Law Firm Interview Call the First Step

If you have been invited to visit a law firm, corporate law department, or governmental agency, you have leaped an important hurdle. The chances of being offered a position have improved dramatically. Consequently, the need to establish the basic ground rules of this advancement in the process becomes even more important.

Some of the more obvious questions, particularly if you are asked to visit an institution in another part of the country, relate to who pays for what. Most prospective legal employers pay round-trip coach air fare, lodging, food, and some incidental expense money. In some instances interviewees have flown first class, and some interviewees have received significant incidental expense money. However, these are the exceptions and not the rule.

Most major law firms and corporate legal departments have administrative personnel or recruiting coordinators who will arrange all the details of your trip for you. Alternatively, you may want to arrange the details of your trip yourself. This may be particularly true if you intend to visit with family or friends over a weekend or simply hope to take a few days' vacation during the interviewing process. Generally speaking, no firm or corporate law department has any objection to your extending the trip in that fashion, assuming, of course, that the incremental expenses are borne by you. With the clear representation that you are willing to be billed for all incremental costs, you should not be at all embarrassed, for example, to ask the recruiting coordinator at a given institution to (please!) make reservations for an additional period of time either at the same hotel in which they are housing you during the time you interview or at a different hotel if there is, as there probably will be, a substantial rate differential. In a few instances, law firms are willing to bear such incremental costs on the theory that an extended stay will give the interviewee an opportunity to become more familiar with the geographical area in which the firm in question is located. Indeed, some firms welcome the opportunity to spend additional time recruiting. Consequently, it is not at all forward or uncommon simply to ask the recruiting coordinator whether or not incremental costs are to be borne by the firm or by the interviewee, perhaps suggesting as a courtesy that you are perfectly willing to absorb such costs.

Bear in mind that such courtesies may require you to spend additional time with firm representatives. This could be very tiring if several firms are sharing the expenses of your visit and intend to share your additional time as well.

As noted, many large firms and some corporate legal departments have recruiting coordinators whose job is to arrange all logistics for interviewees, summer clerks, and incoming permanent associates. If you are interviewing at an institution with a recruiting coordinator, you will no doubt find him or her very helpful and knowledgeable about the policies of that particular firm.
You will do yourself a favor if you ask the coordinator or your hiring attorney, rather than some attorney at random, questions about reimbursement of expenses, staying over weekends, and other issues that someone might mistakenly see as an attempt to take advantage of the situation. You are no doubt well aware of some of the tremendous flimflams which have been engineered by law students over the course of the last few years. It should be obvious that such efforts are not career enhancing.

How to Prepare for Your Visit

The first thing you should do is review your prior workup on the institution. Reread the firm resume; recall your interview at school and check with friends who may have just returned from an interview with the same firm.

Some law firms and corporate legal departments use their best recruiters in the interviewing process; others simply take a random sampling of available lawyers and ask them to spend time with a particular interviewee. Incidentally, even that seemingly minor variant tells you something about the institution.

At least you know that you may not be seeing a representative sample of lawyers of the firm or corporation during your interview.

In most instances a lawyer, either the one who invited you to visit or a younger lawyer, or perhaps the recruiting coordinator, will make sure you get from one appointment to another and will arrange for your midday and evening meals. At those meals you will be joined by two or more other lawyers and perhaps their spouses or, in recruiting jargon, "significant others".

Generally speaking, the importance of lunch and dinner inter views, at least in the context of a full day or more interviewing period, is overrated except that employment committees naturally pay attention to the recommendations of the people who have spent the most time with the prospective interviewee.

What about Spouses or Significant Others?

In almost every instance, law firms commonly pay for travel, lodging and meals for spouses; reimbursement for the expenses of a fiancée or a "significant other" is a bit trickier. The practice is far from uniform with respect to the reimbursement of expenses for people who have developed substantial person al relationships but for one reason or another have not formalized those by marriage. It is safe to assume that long-standing relationships between "significant others" will be treated differently than shorter term relationships. Your own feelings with respect to how important it might be for your "significant other" to accompany you and participate in your career choice will be the best guideline in determining whether or not you should ask about or expect reimbursement for his or her (but not their!) expenses.

A combination of factors, most notably including the substantial increase in the number of women in law schools and the quite positive overall effects of the women's movement, has resulted in a significant increase in the number of professional couples. Consequently, the interviewing process can become complicated by considerations, such as "whether my husband can get an internship in the city in which I hope to practice" or "whether the Los Angeles office of McKinsey & Co. has an opening for my wife if I decide that is where I want to practice". Most good interviewers will make every effort to optimize the employment opportunity for the spouse or significant other of a law student in whom the firm is particularly interested. However, that cannot be done at the last minute. You should make every effort to advise the attorney arranging your visit of any particular requirements in that regard so as to give him or her an opportunity to talk to other attorneys, clients, and friends to see how the firm might be helpful; an institution may also have a substantial number of contacts that might be helpful in securing any type of job whether it be musician, dentist, teacher, or real estate broker.

In any event, if you and your spouse have decided that one of you is not going to work, the question of what the other does during the interviewing process remains. Many firms have fairly sophisticated procedures outlining the ways wives may be entertained while their husbands interview. To the best of my knowledge, there are no comparable program procedures for husbands. In any event, it is perfectly legitimate for you to ask what kinds of activities might be available for your spouse or suggest certain interests he or she may have and ask guidance and direction as to how those interests might be fostered during the interviewing process. An interest in art, for example, might be greeted with an introduction to the executive director of a major museum whose chairman of the board just happens to be a senior partner in the firm you are visiting. Of course, there is always the possibility that such an interest may be greeted with a street map and a bus token.

If you and your spouse or “significant other” are both lawyers, one of the questions you must answer is whether you should work in the same firm. Many firms have explicit policies and answer that question for you one way or the other. If it is important for you to work together, address the issue early, particularly if you both anticipate practicing in the same discipline and especially if one of you will be senior to the other. Al though there was a time when couples seemed to want to work together, there appear to be very few instances of such requests today. The practice of law may be hard enough without com pounding it with intimate personal relationships. On the other hand, denying husband and wife an opportunity to work together is a form of discrimination which, like all forms of discrimination, must satisfy a high test or standard. Indeed, perhaps the couple ought to be the ones to decide whether or not to take the obvious risks. In any event, this especially sensitive subject must be thoroughly considered by both. Oddly enough, most firms are quite comfortable with significant others both working at the same firm. Such comfort is more a result of being ostrich-like rather than their condoning a life style.

Scheduling

In many instances, using one trip to visit several law firms or institutions in which you are interested is difficult because interviewing is an exhausting process. Any attempt to see three or four firms, each of which conducts full day or more interviews, can be terribly tiring and be the cause of a lackluster performance on your part. Consequently, be very judicious in scheduling long interviewing jaunts. In addition, there is always the problem of missing extended periods of class. If you are fortunate enough to receive several offers to visit law firms in a particular city, do not accept them all. Be hard on yourself, and narrow your choices as much as possible beforehand. An ideal schedule for a student on one coast who hopes to practice on the other may be two trips reasonably spaced, each of which is designed to see one or two institutions with a weekend sandwiched between the actual interviews. For example, you could leave New York for Los Angeles at midday Wednesday (do not take the "red-eye" or very late flights) and interview with a large law firm on Thursday and Friday. On the weekend you could develop some sense of the city and the area, particularly if traveling with your spouse or significant other. On Monday and Tuesday of the following week you could interview with a smaller law firm or a corporate law department, returning to New York on Tuesday evening (red eyes on the return flight arc perfectly acceptable). Incidentally, in that situation reasonable weekend expenses should be allocated between the interviewing institutions.

The general question of allocating expenses between firms is relatively simple. Most firms across the country have developed working relationships with each other to handle the allocation of costs and do so in a very routine manner. Your responsibility consists solely of making sure each firm knows of your plans and in allocating your time fairly. If, for example, you expect to visit two firms in a given city with a weekend in between, you should not commit to social engagements on both Saturday and Sunday with one firm excluding the other entirely. The only way to avoid that problem is to ask both firms at the outset whether or not you are expected to be available over the weekend.

In the event you elect to remain in an area for an extended period of time, you should devote some time to planning how you can maximize the benefits of your visit. Almost every city of any consequence has a tourist information bureau or a chamber of commerce which can supply a lot of information. Use them. Furthermore, many law firms and corporate law departments have developed extensive packets of information about the geography, economics, business and culture of the area in which they are located. To give you a sense of the cost of living in a given area, you should devote some of that extra time in a new city to a perusal of the ads for apartments and new homes. You should also consider visiting the areas where young lawyers in the firm live.

Visits by First- and Second-Year Clerks

Many law firms now fly prospective summer associates for visits to the law firm as a matter of course. That practice is bound to increase rather than decrease. The only potential variant from visits by prospective permanent associates relates to the question of expenses for spouses or significant others. A quite responsible argument is that one of the purposes of a summer clerkship is to give both of you an opportunity to see whether or not you like the city and the firm. Nonetheless, I assume the recruiting process will continue to evolve into one in which such expenses will be reimbursed more or less routinely. I say that with no little regret in that I believe the recruiting process has become or is tending to become surrealistic. By that I mean the recruiting process has become so competitive, so expensive and so generous that interviewees may mistakenly see the process as the reality of the practice of law.

Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed the first few weeks of permanent employment can produce some withdrawal pains caused by paying for your own lunch and drinks and not being invited to the best restaurants every night. Although the question of expenses is a real one, the more important issues relate to the sobering effect of leaving the recruiting process and entering the world of practice. Things are different once you begin to practice.

That point merits a brief additional discussion. Many new associates are amazed at the difference in the attention given to them in the recruiting process as opposed to that which they receive when they actually begin work. A number of firms, particularly the larger ones, have developed elaborate programs to help new associates feel welcome and allow them to assimilate into the law firm. As noted, you may nonetheless feel some interviewee withdrawal. The only answer is to be realistic about any recruiting process and accept it for what it is.

What You Might Expect in the Interview

The interviewers you see at a given institution will usually be less experienced than the ones you saw at your law school. On the other hand, you will surely see the particular hiring partner or members of the hiring or employment committee. In most instances, those people will not be identified for you in advance of your interviews. In fact, it may be in your best interests not to know which of the people you see are on the employment committee. Some interviewees have not received offers because of perceptions that they interviewed one way with members of the hiring committee and differently with others in the firm.

The "Couple of Hours or Lunch Interview" vs. the Full-Day or Multiple-Day Interview

Shorter interviews can be more dangerous. If the only step between an interview at the law school and the receipt or non-receipt of an offer is a lunch, that lunch tends to be very important. Consequently, your questions and responses have to be much more succinct and precise than they would be in a full-day or two-day interview. Nonetheless, all of the basic principles described throughout this book apply equally in either set ting. There will be, of course, obvious alterations which must be made depending upon the type of interview.

Questions Again

An important rule to remember is not to be afraid of asking the same question of several different people. To some extent that practice should be encouraged. You should expect to meet the same wide range of interviewers and interviewing styles you encounter at law school and should feel free to ask all the questions you asked at law school. In addition, you will have substantially more opportunity to ask partners and associates what they do and what they like or dislike about their firm. An interesting gambit is to ask several of the associates with whom you chat what law firm they would have selected if they had not selected their current employer. You may find you are in the wrong place.

Many of the lawyers with whom you will visit during the interview will assume your academic record is qualifying. That, of course, is not true at law school interviews. The difference is explainable; people will assume the interviewer the firm sent to the law school will not bring unqualified law students for additional interviews, and unless you went to the same law school as the person with whom you are talking, he or she will probably not understand your law school grading system. Obviously this distinction is important; in fact you go from inter views at the law school where the presumption may be against receiving an offer to an interview at the firm where you may actually enjoy a presumption in your favor. The same phenomenon may not be present at corporate legal departments or agencies. Nonetheless, you should assume that everyone with whom you speak will have input into the decision as to whether or not to offer you a position.

Old Issues

Questions of dress, decorum, and manners are easily answered. You should dress and act in a manner that indicates you want to receive an offer. If you do not, the probability is that you will not. There are others, perhaps more subtle, issues such as whether or not you should drink or smoke. If you do so normally, you should do so during the interviewing process, remembering of course Benjamin Franklin's stricture with respect to moderation.

There may be instances in which younger lawyers escorting you to dinner may offer or use marijuana or other narcotics. Even if you normally use marijuana, prudence suggests abstinence during the interviewing process. You simply are unable to gauge the effect of such an action, however innocent or otherwise appropriate, in the interviewing process. The same may be said of opportunities for sexual encounters, particularly with people from the firm or firms you are visiting.

Social Aspects

Although the social aspects of interviewing are necessarily interwoven into the entire procedure, a few specific points are worth making. Recruiting is an exhausting process. The sense of fatigue can be overwhelming if you do not recognize that heavy lunches, fancy dinners, fine wine, and late hours are quite tiring. And you should expect heavy lunches, fancy dinners, fine wine, and late hours. In many firms the younger associates take a primary responsibility for the noonday and evening meals and use the recruiting process as an opportunity to entertain you and themselves at restaurants and in a manner which they could not otherwise afford. Most firms expect that to happen although the most effective entertaining for recruiting purposes is done by people who take you to places they go on their own money or, better yet, to their homes.

Interviews with Younger Lawyers

Some interviewees disdain younger associates. That is a mistake. I have seen several otherwise promising interviewees fail to receive an offer because of the way they treated the younger associates with whom they visited. Younger associates are also a source of vital information. From them you can learn why they picked a particular firm or corporate law department, whether their expectations were fulfilled or unfulfilled, and what type of work they expected as opposed to the work they are actually doing. You can also get a sense of the level of responsibility given them as well as their perception of how young associates are treated and whether or not the institution's promotion policies are fair and predictable or autocratic and within the total discretion of the partnership or relatively small segments of the partnership. In addition, there is always the possibility that your interview is the beginning of a long-term personal and professional relationship. Surveys about law firms or associates' impressions of their firms are poor substitutes for the interviewing process. If you like what you have seen about a firm, continue interviewing.
Depend on your own impressions.

Special Prerequisites: Potential for Abuse

As noted above, there are many firms and corporate law departments which encourage interviewees to spend (or at least do not discourage them from spending) additional time in a given geographical area. In such cases, you might reasonably expect the firm to pay reasonable incremental expenses, including a rental car.

With the proliferation of branch offices, there is always the prospect of interviewing at one or more of such offices or at the principal office if you intend or hope to work at one of the branches. Those offices may be located in a nearby geographical area or across the country. In any event, you should understand the relevance and availability of interviewing in such fashion if that is something in which you are interested.

In some instances you may be genuinely unsure about your decision and will want a return visit to a given firm. That "perk" is rarely offered if it involves significant travel expense.

See the following articles for more information:
 

• 21 Major Interview Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs
• The Best Way to Prepare for a Job Search and Interviews
• How to Talk About Other Interviews in Your Interviews
• How to Answer the Tell Me About Yourself Interview Question
• How to Answer the Do You Have Any Questions for Me Interview Question