Standing Out in Your Law Firm Interview Our Favourite Tips

So, you've applied to a law firm for a job, and now they've invited you to an interview. You're excited, but also nervous, so you start preparing, and maybe you decide to consult everybody's favorite online resource, Google. 22.5 million search results and an avalanche of advice come up, with a lot of tips like be presentable and dress your best, research the law firm, or ask questions. And while these things are all true, they're also what's already expected of applicants. In today's competitive job market, how does one not just pass their interview, but stand out from everyone else? So, in today's video, we want to share with you guys our favorite tips based on our own law firm interview experiences over the past decade, which helped us get into top international law firms. Make sure you stay tuned until the end for an interesting take we have on a common interview tip. And remember, if you like this kind of content, please hit that like button below and consider subscribing if you'd like to see more. So, our first tip is to know your own CV inside out, and to frame your experiences the right way when you talk about them, which I'll explain in two parts. First off, you should be prepared to talk about any of your experience in detail if you need to. The more relevant your experience is to the role and the practice areas of the firm you're going for, the more detail about that experience you should be prepared to talk about. I've actually had an interview where a partner asked me details about a case I worked on before, down to what certain clauses said in a several hundred page contract. To be fair, this was just a one-off experience of mine, but it does go to show this kind of thing does happen, so it's best to be prepared just in case. However, this does not mean that when you're asked about an experience in an interview, you should right off the bat launch into a detailed explanation of what you did. Aside from the fact that you might end up boring your interviewer a bit with unnecessary information that they might not have wanted to know, the way you initially describe your experience is actually super important. This is because it can allow you to sort of control, to a certain extent, the direction of what you and the interviewer will be talking about in relation to that experience. What we suggest is that before an interview, think carefully about how you would summarize an experience and your involvement or role in a clear and concise way. That way, when you're asked about an experience, you're already prepared to start off with that summary. And if there's something in particular that the interviewer wants to know more about, they'll ask you. The reason this is important is because the interviewer, generally speaking, only has the information that you give them. So how you describe and frame your experience really helps set the stage for the interviewer, as well as the parameters of what they'll ask you. Now, I'll give you a personal example to show you what I mean. In one of my interviews before, I knew I'd be asked by the interviewers about a case I'd worked on because it was clearly relevant to the role at the firm I was applying to. However, that had been a really big case with almost a dozen issues and wasn't extremely familiar with a couple of them because they'd largely been dealt with by other members of my team. As a result, when I was asked about the case in my interview, I chose to only mention the issues that I was really familiar with when I was summarizing my experience on the case. This then led the interviewers to ask me questions about those issues, which I was comfortable talking about in a lot of detail. I think this also just goes to the general rule that you should avoid bringing up concepts that you're not familiar with in interviews. Of course, there's a chance that those concepts might come up anyways because of the interviewer, and if that happens, it's best to just be honest that you're not familiar with those issues rather than do something like try to bluff your way out. So next, we want to talk about being prepared to address any possible weaknesses in your CV, whether that's not-so-good grades or gaps in your experience. Our approach is that if there's a good, honest explanation for why that's the case, it's generally just best to be upfront about it, which we've talked about in a previous video. For instance, as Lloyd has mentioned before, he actually got a D-plus in commercial law when he was still a student. Since that was because he had some personal stuff going on at the time, when he was asked about it in an interview, he was just honest about what happened. However, sometimes you might have weak points or things that just don't look great that you can't just explain away. If that's the situation, we suggest taking the time to think about the kinds of concerns that the interviewer might have and how you would assuage those concerns. For instance, when I was interviewing for my last firm, I knew that the firm was looking for an associate who specialized in projects and construction work. Although I had a fair amount of experience in the area, I wasn't a specialist, and that was because that just wasn't my role at my previous firm and that wasn't something I could do anything about. However, the way I thought about it was that if the firm really wasn't interested in hiring me at all and possibly having to teach me, they wouldn't have invited me to the interview. So instead of focusing on the experience that I didn't have and apologizing for it or making it sound like I'm anything but a great candidate, I decided to draw the interviewer's attention to the positives instead. I decided to highlight the level of involvement and exposure I had already gotten to that kind of work in the cases I did, and I also decided to emphasize my eagerness and willingness to learn. I think this kind of approach has the added benefit of demonstrating a good attitude, which is something you can never really go wrong with. So in an interview, there's usually an opportunity where the interviewer asks you if you have any questions for them. Preparing good questions for an interviewer is a common tip that you see, but what really makes a good question? So the first rule is that you should only really be asking questions that you genuinely want to know the answer to. Way too many people ask questions because they're the right questions to ask to demonstrate the right version of themselves to the interviewer. But really, this is a great opportunity to ask a question that you really want to know the answer to and probably get a genuine answer. So it's a really big opportunity that shouldn't be wasted. On top of that, interviewers can tell when people are being genuine or not. So the questions you ask will reflect this. Asking a genuine question can demonstrate that you're actually really interested in the firm or you're interested in the partner rather than just asking a stock question that you'd ask any interviewer. So what we recommend doing is picking questions that are things that you genuinely want to know while also being able to demonstrate your interest in that specific firm or that specific partner. And remember, interviews are two-way in that the partners have to decide whether or not they want to hire you, but you also have to get a feel for whether or not you want to take a job at that firm. Open-ended questions are great too as opposed to a simple yes or no question because again, it's a really great opportunity to get a very genuine and fleshed out response from an interviewer in a face-to-face situation. A question that I used to always ask was to ask the interviewer what their experience working at the firm was like. Usually this would give me a bit of insight into the culture of the firm as well as a more personal spin on the experience working there as opposed to just something that I could research online. So the specific question that we both asked in interviews before is what do you specifically like about working at this firm? When I asked that question when I was interviewing at my current job, I got a really thoughtful response about the culture at the firm. In a career like law, there's a lot of horror stories like people working really late, working over weekends, canceling holidays, or not really being able to see their family just to name a few. But one of the female partners who interviewed me told me a story about how she was really supported by the firm when she was on maternity leave and she didn't really have that much pressure to come back and build her business when she had her newborn child. That gave me a really good insight into the firm and the fact that they actually practiced what they preached which is something that I really cared about. So for me, being able to get into a genuine discussion about the culture of the firm and the fact that people's time was valued outside of work was a really good thing for me and helped me make the decision ultimately that I wanted to work at this firm. So we definitely recommend coming up with about two to three questions in case any of them inadvertently get answered during the course of the interview. So a common tip is to be yourself or to be your best self which really just means not sounding scripted and being conversational and genuine. And while this is true and seemingly straightforward, it does seem kind of difficult to conceptualize how one goes about being their best self and putting their best foot forward. So we think about it like this, we all have a lot of different things that come together to make us who we are, our interests, hobbies, or even just preferences really dictate who we are and our personalities. That said, an interview can often be quite short and you most likely won't have the opportunity to express everything you may want to about yourself and what sets you apart in that short timeframe. So while everyone has different traits, perspectives, and personality that make them all unique and special, it's important to think about which parts of your personality or better put, which parts of your story you wanna share with the interviewer in that short span of time. For example, very broadly speaking, I'm personally very into fitness and nutrition, cooking, video games, anime, and tattoos. But in the context of a law firm interview, if I only have an hour to explain my personality and the things that I'm really interested in, I might wanna raise maybe half of those things and not the other half. I'll let you guess which half. But in all seriousness, part of the interview process is to demonstrate that you know how to govern yourself professionally and handle yourself in a business situation. So it's very important in an interview setting to first demonstrate that you have that requisite level of professionalism and that you can conduct yourself as such. This includes your communication style and tone, the things you choose to talk about during the interview, and the parts of your personality that you share in that setting. Once you demonstrate that requisite level of professionalism, it's like ticking the basic boxes and it becomes easier after that to build rapport and transition to other topics during the interview. As a personal example, when I interviewed for my current job, the first half of the interview was quite a bit more serious with detailed questions about my CV, the work that I had done as an intern, and my career aspirations. I also had this whole Wolf of Wall Street moment where one of the partners handed me a stapler and said, all right, sell me the stapler. But once we got through that initial stage, the second half of the interview was way more relaxed and I got to talk more about myself, such as how I used to work as a bartender in university and how I love cooking and playing video games. So because we were able to establish that basic level of professionalism, it was a lot easier to build that rapport and talk about things that were a bit more personal. Now, of course, it is also worth mentioning that it is entirely possible for someone to just not be on the same wavelength as the interviewer. At the end of the day, if you're just not vibing with someone, that's really outside of your control and all you can really do is try to put your best foot forward in any given situation. Thanks a lot for checking out our video, guys. If you'd like to see more, we'll link up above to a video we made on the pros and cons of being a lawyer. And click on this video for a video that the YouTube algorithm thinks that you'll like.