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Legal counsel skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
4 min read
Quoted experts
Traci Dingle Ph.D.,
Traci Dingle Ph.D.
Legal counsel example skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical legal counsel skills. We ranked the top skills for legal counsels based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 11.1% of legal counsel resumes contained legal advice as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a legal counsel needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 legal counsel skills for your resume and career

1. Legal Advice

Here's how legal counsels use legal advice:
  • Provided legal advice to senior management with respect to potential disputes arising from or related to regulatory or legislative changes.
  • Supervised legal advice for international tenders - Maintained relationships with national and international clients, shareholders, and senior management

2. Legal Issues

Here's how legal counsels use legal issues:
  • Handled legal issues involving personnel including hiring, discipline, termination, workers compensation, and unemployment compensation.
  • Identified and managed all legal issues/liabilities and aspects of ongoing and new business development marketing projects.

3. Litigation

Here's how legal counsels use litigation:
  • Created and directed litigation strategies, including human resource related issues, general corporate liability, contract liability and products liability.
  • Assisted in management of litigation, arbitration, mediation, and discovery in consultation with senior company stakeholders and outside counsel.

4. Legal Support

Here's how legal counsels use legal support:
  • Provide legal support to management in all operational and administrative areas.
  • Provide timely and accurate legal support to large international corporation.

5. Intellectual Property

Intellectual properties refer to individuals' intangible or non-physical wealth, which results from their imaginations and intellect.

Here's how legal counsels use intellectual property:
  • Negotiated and drafted intellectual property agreements, consulting agreements, procurement agreements, non-disclosure agreements, and joint development agreements.
  • Prevented any risk of responsibility for Intellectual Property infringement, product liability and damages, whether direct or indirect.

6. Legal Risks

Legal risks are the consequences of not adhering to the stipulated laws governing the running and establishment of any business. These consequences can come in the form of fines, lawsuits, sealing or acquisition of the business by the government, and many others. Legal risks come in different types including compliance risk, regulatory risk, reputational risk, and dispute risk.

Here's how legal counsels use legal risks:
  • Updated management on legislative changes and advised management of legal risks in marketing area.
  • Minimized legal risk and optimized compliance with federal and state regulations.

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7. Legal Research

Here's how legal counsels use legal research:
  • Managed hearing scheduling and calendar maintenance; developed complaints based on analysis of investigation and legal research.
  • Performed legal research relative to utility regulation in Iowa; represented the Association in regulatory hearings.

8. In-House Counsel

Here's how legal counsels use in-house counsel:
  • Experienced in-house counsel o Serving as in-house counsel for 400+ person, $60M law enforcement agency.
  • See above description for OUSD (one in-house counsel) Received a commendation for my work.

9. Ethics

Ethics is a branch of knowledge that involves recommending, defending, and systemizing aspects of right and wrong behavior.

Here's how legal counsels use ethics:
  • Provided proactive education and training to personnel on government contract requirements and ethics and compliance subjects.
  • Provided legal counsel and support to incident and ethics compliance investigations.

10. Risk Management

Risk management is the method of recognizing, evaluating, and managing risks to an organization's resources and profits. Financial insecurity, regulatory liability, strategic management mistakes, incidents, and natural hazards are just some of the challenges or dangers that could arise. For digitalized businesses, IT security vulnerabilities and data-related threats, as well as risk management techniques to mitigate them, have become top priorities.

Here's how legal counsels use risk management:
  • Provided company and its intentional affiliates with legal and risk management support relating to their global technical and commercial services.
  • Created internal risk management procedures for existing clients, including driver safety programs and regulatory compliance procedures.

11. Internal Clients

Here's how legal counsels use internal clients:
  • Provided advisory support to internal clients on patent application drafting, filing procedures and compliance with patent law.
  • Introduced, created awareness, and ensured buy-in from internal clients (Sales and Development).

12. Human Resources

Human resources is a set of people in a business or a corporation that are designated to locate, interview, and recruit new employees into the company. They are also responsible to maintain the integrity of the employees and help them sort their problems out. They try to introduce and manage employee-benefit programs.

Here's how legal counsels use human resources:
  • Presented labor and employment hot topics seminars to human resources professionals.
  • Assisted Human Resources in training and rehiring 800 new employees after the company was awarded a Government Contract for the INS.

13. Regulatory Compliance

Here's how legal counsels use regulatory compliance:
  • Directed company-wide strategic overseas corporate governance framework, chartering foreign corporations, obtaining local business licenses and implementing regulatory compliance measures.
  • Reviewed and approved marketing materials, website usage agreements for statutory and regulatory compliance and for language clarity.

14. HIPAA

Here's how legal counsels use hipaa:
  • Authored HIPAA and internal business-related policies and procedures.
  • Redrafted Children's standard Business Associate agreement to comply with the HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule released in

15. Legal Services

Here's how legal counsels use legal services:
  • Directed, coordinated and provided legal services and guidance to the director and division chiefs regarding significant legal and administrative proceedings.
  • Represented and provided general legal services to corporations, businesses, and individual clients, primarily regarding business issues.
top-skills

What skills help Legal Counsels find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What soft skills should all legal counsels possess?

Traci Dingle Ph.D.

Professor, Berkeley College

Important soft skills include emotional intelligence and attention to detail. Working in the legal field, you may interact with attorneys, clients, or the public during stressful times. Accordingly, it is crucial to have self-awareness to be able to understand and control your emotions. It is also essential to gauge the feelings of others to provide the needed resources to support them and to show empathy, as working through the legal process may be emotional for some. Lastly, it is vital to exercise attention to detail when drafting documents or when talking with clients, as errors or not remembering important information about the client may imply that you or the office does not care about the client. Remember, you are a representative of the office, and your actions also reflect back on your colleagues.

What skills stand out on legal counsel resumes?

Traci Dingle Ph.D.

Professor, Berkeley College

Skills that stand out on a Legal Specialist's resume include legal research and writing, analytical and logical skills, and time management. Prior experience with legal research and writing tells your future employer that you know or are familiar with the research and writing process. Moreover, it would be helpful to be familiar with at least one legal database, like Westlaw or LexisNexis. Analytical and logical skills warrant that you may reasonably use critical thinking and reasoning to solve problems that may arise in your day-to-day operations. Lastly, demonstrated skills in time management imply you can multi-task, prioritize, and meet deadlines while producing quality work.

What hard/technical skills are most important for legal counsels?

Chad Smith

Director of Legal Programs, Catholic University of America

Most important would have to be strong computer and related technology skills. In today's world, more and more professors are having to rely on the use of technology and platforms such as Zoom, Blackboard, and Canvas for remote/online learning. Professors today need to be able to convey information in-person and online.

What legal counsel skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Hanna Royce

Assistant Dean of Career Services, University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law

The key to success is to add new and relevant legal experience to their resume. If graduates are not taking on full-time roles, this could mean completing document review or project work on a contract basis.

What technical skills for a legal counsel stand out to employers?

Naveen Jonathan Ph.D.Naveen Jonathan Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Clinical Associate Professor and Department Chair, Chapman University

Technical skills that I see employers looking for due to the pandemic, include flexibility and comfort of providing therapy services both in-person and via telehealth. I also see employers looking for therapists who are trained in trauma-informed care. When situations such as the pandemic emerge, they can evoke a traumatic response. If a client has experienced past trauma in their life, these can also reemerge. Therefore, knowledge of trauma-informed care would be important.
Do you want to know more?
Read more about what experts have to say about legal counsel

List of legal counsel skills to add to your resume

Legal counsel skills

The most important skills for a legal counsel resume and required skills for a legal counsel to have include:

  • Legal Advice
  • Legal Issues
  • Litigation
  • Legal Support
  • Intellectual Property
  • Legal Risks
  • Legal Research
  • In-House Counsel
  • Ethics
  • Risk Management
  • Internal Clients
  • Human Resources
  • Regulatory Compliance
  • HIPAA
  • Legal Services
  • Data Privacy
  • Employment Law
  • Due Diligence
  • Service Agreements
  • Securities
  • Saas
  • Compliance Issues
  • Regulatory Issues
  • Legal Affairs
  • Corporate Governance
  • Cloud Computing
  • External Counsel
  • Business Development
  • Legal Aspects
  • Vendor Agreements
  • Dispute Resolution
  • Legal Compliance
  • Legal Guidance
  • Non-Disclosure Agreements
  • Contract Review
  • Corporate Policies
  • Legal Analysis
  • Government Agencies
  • Distribution Agreements
  • Liaising
  • Executive Management
  • Contract Negotiations
  • Confidentiality Agreements
  • Legal Opinions
  • Federal Laws

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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