Top 12 Legal Advisor Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the competitive field of legal advising, showcasing a robust set of skills on your resume is crucial for standing out to potential employers. This article unpacks the top 12 legal advisor skills that can lift your resume, helping you present as a sharp, adaptable candidate in today’s legal market.
Legal Advisor Skills
- LexisNexis
- Westlaw
- Contract Negotiation
- Compliance Management
- Litigation Strategy
- Intellectual Property
- Corporate Governance
- Risk Assessment
- Mediation
- Arbitration
- Case Management Software
- Legal Research
1. LexisNexis
LexisNexis is a global provider of legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics, serving as a comprehensive resource for legal advisors to conduct research, review precedents, and draw insights for case preparation and strategy.
Why It's Important
LexisNexis is vital for a Legal Advisor because it offers deep coverage of case law, statutes, regulations, and journals, enabling thorough research, due diligence, and confident decision-making.
How to Improve LexisNexis Skills
Sharpen your approach with speed, precision, and smart configuration:
Training and Support: Dive into vendor tutorials, webinars, and practice exercises to master advanced queries, filters, and citator tools.
Customization: Tailor your workspace. Pin jurisdictions, sources, and alerts that map to your matters for faster retrieval.
Integration Tools: Use Microsoft 365 add-ins and Lexis+ drafting assistants (e.g., Lexis Create) to pull research into your documents without breaking flow.
Use Analytics: Employ legal analytics to spot judicial tendencies, motion outcomes, and timeline expectations that inform strategy.
Stay Current: Track feature updates and refine settings as your practice shifts. Small tweaks compound into major time savings.
How to Display LexisNexis Skills on Your Resume
2. Westlaw
Westlaw is a comprehensive legal research platform with case law, statutes, regulations, treatises, and practical guidance to support sound advice and preparation.
Why It's Important
It provides up-to-date authority and powerful citator tools, enabling efficient research, accurate analysis, and advice grounded in current law.
How to Improve Westlaw Skills
Make it faster and sharper:
Advanced Search: Use terms & connectors, field restrictors, and Boolean logic to tighten results and cut noise.
Customized Alerts: Set KeyCite and content alerts for cases, statutes, and topics you can’t afford to miss.
Practice Resources: Leverage Practical Law and jurisdiction-specific guidance to accelerate drafting and issue spotting.
Organize and Annotate: Tag, folder, and annotate with Westlaw Edge/Precision features for quick retrieval and cleaner workflows.
Keep Learning: Schedule periodic refreshers to adopt new features and search tactics as they roll out.
How to Display Westlaw Skills on Your Resume
3. Contract Negotiation
Contract negotiation is the back-and-forth process of shaping terms so the deal aligns with the parties’ legal and commercial interests. Legal advisors drive clarity, manage risk, and secure outcomes that stand up under pressure.
Why It's Important
It prevents ambiguity, ensures compliance, protects value, and reduces the chance of disputes later.
How to Improve Contract Negotiation Skills
Preparation and poise win the day:
Prepare Deeply: Know the facts, market terms, fallback positions, and what your client truly needs versus what’s nice to have.
Build Rapport: A workable relationship makes thorny issues solvable. Civility pays dividends.
Map the Other Side’s Drivers: Understand their constraints and motivations. Trade low-cost concessions for high-value gains.
Be Clear: Use crisp language and structured term sheets. Confusion kills momentum.
Listen Actively: Surface underlying interests and hidden blockers. Adjust in real time.
Stay Flexible: Offer alternatives—tiered remedies, phased obligations, caps, or conditions—that unlock agreement.
Know Your Walk-Away: Set limits in advance. Protect leverage and client outcomes.
Phone a Friend: Loop in subject-matter experts for tax, IP, privacy, or regulatory wrinkles.
Use Technology: Contract lifecycle tools, redline automation, and clause libraries reduce errors and speed closing.
Keep Learning: Study term trends, negotiation tactics, and evolving regulations. Iterate after every deal.
How to Display Contract Negotiation Skills on Your Resume
4. Compliance Management
Compliance management is the system of policies, controls, and oversight that keeps an organization aligned with laws, regulations, and internal standards—reducing exposure and safeguarding reputation.
Why It's Important
It prevents costly violations, supports ethical culture, and creates operational predictability. For a Legal Advisor, it’s the backbone of proactive risk reduction.
How to Improve Compliance Management Skills
Make it living, not static:
Stay Informed: Track regulatory changes in all relevant jurisdictions and industries. Translate updates into practical guidance fast.
Risk Assessments: Run periodic, targeted assessments to find vulnerable processes and prioritize resources.
Tailored Programs: Design policies, controls, and ownership that fit your company’s size, risk profile, and culture—not one-size-fits-all.
Training and Communication: Deliver role-based training and plain-language guidance. Reinforce with reminders and leadership tone.
Monitoring and Auditing: Implement continuous controls testing and independent audits. Close gaps decisively.
Enablement Tech: Use modern GRC and hotline tools for case intake, tracking, metrics, and reporting.
Feedback Loops: Encourage reporting, protect whistleblowers, and iterate based on findings and incidents.
How to Display Compliance Management Skills on Your Resume
5. Litigation Strategy
Litigation strategy is the plan for positioning a dispute—facts, law, timing, and tactics—to achieve the best outcome within budget and risk tolerances.
Why It's Important
It keeps the case coherent, aligns actions with objectives, and ensures resources are spent where they move the needle.
How to Improve Litigation Strategy Skills
Think holistically, execute precisely:
Clarify Objectives: Confirm client goals, constraints, and settlement ranges upfront. Revisit as facts evolve.
Analyze Early: Pressure-test facts, documents, witnesses, and damages theories. Map strengths and weak points.
Build the Record: Research controlling authority and trends. Plan dispositive motions and evidentiary themes from day one.
Communicate Relentlessly: Keep clients informed, manage expectations, and negotiate strategically to unlock settlement options.
Adapt Fast: Update strategy when new facts emerge or court signals shift. Flexibility wins close calls.
Leverage Tech: Use e-discovery, case mapping, and presentation tools for clarity and speed.
Trial-Ready Mindset: Prepare as if you’ll try the case—mock examinations, story arcs, clean exhibits. Settlements improve when you’re ready to go.
Continuous Learning: Study judicial preferences, procedural updates, and advocacy techniques. Refine after every matter.
How to Display Litigation Strategy Skills on Your Resume
6. Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property (IP) covers creations of the mind—patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and related rights—that grant owners control over use and monetization.
Why It's Important
IP protection fuels innovation and investment. Legal advisors help clients capture value, avoid infringement, and enforce rights across markets.
How to Improve Intellectual Property Skills
Turn ideas into assets:
Run IP Audits: Inventory patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and agreements. Fix gaps, calendar deadlines.
Track Laws and Filings: Monitor developments at offices like USPTO, EUIPO, and WIPO. Align filing and maintenance strategy with business plans.
Institutionalize Policies: Create invention disclosure, confidentiality, and open-source use policies that curb leakage and confusion.
Educate Teams: Train R&D, marketing, and sales on IP basics, clearance, and proper marking.
Enforce Smartly: Watch the market, send calibrated demands, and escalate when needed. Consider ADR to control cost and speed.
Use Tools: Employ IP management and docketing software to track portfolios, annuities, and disputes.
How to Display Intellectual Property Skills on Your Resume
7. Corporate Governance
Corporate governance is the framework of rules, practices, and processes directing a company. It balances interests among shareholders, management, employees, customers, lenders, regulators, and the community.
Why It's Important
Good governance embeds accountability, fairness, and transparency. Legal advisors guide boards and executives on duties, controls, disclosures, and ethical decision-making.
How to Improve Corporate Governance Skills
Strengthen structure and culture:
Ensure Compliance: Keep charters, policies, and disclosures aligned with law, listing standards, and regulator guidance.
Optimize the Board: Support independent oversight, thoughtful committee structures, diversity of skills, and regular evaluations.
Promote Transparency: Clear reporting, timely disclosures, and candid stakeholder communications build trust.
Sharpen Accountability: Define roles, escalation paths, KPIs, and consequence frameworks that actually bite.
Foster Ethics: Code of conduct, conflict management, speak-up culture, and tone at the top—reinforced, not just written.
Engage Stakeholders: Seek input from investors, employees, and key partners. Address material concerns promptly.
Manage Risk: Integrate enterprise risk management with strategy, including cyber, privacy, and ESG considerations.
How to Display Corporate Governance Skills on Your Resume
8. Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is the process of spotting, analyzing, and prioritizing legal risks tied to activities, deals, and operations—so you can act before issues bite.
Why It's Important
It enables mitigation, transfer, or avoidance strategies that minimize liability and protect the organization’s reputation.
How to Improve Risk Assessment Skills
Be systematic and iterative:
Identify: Build and update risk inventories across contracts, products, privacy, employment, and regulatory domains.
Analyze: Estimate likelihood and impact using qualitative and quantitative methods. Document assumptions.
Prioritize: Focus on high-severity, high-likelihood risks. Sequence remediation for measurable wins.
Control: Draft policies, playbooks, and fallback terms. Add approvals, training, and monitoring where exposure persists.
Monitor: Track incidents, metrics, and legal changes. Reassess on a set cadence and after major events.
Upskill: Continue education on risk frameworks and industry trends. Cross-pollinate with compliance and security teams.
How to Display Risk Assessment Skills on Your Resume
9. Mediation
Mediation is a voluntary, confidential process where a neutral facilitator helps parties negotiate toward a mutually acceptable settlement.
Why It's Important
It’s quicker, more private, and often less costly than litigation. Relationships survive. Outcomes can be tailored.
How to Improve Mediation Skills
Structure the path to yes:
Prepare: Clarify facts, legal issues, and interests. Gather documents. Set realistic targets with your client.
Communicate: Use active listening and plain speech. Reframe positions into interests to spark movement.
Develop Options: Brainstorm packages—payment structures, timelines, conditions—that bridge gaps.
Honor Ethics: Safeguard confidentiality and neutrality. Keep participation voluntary and informed.
Keep Learning: Attend workshops and observe seasoned mediators. Practice caucus strategies and reality testing.
How to Display Mediation Skills on Your Resume
10. Arbitration
Arbitration is a private dispute resolution process where a neutral arbitrator (or panel) issues a binding decision outside of court.
Why It's Important
It can be faster, confidential, and tailored to the dispute, with subject-matter experts deciding complex issues.
How to Improve Arbitration Skills
Drive efficiency without sacrificing fairness:
Assess Early: Evaluate claims, defenses, and damages upfront to guide case scope and settlement posture.
Select Well: Choose arbitrators with the right expertise and temperament for the matter.
Streamline Procedures: Advocate for tight schedules, focused discovery, and proportionate motion practice.
Use Technology: Employ secure platforms for filings, document exchange, and remote hearings.
Ensure Fairness: Maintain transparency, equal opportunity to be heard, and clear procedural ground rules.
Keep Current: Track rule updates and trends across arbitral forums. Refine advocacy techniques continually.
How to Display Arbitration Skills on Your Resume
11. Case Management Software
Case Management Software helps legal advisors organize files, deadlines, communications, tasks, and reporting in one secure hub.
Why It's Important
It centralizes work, reduces mistakes, and scales your capacity to manage multiple matters with less stress.
How to Improve Case Management Software Skills
Turn the system into a force multiplier:
Integrations: Connect research, e-signature, billing, and document tools to cut manual handoffs.
Automation: Auto-generate documents, reminders, and intake workflows. Standardize templates and checklists.
Client Portals: Provide secure access for updates, documents, and messaging to reduce email churn.
Customization: Align fields, workflows, and dashboards with your practice areas and KPIs.
Security: Enforce encryption, MFA, role-based access, and regular audits to protect sensitive data.
Mobile Access: Enable on-the-go updates and document review without friction.
Training and Support: Offer ongoing training, office hours, and release notes so teams adopt new features quickly.
How to Display Case Management Software Skills on Your Resume
12. Legal Research
Legal research is the hunt for authority—cases, statutes, regulations, and commentary—to inform advice and advocacy.
Why It's Important
It anchors your counsel in current law, surfaces risks, and supports strategies that hold up under scrutiny.
How to Improve Legal Research Skills
Cut through the noise:
Define the Question: Frame the issue and jurisdiction before you search. Aim at the right targets.
Use Trusted Databases: Work with reputable legal research platforms and official government sources for primary law.
Strategic Keywords: Combine precise terms, Boolean operators, and filters to narrow results.
Leverage Secondary Sources: Start with treatises and practice guides to map the landscape, then dive into primary authority.
Stay Organized: Track sources, notes, and citations with a consistent system—folders, tags, and citation managers.
Verify: Shepardize/KeyCite and cross-check authorities. Don’t rely on a single source.
Keep Learning: Take periodic trainings, and test new features like AI-assisted search where permitted by firm policy.
Consult Colleagues: Compare approaches and share exemplars. Fresh eyes reveal better routes.
How to Display Legal Research Skills on Your Resume
