I read with interest this post on CNBC by a career coach on the two words to avoid on your resume “at all costs.” What are they? “Responsible for.” OK those words are not ideal, but worse in my book are “handled,” “participated,” or “involved.” (Talk about vague and weak!) The point is you should use active verbs on your resume since it has to grab the reader’s attention within seconds.

The legal industry is conservative so you don’t have to be super creative with your resume. Do use crisp words and include metrics so the reader can immediately understand your value. For legal resumes, here are the main verbs that are widely used and understood, and are not wishy-washy:

• Draft, review, and negotiate [XYZ] agreements.
• Counsel [or advise] executive teams/cross-functional teams, including [departments] on [subject matters, e.g., product, privacy, commercial,  etc.]
• Serve [or act] as primary [or lead] counsel on [XYZ product, function, etc.].
• Serve [or act] as de facto counsel for [describe clients/matters]. (This is for external counsel wanting to go in-house.)
• Scale [product or team or company] (list metrics over XYZ period, e.g., # and types of products launched, $ revenue generated, # countries entered, % hypergrowth, # employees increased, etc.).
• Created and implemented [XYZ] programs [or processes/systems/templates]. (Include what the result was, e.g., $ saved, time shortened, awards won, etc.)
• Lead [or manage] XYZ team. (Then list results.)
• Represented [name drop top clients or at least describe like “global Fortune 500” or “leading public cloud company”] on [XYZ] matters. (This one is pretty vague but ok to use if you can’t do better. It does make clear your value if your firm staffed you on these clients or your experience with clients in relevant industries. I recommend you follow this sentence by listing the problems solved for these clients.)

And disregard this career coach’s advice to use synonyms within the resume. Drafting and counseling (or advising) are terms of art here, and we are expected to do exactly that, so no need to use other words in those cases.