brotherdarkness wrote:jbagelboy wrote:1L Summer hiring is mostly over for these firms or at least in callback mode. But from my experience (anecdotal of course) I didn't receive any unexpected or off the wall questions. How well you can speak to any/every item on your resume and link it in a comprehensive narrative to your interest in practicing some area(s) of law will define your performance.
Re: 2L OCI. I rarely had questions about whether I was enjoying law school and only one firm asked me about a legal issue (that discussion turned into an argument and the interview went downhill very, very quickly). I was asked about my pre-LS employment, my 1L summer, and why I am interested in a particular area of law in every interview. That said, most of my interviews were fairly conversational and many were about things entirely unrelated to the law. I interviewed with the entire V10 (sans WLRK
) and
every single firm asked "why us?" It may seem self-explanatory, but if your only answer concerns prestige, it's not going to be pretty.
Anyhow, as far as the non-football/food/etc. interview fodder is concerned, most of the V10 firms were very interested in why I was interested in transactional work. I don't have a finance background and law school pushes you towards litigation, so if you're like me you're going to want to have a solid narrative crafted.
This is very bad advice. When I interview applicants at my top tier firm, the best, by far, answer to the "why us" question is "because this firm has a preeminent transactional practice." No need for website cites - if I want to test whether you read Chambers, I will follow up to elicit that separately. Note that you don't need to be at Cravath to use this approach - it works at any firm good enough so that you don't sound like an idiot for saying it (i.e., works at Debevoise, works at Kirkland, etc.). It has the advantage of truth.
Similarly, you do not need a transactional narrative. It's a simple answer. "you were an art history major and worked before law school teaching second grade. Why transactional work?" "Because I'm interested in deal work. I could do either but transactional is what gets me excited."
Explaining yourself, rationalizing - these are all weak moments in the interview that should be minimized. Every second you spend explaining the backstory of why you switched from animal husbandry to M&A is a second you're not pitching yourself as an excellent candidate. I don't need a good rationale, I just need to look in your eyes and believe that this is what you want to do. You can convince anyone with a very short answer said with convinction.
As to what to expect - context matters. If your grades are way above our (informal) cutoff at a top school, I'm primarily checking to see if you're insane, then assuming you're not, I'm recruiting you. A 3.8 from NYU with social skills is going to get an offer regardless of how many cappuccinos they made during their post college career as a barista. My job is to get you to accept your offer, and the friendlier your interviews seem, the more likely that is.
Alternatively, you could be a marginal candidate - lower GPA from a feeder, or a top student at a second rate school. Now the interview is both a recruiting exercise and a test. And you test people, primarily, by stressing them; either emotionally, intellectually, or both. I will read your resume beforehand, ID the weak points, and drill like an oilman. McKinsey has a great thing they tell applicants before they interview - have multiple answers to key questions, because they're going to keep asking. "Why did you leave your first job so soon?" "I got an offer I couldn't pass up at this second place." "Why did you get that offer at that time?" (Long pause). "Um, I didn't get the offer in college and then they were short a couple of people and called me." In the end it was a fair response, but the long pause, the fidgety hands, the stammering - that guy got a mediocre review from me right then.
The whole point is that you can't prepare for every question, but you need to be prepared to be forced off script, to be made uncomfortable, and to be cool the whole time no matter what they throw at you. What's the best reason to hire one guy over the other, same (marginal) GPA, same school? It's not to take the nicest guy, because plenty of nice guys are shitty workers. It's to take the guy with adequate social skills who can eat up stress and come back from more.
That being said - adequate social skills is super important. If I can't stand being with you in a room for 30 min, how could I manage you for 3 months on a deal? But there are lots of way to skin that cat - I've worked with total nerds that are a breeze to manage, total bros, and everywhere in between. Frattiness or extroversion does not correlate that well with professional social graces.