quickly evolving issue on your resume.  Let us know if you have any thoughts on our suggestions.  You can email us at hello@legalresumereview.com