Interview Tips

I'll be interviewing all day tomorrow at Loyola Law School for my firm's 2003 summer associate class. (Hey, unrelated, but check out Loyola's Symposium on "Eldred v. Ashcroft, Intellectual Property, Congressional Power And The Constitution.") In case any of the candidates I may meet are readers of this blog (or become readers when they look up my bio on the firm's site), here's a bit of friendly advice about the interview process.

~ Do visit the Web sites of the firms with whom you are interviewing, familiarize yourself with their practice areas, and, if possible, your interviewers. It's pretty apparent when a candidate has done no homework, and it doesn't score you any points.

~ Try to relax and be yourself (a toughie, I know). We don't need a litany of your accomplishments, presumably your resume sums all that up. Who are you? What excites, upsets, intrigues you? We want to know all this, within reason -- by which I mean, try to be an enthusiastic but polite conversationalist. The best interviews are those with a good deal of give and take.

~ Talk about your real life experiences that are pertinent to how you will fare as a lawyer, and they don't have to be professional ones (in fact, at this point it may be better if they're not). How have you responded to challenges? What has helped you keep your head?

~ Don't burn the bottoms of the chocolate brownies with halvah cheesecake topping you're bringing with you. (Kidding, folks at NALP.)

~ Have fun. I and my co-interviewer Carrie Hemphill are borderline cool (at least we remember what cool looked like), and hey -- you could be sitting in Tax.