There is plenty of stuff you can find on the internet about firm interviewing on campus. The short of it is that it's a 20 minute interview where the associate or partner they send may or may not even bother reading your resume in advance, and if you get past this stage, you get to repeat it four-fold at the firm (sometimes with a lunch involved). If you've done well, offers tend to follow, but remember, the rejection pile will never outweigh the one offer you wind up accepting.
I could go on about any number of problems I have noticed with such interviews generally because most lawyers interviewing have no HR experience, but I will focus this entry on the most pointless question that occasionally gets asked, the one that has absolutely no bearing on any part of one's legal career whatsoever: "Why did you go to law school?" The interviewer doesn't care, clients won't care, and if I ever get the chance to answer this question again, I will simply turn the question on them before answering it myself. I'm guessing that the interviewer won't have a good answer either.
Any answer to this question, barring some super story integrated into the law school admisssion's initial personal statement two years earlier, is probably pretty boring:
-I have always wanted to be a lawyer or someone in my family is a lawyer/doctor/etc. and this was a good fit.
Translation: I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated college but 3 more years of school without major responsibility sounded like a good idea at the time. I also don't fully appreciate $100k+ in debt or realize how much the IRS actually takes out, so I don't quite understand how broke I actually will be.
-I enjoy debating/arguing.
Translation: My relationships tend to be my way or the highway, and I win more than half the arguments with my friends because I frustrate them to the point they give up.
-Med school didn't take me.
Translation pretty clear.
Let's be real, there is no meaningful answer to this question, and while there are a great number of potentially funny answers, the initial interview probably isn't the most appropriate forum to test such material. The question really only lends itself to two possible answers, neither of which is any more meaningful than my aforementioned responses. Either the candidate went right from undergrad, in which case he or she probably doesn't have a solid reason other than he or she thought law was cool, or the candidate took some time off (1 year or more), got fed up with the working world, and thought going back to school as a career change had more merit than living another day of Office Space. If the candidate has a more interesting answer than that, it should be readily apparent on the resume.
Given this latter assumption, in my opinion, by asking this question, the interviewer indicates he or she hasn't read the interviewee's resume or has given it only a cursory inspection. If this is the case, the interviewer probably is hoping that in the ten seconds it takes for the interviewee to give whatever tossaway answer he or she has prepared, the interviewer can quickly glance over the resume and come up with a better question. The better question the candidate interviewee should then ask to his or herself is why he or she would want to work for a firm who doesn't care enough to send someone prepared to do the interview? What kind of quality of work should be expected from them, and what kind of work are they producing? Think about it.
Because the question is crap, the interviewer should go ahead ask why the candidate is interviewing for that particular firm (beyond the obvious) and cut right to the heart of the matter. Or ask the candidate something from the resume. An interviewer may bill for time generally, but any lawyer can appreciate that a law student's time is no less valuable, so why waste it by asking a stupid question like the one I've discussed ad naseum? Otherwise, when asking for questions (and the interviewer always will), the interviewer subjects him or herself to the opportunity for the candidate to throw their doofy question right back in the interviewer's face. For the candidate, the trade-off of a callback may be worth it once just to have a good story to tell at the bar.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Law firm on-campus interviewing: Who cares why I went to law school?
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2 comments:
I beg to differ, but only slightly. The interview is the opportunity--an often only opportunity--for the firm to see what the interviewee is like off the paper. Any employee, when considering who he or she wants to work with, will consider about two things, and both a motivated by self interest. First, is this person qualified/will they work hard? This question ensures that the interviewer will not look stupid if the applicant under performs because that would be a reflection on those that selected him or her. Second, would I want to spend eight hours a day (more like 12 in a big firm) around this person?
The question "why did you go to law school?" is crap, I will admit but it still is an opportunity to become likeable. An interesting story or even a boring but solid answer will definately help. If the interviewee gets flustered or simply can't answer the question it can be damaging if only because the interviewer knows this person does react well when they are put on the spot.
I think a good approach to an interview is to think "what can I do in 20 minutes to make this person like me?" It is like a first date and you want to make sure you get a second. Like dating, anyone with a "scripted" answer will seem fake and the interview is bound to go south. In my opinion--and I am admittedly no expert--a good approach is to have an answer in mind to the obvious, and often crap, questions. Those are softballs which you should hit out of the park. Then when a tough question comes, take a thoughtful pause and answer the question as sincerely and confidently as you can.
I agree that it's a softball question, and I agree with your point that it's an easy opportunity to become likeable depending on how it is answered. You should have an easy answer to this question that doesn't seem rehearsed.
I also agree with all of the rest of your points that an interview is merely a sizing up of whether or not you can get along with the person or not. With all that in mind, I merely think that the "why law school" question is more filler than anything else, and an interviewer can get the same (or, likely, more thoughtful response) by tying something in the resume to what may or may not be an obvious answer (such as why they went to law school). In this sense, you may be asking the same question, but killing two birds with one stone. In the same breath or category of softball questions you can probably lump "why this firm" but since that one almost has to be asked, there is no need to critize it's effectiveness. I would love for an HR person to analyze the typical questions that get asked just to see if they come up with anything more solid, but it's really more a gripe than anything else. Thanks for your comments.
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