LAW FIRM CONFIDENTIAL

How do you land an interview with your firm of choice? What do you do to stand out from the crowd? How do you convince a firm to hire you back? National spoke to four recruiters from top law firms across the country to explore what they look for in candidates along with their tips on how to succeed in the big leagues

By Jim Rossiter

Getting in the door: The truth about grades

Moderator James Rossiter:  So, how important are grades?

Louis-Philippe Constant: I would say that for the first interview selection, grades are one of the key factors and in fact, it’s one of the only objective factors that we can rely on for the initial selection. My feeling is that once you reach a certain threshold, however, grades become less significant.

Rossiter:  Is there a risk that the firm will overlook students who might otherwise be a successful article clerk but whose grades, for whatever reason, haven’t been stellar?

Rebecca Saturley: There’s always a risk.  This is a high-pressure environment where, at the end of the day, we’re providing strategic, long-term advice to some very important clients.  And to do that you need to have a solid academic footing.  But you also need to be able to communicate, both within the firm and externally. And so we really do look at the whole package when we’re deciding who is going to get that first interview. 

Rossiter:  What can the student with less than average grades do to get an interview? 

Mary Jackson: You have to be realistic about your opportunities and if you’re faced with average grades or less than average grades, you might have to work harder to network and to find opportunities in different markets. You also need to focus on showing improvement over time. Sometimes you see that person that maybe didn’t do as well in first year but really improved in second and third year. 

Saturley:  In addition to that, you can get involved in extracurricular activities, which I wholeheartedly support. But don’t just sign up for 10 things just to say that you’ve signed up for 10 things.  We know that that means that you’re not taking a leading role in any of those organizations. So if we see somebody who’s worked their way up through an organization or who has a part-time job and who’s taken on increasing responsibility in that part-time job, that will often stand out to us when we’re looking at candidates.

Rossiter:  When firms look at the academic transcript is there any consideration regarding the choice of classes?

Christian Petersen: There is some analysis of the types of courses that are taken. But it’s really just to get a better sense of whether the grades are reflective of a strong application or not. I know that some courses are easy and some courses are difficult.  And that means that higher grades in black letter law courses hold more weight with me than high grades in… I’ll just call them non-black letter law courses.

Jackson:  If someone’s applying at a business law firm, you’d like to see business law courses. And if you’re applying to a litigation boutique, you’d want to make sure they’ve taken the advocacy course. But I also think you are allowed to have some academic freedom, as well, just to pursue areas that are interesting. It’s also good to see a mixture of courses that require exams but some that require writing, as well. It shows that you can write.

The application process: Play to your strengths

Rossiter: What is the purpose served by the cover letter and the résumé?

Saturley:  The cover letter can only hurt you. We never see it again, frankly. But when you try to be too cute or you refer to the name of another firm -- which happens all the time because people just use fields or whatever to fill these in – it doesn’t help. Make it short.  Make it sweet.  And make sure that you’ve read it over 100 times and that it’s absolutely perfect.

Constant:  I've noticed that some students take advantage of the cover letters to explain certain weaknesses in their profile. And sometimes, these students are being very hard on themselves. It’s something that we may otherwise not have noticed during the review of their profile. And they point it out. So some students need to do it; others may not have to do it.

Rossiter: What is it precisely that firms are looking for in the résumé itself? 

Saturley:  The résumé is where most of the information about an individual is contained.  So I think it should be clearly set out. Most people use the two-page chronological template, which makes it easy when you’re comparing a bunch of résumés. But sometimes everybody is just saying the same things over and over again – what they think you want to hear. So I would make it specific to you. Be honest about what you are like and what your interests are because at the end of the day, you’re looking for the right fit for both the firm and the candidate.

Constant: I have to say that I’ve been very impressed with the résumés that I’ve been seeing in the last few years. Just looking at the CVs without the cover letter and the grades, it would be difficult for me to determine who’s got the better profile, frankly. So I think that the students need to make sure that they’ve got enough in there and that it’s well-presented.  But at the end of the day, they should focus on certain things that put their strength into perspective.

Tips for mature students

Rossiter:  What about the mature student who has followed an unconventional route to law school? Is this student at an advantage or a disadvantage or neither?

Saturley:  It depends on the student. It is fairly impressive if they’ve had success in some other career or some other academic pursuit. I imagine for some there are disadvantages but frankly, with the students that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years, I see it as a real advantage. It sets yourself apart from the average student at law school.

Constant:  One of the things that we’re worried about sometimes when we see a more mature student coming in is whether he or she will be ready to receive instruction and work under someone that’s maybe a few years younger. For these students, it’s important for them to get the message across that this may be a second career or it may have taken them a while to get there. But that they also understand that they will be starting at the bottom of the ladder and that they’re more than willing to accept working for younger bosses.

Petersen:  The concern for all applicants should be that they’re communicating commitment to the practice of law. Certainly one prior career wouldn’t suggest otherwise but five prior careers at the age of 35 might – that law might just be the sixth and that there will be a seventh.

Mature students need to be a little bit more careful to explain why they chose law to satisfy firms that it's not a short-term commitment. 

How to shine during interviews

Rossiter:  Let’s shift gears. I’ve been asked to an interview. Is it fair to describe the interview stage as make or break? 

Jackson:  Yes. It’s extremely important. You can’t get away from the fact that you’re hiring a person. And so you need to know who that person is. Our focus is trying to figure out what judgment that person has, whether they’re a team player and how they present. And so you have to be prepared to go to that interview and talk about yourself because a good interview is basically the candidates talking about themselves and you exploring them on those dimensions.

Petersen:  For us, by the time a student has made it to the interview level, we’re relatively satisfied that the student will be academically able to do the work required of them. The question becomes, will they be able to do that work in our environment? It’s a determination of whether or not they’re going to fit with the people that they need to work with.

Constant: Personality, I think, is important. For a smaller firm like ours with the focus on litigation, it’s certainly something that we’re looking at, whether that person, we feel, has the potential to become a good litigator.

Rossiter:  Now that I know what it is that firms are looking for from me, how can I show that to them in a 15- minute interview?

Saturley:  It’s tough. But there are a couple of things that you can do. The key thing is to do some research. Find out about the people who are going to be interviewing you. Talk to the other students at law school who are working at the firm. And if the firm sounds appealing to you, try and convince us that you have those qualities and can demonstrate those attributes that we think that we’re looking for.  By doing research, you can be prepared and ask good questions.  That will set you apart from other people in the interview process.

Rossiter:  At the interview itself, how can I shine?

Jackson:  I believe in behavioural interviewing. So I will ask people about questions about their past and particularly where they have had to exercise judgment. One of my favorite questions: “Let’s talk about something you haven’t done as well at.” And what I’m listening carefully for is their integrity, how they judge the situation, how they treated others, how they took responsibility. People need to think through their past and think of those kinds of things that might demonstrate the kinds of qualities that all law firms are looking for. I try to knock people out of script because my goal is to find out, really, what’s this person like? When it comes to résumés, I actually ask people, what’s not on your résumé? Because that could be more revealing.

Petersen: From the students’ perspective, what is important is to be themselves during the interview rather than attempt to align themselves with what they perceive to be the culture of the firm. Because at the end of the articling year, they might have been able to pretend to be somebody else for 10 or 12 months but it’s going to be difficult to do that for the rest of their career. So try and show their real personality; and if the firm doesn’t like it or if it’s not a good fit, there will be another one out there that is.

Rossiter:  All job interviews leave room at the end for any questions the applicant might have.  Comments? 

Constant: Unfortunately, I've seen students with excellent résumés and who have an excellent intereview. Then once given the opportunity to ask questions, they somehow find a a way to damage their image by asking questions that can easily be answered just by looking at the firm Web site, or that are redundant.

Jackson: Questions should be very specific. A good one to ask is: “So, if I were a second-year associate here, what work would I be doing?” You can get a meaningful answer that might help – it’s informative. 

Rossiter:  Second and third interview now: Should a student prepare differently?

Petersen:  The first question that the students have to ask when offered the second or third interview is: Do I have any interest whatsoever in that firm? And they have to be honest with themselves about that because if they don’t, it’s a waste of everybody’s time. In Vancouver an articling interview period lasts just shy of 48 hours. Over the years, I’ve seen students interview at 15-plus firms and then find themselves with three or four dinners a night. And they ruin it at the firms that actually interest them because they keep too many balls in the air. 

Rossiter:  Where does the firm’s social reception dinner fit in?

Saturley: It can be an opportunity to connect on a number of different levels. This is the real time to be yourself, but maybe not too much. It’s still a professional business environment.

Behind closed doors: How decisions are made

Rossiter:  The interview process is complete. The dinners are done. Take us behind the closed doors where the decisions are being made on offers.

Jackson: We have a committee that sees a wide variety of candidates.  We keep going through the candidates.  But we involve about 100 lawyers – even junior associates. And we will ask for everybody’s feedback in making those decisions. And then we usually have a great big meeting on Wednesday afternoon -- almost the entire office – because our offers have to go out at 5:00. We go through the candidates and sometimes there might be a bit of a debate.  You know sometimes who the crowd favors.  And then we may reach our decision.

Constant:  We interview 40 candidates during the first interview. And we bring it down to 10 for the second interview. Then there is a cocktail and we make about four offers. Most of the committee will be there during the second interview process. And we’ve all seen them at the cocktail. So we’ll get a sense from our colleagues that are not on the recruiting committee of what they thought of the candidates during the cocktail, and then sit down all together and make the decision based on the second interview and the first interview. But given that we’re dealing with such a small number of offers, a consensus is reached pretty quickly.

Rossiter:  The offers are made. What’s the etiquette? How long may they retain the offer and consider it?

Petersen:  In Vancouver, that’s regulated by our local bar association. We have to keep our offers open for 24 hours from the point they’re made, which is 8:00 a.m. on Thursday of the interview week. In our firm, once the decision is made to extend an offer to a list of candidates, those offers go out and no further offers are made. So, we don’t care how long a student sits on an offer, as long as they make the right decision and accept it.

I know there are other firms that do rolling offers and the etiquette for those firms might be somewhat different in that they are sitting on an offer that prospectively will go to a classmate if they don’t accept it. In those circumstances, the student has a heightened obligation to focus his or her attention, if they’re truly not interested, to advise the firm of their decision.

Saturley:  It’s different in Halifax. The Bar Society doesn't regulate how long an offer has to stay open for. But we obviously encourage people to get back to us and to not leave things hanging. 

Constant:  My view on this is that it’s perfectly acceptable for a student to take whatever time he’s entitled to take in order to make that decision. It’s a significant decision and I would find it difficult to blame a student for taking 48 hours to weigh the different offers that he’s received.

Petersen: I think it’s important for students to know too that if they’re sitting and waiting for an offer from their first choice, there’s nothing wrong with that student phoning that firm and asking them, “Where do I sit with you? Am I going to get an offer or have all of your offers been extended?” I don’t think students should be shy to do that, especially if they have a top pick that they’re waiting on and they have other firms out there who have extended them offers who they might go to if their top pick doesn’t extend them an offer. 

Making it in the real world

Rossiter: Now help me make that transition from law school to the law firm. As I make that move from school to firm, what am I going to see or experience?

Rossiter: Articles are sometimes described as the year-long job interview. The goal is hire-back or at least the goal for many. What can the article clerk do to shine?

Petersen:  As a student, it’s easiest to approach articling by thinking of the lawyers in your firm as your clients.  And soon, you’ll have your own clients and the phone calls will come from outside of the office rather than in. But you need to start thinking about servicing the lawyers in the firm as your own clients. That means being responsive and showing a commitment to getting the right answer to the question that’s asked at any cost.  

Rossiter: Is there wisdom in aligning myself as a clerk with power brokers or senior partners?

Jackson:  I would say that students often misinterpret the power hierarchy and think that by listening to Partner X, who is a certain age and stage, they’ll get the best advice. But sometimes, that person is not clued in to the hire-back process at all. Frankly, I think being strategic is about connecting to everyone you work with. I’m sure all of our organizations – all of our firms have the same thing in common. The student that connects with everyone they’re working with shows real commitment to the work and does good quality work has no problem. And I think people who spend too much time trying to read the political environment don’t, generally speaking, do as well. 

Petersen: Many lawyers who have been in a firm for 20 years have difficulty reading the political environment.  A student that’s been there two months probably can’t do it, either.

Rossiter:  Any advice for the article clerk not hired back? 

Saturley:  We have people that we’ve opted not to hire back; usually we do our best to see if we can’t help them find alternate work for the future just because they’re usually pretty good students who are going to be pretty good lawyers at the end of the day.  It’s always tough getting that negative decision. But I would say that, for the months left after you get that decision, continue to go to work every day and work hard. Just try your hardest to convince people that if there are other opportunities out there, that you are the right person for those opportunities.

 Published in National Magazine's 2011 Student Edition. More articles from this issue:
http://www.cba.org/cba/PracticeLink/careerbuilders_students/