Legal Job: Know the Interviewer

A legal job interview's success depends on preparation and right thinking. After doing your homework on the target company you should know a bit about those who interview you.

Finding out what the target employer is really like, and obtaining non-public information that you can use to your advantage during the job interview itself, is only half the battle. To be truly successful in a legal job interview, and stand out from the crowd of people competing against you, it is necessary to know something about your lawyer-interviewer(s) before you walk in the door.


Step One: Know "Who's Who in the Zoo"

The first stop is your law school placement office. By obtaining a copy of the firm resume or corporate materials that are on file there, you will be able to tell at a glance who the members of the firm's Legal Personnel Committee are, the names of the other attorneys in the corporation's legal department (and, more importantly, who reports to whom within the organization), and the division heads of the legal staff of the government agency.

You must keep in mind that not all lawyers employed by an organization will be lawyer-interviewers; only a very select handful will be chosen to perform this task, and your first task must be to identify the subset of lawyer-interviewers that lurks within the larger pool of attorneys employed by the target organization. Lawyer-interviewers will generally fall into one of two categories: either they are members of a Legal Personnel Committee or other select group of lawyers to whom the organization delegates the delicate task of screening candidates for employment; or they are lawyers to whom you will directly report if you are hired at the target organization.

Finding out the names of the lawyers to whom you would report if you are hired is relatively simple; usually the job description will contain this information, as in the case of a newspaper ad that says "reports to the Assistant General Counsel in charge of patents and trademarks". In the case of a "lateral hire" or career change, however, this information may not be as easily obtained. In these cases you will have to call the target employer's personnel office and find out verbally who heads up the XYZ division's legal staff, or who the senior partners in the firm's Bankruptcy Department are. Sometimes you will not be able to find out this all-important information until the initial interview; in this case one of your first questions for the lawyer-interviewer should be "how is the department structured, and who reports to whom within the department?"

If you are interviewing for your first legal job out of law school, virtually all of your interviews will be with members of the Legal Personnel Committee. Finding out who these people are should be as easy as looking at the firm resume on file in your law school placement office. If this information is not available, the placement office personnel should be able to get it for you (and for your competition) without much difficulty, or you may wish to call the firm's recruitment coordinator and obtain the information directly. There is a risk, of course, in taking the latter course, as if you identify yourself to the recruitment coordinator he may be tempted to tell a member of the Committee to "be careful when talking to So-and-So from Law School X; he's been calling here asking all kinds of questions." As in so many other aspects of the information gathering process, your ability to be discreet counts for much here.

One way to do this is to call the firm, ask for the recruitment coordinator's secretary (not the coordinator himself) and, without identifying yourself, say that you are interested in writing a letter to the Chairman of the Legal Personnel Committee and want to know the correct spelling of his name. At least you will know one name through this method. Another way of achieving your goal is to make friends with a librarian at another law firm in the same city; it is my experience that law librarians all know each other, and if he likes you he may be willing to place a discreet telephone call to his counterpart at the target firm and ask for a list of the Legal Personnel Committee members.

Step Two: Learn About Individual Interviewers

Once you have found the names of the Legal Personnel Committee members and the most influential partners in the department or division in which you will be working if hired, your task is a simple one: find out as much about each one of them as you possibly can before you walk into his office. As will be seen, this is a process that continues right up to the moment (and sometimes after) the interview begins.

His Curriculum Vitae: The first stop, of course, is Martindale-Hubbell. There you will find the individual's date of birth, educational history (where he graduated from college and law school and years of graduation), a list of publications and bar memberships, professional honors and awards, and (sometimes) area of practice concentration. If you are looking at a corporate legal department or government agency, the Prentice-Hall Directory of Corporate Counsel may be a better place to start, as more corporations list detailed information about their legal staff there than they do in Martindale-Hubbell.

Common Interests in the Law: If you find that the lawyer-interviewer you are researching has written a number of articles for law reviews or bar journals, should you read any or all of them prior to the interview? My advice is usually no; it takes up too much time, you probably won't remember much of importance (and will risk misquoting the article when actually speaking to the lawyer-interviewer), and you will appear to be "brown-nosing" if you show any detailed familiarity with the interviewer's written work. You should, however, know the titles of the articles he has written, and if you have the time you should read the brief synopsis or "executive summary" that usually appears at the beginning of each article.

This will give you an idea of the particular issues or problems in which the interviewer is interested, and if you can (sincerely and genuinely) make the connection between the interviewer's interest and something you yourself have written about or studied, so much the better. The key words here are "genuinely" and "sincerely"; if the lawyer-interviewer thinks you are coming across as too polished, or are trying to "brown nose" him, he may be tempted to turn the tables on you by asking a series of detailed (and embarrassing) questions to find out just how closely you have followed his work.

What are you looking for, then, in studying the inter-viewer's biography? You are looking for something in common. If the interviewer is a graduate of your college or law school, or has written extensively in an area you are currently writing your Law Review note or case comment about, or shares a charitable or political interest or hobby, you have something to talk about that will set you apart from the competition. Rarely will Martindale-Hubbell and the other legal directories give you all of the information you will need to know in a legal job interview.

The Really Good Stuff: To get the "really good stuff about a lawyer-inter-viewer, you must resort to networking and "gossip", just as you did when researching the target employer. Talking to other attorneys in the community can be very useful here if you are in a "lateral hire" or career changing situation; while professionals are notoriously uneasy about tattling on their colleagues in the bar, most will give you a balanced presentation of the "scuttlebutt" if they feel they can trust you to be discreet. Keep in mind that you are not trying to find out about the lawyer-interviewer's sex life or personal idiosyncrasies, the sort of things people are naturally reluctant to talk about.

You are trying to find out harmless things: his hobbies, number of children, political or community interests, professional interests (bar association committees and the like), significant cases or business transactions he is known for, client contacts, and so forth. When you have learned something about an interviewer that you think will help you establish rapport with him, write down a question that you think will help "open him up" on an area of mutual interest or concern and get him talking away about something the two of you find fascinating.

Study the Interviewer's Office: Finally, keep your eyes open when you walk into the interview room (or the interviewer's office). If you arrive for the interview a couple of minutes early, and (lucky you!) are asked to wait in the office for a couple of minutes as the inter-viewer has been detained in a meeting, look around you and drink in every detail. Are there paintings of sailboats on the wall? What sorts of legal and non-legal books are on the book-shelf? If there are bound volumes anywhere in the office, what types of transactions or cases were they and how much money was at stake? Are there any memorabilia or toys on the interviewer's desk? What does the furniture look like -contemporary (metal and glass), traditional (solid hardwoods), or beat up (passed on from partner to partner over the generations)?

Look at the inevitable pictures of the interviewer's family - are the children holding any objects (like a baseball glove) that may offer clues to their parent's hobbies or interests? Do the family pictures face the interviewer, or is his back turned to them? Is the interviewer's desk tidy or disorganized? Is there a "wall" of paper separating you from the interviewer, or is everything off to one side? Does the interviewer's desk face toward the window or the door?

Little details like these can speak volumes about a person, and you should be attentive to them every minute you are interviewing. Even when you have not been given an opportunity to size up the interviewer's desk and office before the interview, you should take advantage of every moment during the interview to do so. By using the techniques de-scribed in Chapter 4, you will have plenty of time to make the necessary assessments. I cannot hold myself out as a psychologist or expert on "body language" or utilization of space, but by using common sense you can usually determine from the arrangement of a person's office or desk how compulsive he is, how important his family life is to him, what he does with his spare time, and the type of work that means the most to him.

Two things you should never do when in an inter-viewer's office: open up any of his desk drawers; or go behind his desk to look at something at closer range. The former is an invasion of privacy and the latter is viewed by most people as an invasion of the interviewer's "personal space" that he may well resent.

The Interviewer's Appearance: Finally, when you greet the interviewer make a detailed note of his appearance. How well (and how conservatively) does he dress? Is his presentation formal or informal? Does he ramble on or watch every word? How does he use his space; does he keep the desk between you and him or do the two of you sit on the same side of the desk? Does he make regular eye contact or is he looking through you?

You should keep in mind that employers pick their lawyer-interviewers because they are exemplars of what the employer wants in its lawyers --indeed, one of the surest ways to spot the up-and-coming lawyers in an organization is to see which ones are named to the Legal Personnel Committee. Ask yourself constantly during the interview: do I want to be like him someday? That is the question your prospective employer wants you to ask: if the answer is "no", you need try to impress the interviewer no further.

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