Interview question -- clerks' questioning? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'll add, as someone who did relatively tough interviews when clerking on a COA, that often the point wasn't to see whether the applicant got the "right" answer. We'd ask challenging questions, for which applicants wouldn't have a prepped answer, just to see how it played out. People give all sorts of responses to these--from completely shutting down, or trying to bluster through, or actively getting offended (all bad) to asking followup/clarifying questions, trying to answer in a way that exposes their thought process even if imperfect, or occasionally being really smart and just giving a solid answer (all good).

My theory is that people who find these interviews to be "unfair" approach them like quizzes, where the point is to give correct answers. They're not, and shouldn't be approached that way.

Exactly. I had substantive interviews and I now ask some substantive questions. It's not about the "answer" and it isn't about flustering for the sake of flustering (though I'm sure some of the "jerks" referenced in this thread do that). It's about probing how one thinks, communicates concepts, and to some extent thinks quickly or juggles several concepts at once. The last isn't so important in a chambers-pace environment, but it can be (quick assignments at trial/hearings) and will depend on the particular chambers (perhaps your judge will want to discuss an analysis and new hypos and if you can't ever do that without typing out a memo for each thing she asks, you aren't going to be very effective in that environment). Grades and heavily edited writing samples are only so useful beyond a certain threshold. So you might take as a proxy of how someone thinks and approaches fresh content, how they frame an answer to an unfamiliar question or topic on the spot. I conducted a ton of interviews in my pre law school career too and they were mostly substantive (tech/consulting/finance) and never to be a jerk or some power trip but because we were trying to find the "best" person and the transcript/resume/recommendations filters let through a lot of bad candidates.