How to present your London (or Dublin) Legal CV to a Northern Ireland law firm

You have spent years building an impressive CV at a serious firm. The challenge now is not the experience — it is making sure a NI hiring partner reads it the right way. Here is how to do that.

Alan Braithwaite, Managing Director, Abacus Careers

There is a CV problem that almost every diaspora solicitor faces when they decide to apply for roles in Northern Ireland — and most of them don’t know it exists until they get no response. The problem is not the quality of their experience. Solicitors returning from London Magic Circle firms, large City practices, major Dublin outfits or top regional English firms have genuinely impressive CVs. The main challenge is to communicate a narrative about a return to NI. What is driving this decision, why now and is it economically viable?

The good news is that many hiring partners or managing partners in medium to large practices, have also taken this journey and returned to NI in the past. They will have a clear personal and professional grasp, but you need to convince them to take the risk and make the investment. Your CV may be written for an audience that already understands the context and it’s important it relates to the NI firm and market. This is especially true if your specialism is narrow — environmental law, derivatives, or capital markets, for example, where the NI market may have limited equivalents and your CV needs to make the case for transferability explicitly

A NI hiring partner reading your CV is asking these questions: Can this person do the work we actually have? Will you be happy here? And will you stay? If your CV doesn’t answer all three — confidently and specifically — it doesn’t matter how good your firm was or how big your deal values are. This guide tells you exactly how to reframe your CV for a NI audience, what to emphasise, what to cut, and what common mistakes to avoid. It includes before-and-after examples drawn from real CVs that we have reviewed with returning solicitors.

First: Understand what a NI Partner is actually looking for

Before you change a word of your CV, it helps to understand the mindset of the person reading it. A managing partner at a Belfast commercial firm evaluating a returning solicitor is weighing several things simultaneously:

• Will this person’s experience transfer? Large London transactions and NI commercial work are not identical. The partner wants to know whether your skills translate to the scale and type of work their clients need — not just that you worked on big deals.
• Will they be disappointed by the pace? This is rarely said out loud but it is almost always on the partner’s mind. They are conscious that NI practice moves differently from a Magic Circle or top-five Dublin firm, and they want evidence that you have thought about this honestly rather than romanticising the return.
• Are they serious about staying? A solicitor who leaves after eighteen months costs the firm enormously. Partners want evidence of genuine commitment to NI — not just a vague desire to ‘come home.’
• Does their specialism fit what we actually do? Some London practice areas have direct NI equivalents. Others are genuinely thin on the ground here. The partner is checking whether your area of law matches what their clients need.

Your CV needs to address all four of these concerns — not by answering them explicitly, but by providing the information that resolves them. Here is how to do that, section by section.

Section 1: Your Personal Statement — Rewrite it entirely

The personal statement — the short paragraph at the top of your CV — is the section that most diaspora solicitors get most wrong. Typically, it reads something like this:

“A driven and commercially minded solicitor with six years’ experience at a leading London firm, specialising in complex cross-border M&A transactions and private equity deals. Seeking a new challenge in a dynamic environment where I can continue to develop my skills at the highest level.”

This statement would be fine for a London lateral move. For a NI application it raises three immediate problems: it emphasises scale that NI firms may not match, it signals ambition without grounding, and it says nothing about why this person wants to work in NI specifically. A NI-facing personal statement needs to do four things in four sentences:

• State your practice area and years of experience clearly
• Acknowledge the GB or ROI context briefly but pivot quickly to NI relevance
• Signal genuine knowledge of and commitment to the NI market
• Indicate what you bring that is specifically valuable to a NI firm

✗  Before — Written for a London/Dublin Audience	✓  After — Rewritten for a NI Audience
Personal Statement	Personal Statement
A driven and commercially minded solicitor with six years’ experience at a leading London firm, specialising in complex cross-border M&A transactions and private equity deals. Seeking a new challenge in a dynamic environment where I can continue to develop at the highest level.	A commercial property solicitor with six years’ post-qualification experience, including four years at [Firm], a top-ten London practice. I am returning to Belfast to build my career in the NI market, where I intend to bring the transactional depth and client management skills developed in London to bear on the strong commercial property pipeline I see growing here. I am particularly interested in firms with an active development finance or commercial landlord client base.

The ‘after’ version is longer, but it is far more useful to the reader. It names the specialism, acknowledges the London context without over-emphasising it, states the intention clearly and specifically, and signals knowledge of the NI market. The partner reading it does not have to guess what this person wants or whether they understand what they’re moving into.

Section 2: Firm name and context — Don’t assume recognition

This is the subtlest but one of the most important adjustments. If your CV says you worked at “Linklaters” or “White & Case” or “K&L Gates,” a London hiring partner knows exactly what that means. A NI partner may know the name but is unlikely to have an instinctive feel for what the work involved, what the client base looked like, or what your seniority within the team actually meant.

Do not assume your firm’s name does the work for you. Add a brief contextual line under each firm — one sentence that gives the NI reader the frame they need.

✗  Before — Written for a London/Dublin Audience	✓  After — Rewritten for a NI Audience
Employment Entry — Firm Name and Role	Employment Entry — Firm Name and Role
Linklaters LLP, London Senior Associate, Real Estate Finance 2019 – present	Linklaters LLP, London  (Magic Circle; ranked #1 globally for real estate finance by Legal 500 2024) Senior Associate, Real Estate Finance 2019 – present  Note: Linklaters’ Real Estate Finance team acts for the UK’s largest investment banks and institutional lenders on development finance and investment acquisitions. Average transaction value £150m–£500m.

You are not boasting. You are giving the reader the context they need to evaluate your experience fairly. A NI partner who does not know Linklaters’ real estate finance practice cannot properly assess what being a senior associate there involved. A single contextual sentence fixes that.

Section 3: Describing your experience — translate, don’t just list

The experience descriptions on most solicitors’ CVs are written for people who already understand the firm’s practice. Bullet points reference transaction types, client names and deal structures that mean something in context but can be opaque outside it. For a NI audience, your job is to translate your experience into terms that connect directly to the work NI firms do. This does not mean dumbing it down — it means making the connection explicit rather than leaving it to the reader.

The translation principle in practice:

✗  Before — Written for a London/Dublin Audience	✓  After — Rewritten for a NI Audience
Experience Bullet — Commercial Property	Experience Bullet — Commercial Property
Advised on the acquisition of a £320m mixed-use development site in Central London, including complex overage provisions and conditional planning structures.	Advised on the acquisition of a £320m mixed-use development site in Central London — a transaction type directly comparable to the large-scale development acquisitions increasingly active in Belfast city centre and the wider NI market. Managed all real estate due diligence, overage negotiations and CP satisfaction workstreams with direct client contact throughout.

✗  Before — Written for a London/Dublin Audience	✓  After — Rewritten for a NI Audience
Experience Bullet — Employment Law	Experience Bullet — Employment Law
Advised FTSE 100 employer clients on complex redundancy programmes, executive exits and Employment Tribunal strategy.	Advised large employer clients on complex redundancy programmes, executive exits and Employment Tribunal strategy. NI employment law follows broadly similar principles to England and Wales on these matters, with specific local procedural nuances I am familiar with through [example if applicable]. Client base included financial services, retail and professional services sectors — all strongly represented in the NI employment market.

The key move in both examples is the same: connect the London experience to a NI equivalent, and add a sentence that shows the candidate has thought about how their skills transfer rather than assuming it is obvious.

Section 4: Scale — Address it directly, not defensively

The elephant in the room when a returning solicitor applies to a NI firm is transaction scale. London and Dublin deals are typically larger than NI equivalents. Most partners know this and wonder whether a solicitor who has been working on £200m deals will find a £5m NI transaction unrewarding. Do not ignore this. Address it — but address it confidently, not apologetically.

The best place to address this is either in your personal statement or in a brief covering note. The framing that works is not ‘I don’t mind doing smaller work’ — it is ‘here is what I value about NI practice that I cannot get in London, and scale is not the only measure of interesting work.’

Suggested framing for covering note or personal statement: “I am under no illusion that NI transactions operate at the same scale as the London market, and I would not expect them to. What draws me back is the breadth of involvement — in London I managed one element of very large deals. In NI I expect to have full responsibility for end-to-end client matters, direct relationships with the principals, and the opportunity to develop a practice that is genuinely my own. That is a trade I am making consciously and enthusiastically.”

Section 5: Demonstrating NI commitment — the piece most candidates miss

The single most common weakness in returning solicitors’ CVs is the absence of any evidence that they have actively engaged with the NI legal market before applying. A CV that reads as though the candidate has done no NI-specific research raises an obvious concern: are they serious about this, or is this a speculative application while they look at other options? You can address this in several ways – in a cover letter, CV or perhaps an initial informal discussion – and the more specific the better:

• Outline the type of firm and practice area specifically. If you mention in your personal statement that you are interested in a type of firm (e.g. local / national firm) with an active corporate M&A practice or a growing employment function — and you can name the type of client they serve — you signal market knowledge.
• Reference NI legal market developments. A single sentence referencing something specific about the current NI market — the growth in Belfast’s commercial property pipeline, the expansion of in-house teams, the arrival of new international firms — demonstrates that you are engaging with NI as it is now, not as you remember it.
• Mention NI professional connections. If you are a member of the Law Society of Northern Ireland, if you have attended NI legal events, or if you have existing relationships with NI practitioners — include it. It is evidence of genuine engagement.
• Be clear about your timeline and location. State that you are relocating to NI (give a general area if you have one) and when. ‘Relocating to Belfast in [month/quarter]’ is far more reassuring than leaving a GB address on your CV with no explanation.

Section 6: What to cut or de-emphasise

Just as important as what to add is what to remove or reduce. A CV written for a London lateral move will often contain elements that are actively unhelpful for a NI application:

Remove or reduce: London/Dublin-specific deal references without context References to named London client relationships, City-specific transaction types, or London market rankings that have no NI equivalent do not help the reader and can reinforce concerns about fit. Either provide context or cut them.

Remove or reduce: Language that signals London/Dublin-only ambition Phrases like ‘seeking to develop my practice at the highest level of the market’ or ‘ambitious to work on the most complex transactions available’ read well in London. In NI they raise the concern that you will leave as soon as London calls again. Replace with language that is specific about what you value in NI practice.

Remove or reduce: Exhaustive lists of London-scale transactions A three-page list of every deal you have worked on in London is not useful to a NI reader who cannot evaluate most of them. Select four to six transactions that best illustrate transferable skills, contextualise them briefly, and cut the rest.

Remove or reduce: An outdated NI address or NI university as the only NI connection Some returning solicitors include their parents’ NI address or their Queen’s University degree as implicit evidence of their NI connection. Neither of these tells a hiring partner anything useful about your current commitment to a NI career. Replace with specific, current evidence of NI engagement.

Section 7: CV Length and Format

It’s not a deal-breaker but NI firms generally expect CVs of two to three pages for jnr/mid PQE solicitors and up to four pages for senior associates and partners. The London norm of a detailed four-to-six-page CV with every transaction listed is typically too long for a NI audience and can read as unfocused.

Format should be clean and professional — not a design exercise. NI hiring partners are reading CVs on screen and in print. Complex layouts, unusual fonts, and colour-coded sections that look impressive in a PDF can become confusing in print. A well-structured, clearly headed Word document in a readable font will outperform a heavily designed version in most NI hiring contexts. They will also review your Linkedin page and your profile on your employer website, so ensure information (and dates) are consistent. Any mixed messages about employment dates, teams, work streams will create probing questions (at best) or negate interest (at worst).

Checklist

Before you send your CV to any NI firm or recruiter, run through this checklist:

Abacus CV Checklist — NI Applications
☐	Personal statement rewritten specifically for a NI audience — mentions NI market, names your commitment to returning, states what you bring to NI practice
☐	Firm name(s) contextualised with a one-sentence description for any employer a NI partner might not know well
☐	Experience bullets translated to connect London/Dublin experience to NI equivalents — don’t assume the connection is obvious
☐	Scale question addressed — either in personal statement or covering note, confidently and specifically
☐	NI commitment evidenced — timeline, location, market knowledge, any NI professional connections
☐	London/Dublin-only ambition language removed — replaced with NI-specific framing
☐	Transaction list edited to four to six strongest transferable examples, each with brief context
☐	CV length appropriate — two to three pages for 3–7 PQE, maximum four pages for senior associates/partners
☐	Current NI (or NI-intended) address or clear relocation statement included
☐	Qualification status confirmed — if Dublin-qualified, note your Law Society of NI recognition status
☐	Covering note drafted — specific to the firm, addresses return, under 400 words
☐	Proofread by someone unfamiliar with your London/Dublin firm — if they understand your experience, a NI reader will too
☐	LinkedIn profile checked — employment dates, firm names and practice area descriptions are consistent with your CV and up to date

Abacus can help

Alan Braithwaite (Managing Director) in Abacus has actively supported 100s of solicitors to consider a return to NI. Many have achieved substantial career goals to partner and managing partner level and personally settle back with families.

The solicitors who navigate the return most successfully are the ones who have thought hardest about how to tell their story for a new audience. The CV is where that work becomes visible and Alan can support you to make an impact with your CV. When a call is made, we are keen to listen and ask some questions, to help frame that narrative and critically weigh up if the right location is NI or to remain where you are. We will typically:

• Ask where you are in the thought process e.g. a passing and recurring thought, or you are seriously making the calculations. 
• Avoid sharing anecdotal stories but offer proven examples about previous placements or efforts; and reflect realistic values about salary levels, house prices, career paths.
• Offer to intro you to a diaspora solicitor we have placed in the past who can offer direct assurance about the move on a personal, family and professional perspective.
• Present a market overview and potential employer options across all segments – law practices, legal services, inhouse, 3^rd sector etc.
• Answer questions with honesty.
• Commit to a series of calls to help you get to the right decision.
• Propose an Action Plan and steps to generate the right opportunity for you.

If you would like to start a confidential discussion, or get a review of your CV, just contact Alan. We will give you specific, honest feedback — not generic encouragement — on what is working, what needs to change, and how to make your application as strong as possible for the NI firms you are targeting.

Ready to take the next step? Send your CV to alan@abacustalentgroup.com or call Alan on +44 28 9538 0598 (direct) for a confidential discussion. We work with returning solicitors across all PQE levels and practice areas, from NQ to partner. There is no charge and no obligation — just an honest assessment from someone who knows what NI firms are looking for. www.abacus.careers