Senior Law Firm Interviews: 8 Things to Consider Before Your Next Move

The people with the most experience can sometimes be the furthest removed from interviewing.

Many of the senior law firm professionals I work with have careers spanning 15, 20 or more years, across areas including Client Value, Practice Management, Innovation and Business Development. Some began in legal practice before moving into these areas. Others have built specialist careers within the business functions of major law firms.

They may have been promoted internally, approached directly about opportunities or spent a decade with the same firm. By the time they reach Director or Head of level, their last formal external interview can be a surprisingly distant memory.

I've worked with some extremely experienced people who haven't interviewed for eight or ten years. They know their market inside out, but sitting down and deciding which parts of a long career are relevant to one particular role can take some preparation.

Senior candidates can benefit from interview preparation for a different reason from someone earlier in their career. They may have extensive leadership experience but relatively little recent interview experience.

Senior law firm recruitment has changed too. Today, processes can involve multiple stages and people from across the firm, all with different priorities.

The preparation I do with candidates is focused on helping them present their experience clearly and make the most of the time they have with each interviewer.

1. Your resume has already done its job

If you're at interview, the firm has already seen your resume and knows you have substantial experience.

You don't need to cover all of it again.

With 20 years of experience, deciding what to leave out can be as important as deciding what to talk about. I encourage candidates to think about the parts of their career that have the strongest connection to the role and the firm.

Which examples show how you operate at this level? Where have you dealt with something comparable before?

That's the detail the interviewer won't get from reading your resume.

2. “We” can hide your contribution

This comes up a lot with senior candidates. When you've spent years leading teams, you naturally talk about what “we” achieved. But I will often stop a candidate during preparation and ask: “Yes, but what did you do?”

The interviewer needs to understand where you came in. Which decisions did you make? Where did you change the direction of something? How did you handle the difficult parts?

You can acknowledge the contribution of the wider team while being clear about your own.

“Senior people are often very used to giving their team credit, which is exactly what you'd expect from a good leader. In an interview, they also need to be comfortable talking about their own contribution. Otherwise some of their strongest experience can get lost.” 

Graham Hale, Managing Director:

3. You won't necessarily have done every part of the job

Senior roles within law firms don't always sit neatly within one specialism.

A Director of Pricing may be considering a broader Practice Management role. Someone who began in legal practice may now work in Innovation. Client Value roles can cross Pricing, Legal Project Management and wider commercial responsibilities.

As these roles become broader, it's less likely that one candidate will have done every element of the brief.

In the senior law firm searches I work on, firms aren't always looking for someone who has already done every part of the job. They want to understand whether that person can step into a broader remit, learn quickly and lead people with specialist expertise.

I spend quite a lot of preparation time helping candidates make connections between what they've already done and what the new role requires.

Perhaps you haven't led that particular function before, but you've taken responsibility for an unfamiliar area and learned it quickly. You may be inheriting specialists who know more about one part of the function than you do. Your experience of leading those people can be more relevant than having done their jobs yourself.

At this level, how you learn and lead can be just as revealing as the individual boxes you can tick.

4. Prepare evidence, not scripts

I don't think senior candidates benefit from trying to predict every question and rehearsing an answer to each one. I'd rather identify a handful of strong examples from their career and really understand what each one demonstrates.

An example of leading a major change could be relevant to questions about leadership, partner influence or dealing with resistance. The same experience can be approached differently depending on what the interviewer wants to understand.

This also makes the interview more natural. You know the experience because you lived it. The preparation is about knowing why it's relevant.

5. Make sense of a career that hasn't followed a straight line

Some of the most interesting careers I come across in law firms don't fit a conventional career ladder, and this is becoming increasingly the case.

Someone may have practiced law before moving into a commercial role and then developing specialist expertise. Others have moved between Pricing, Client Value, Legal Operations, Practice Management or Innovation as those functions themselves have developed.

That breadth can be very valuable, but you can't assume an interviewer will make all the connections for you.

Think about what each move added to your experience and how it has influenced the way you operate now.

For someone moving from Pricing into Practice Management, for example, the relevant story isn't limited to their technical pricing experience. It could be their understanding of partner behavior, commercial decision-making or experience leading across different practices.

A career that hasn't followed a straight line can give you more to draw on, provided you can explain how it fits together.

6. Adapt to the person sitting across the table

Senior law firm interview processes will often involve up to four stages, sometimes even considerably more.

Over that time you might meet a Chief Value Officer, COO, Managing Partner, HR, other functional leaders and members of the team. There may also be a wider partners introduction or meet-the-team session.

They won't all be looking for the same things.

A partner may be interested in how commercially credible you are. Your future team could be thinking much more about how you lead. The functional leader may want to get into the detail of what you've delivered.

“You can have several people interviewing the same candidate and each one is looking at them through a different lens. Before an interview, we'll often talk about who's in the room and what they're likely to want to find out.”

David Pynor, Head of Data & Technology:

You aren't changing who you are for each interviewer, you're choosing the parts of your experience that are most relevant to the person in front of you.

7. Find out what's behind the hire

Two jobs with the same title can be very different once you understand why the firm is hiring.

Is it a replacement or a newly created role? What does the firm expect the person to take ownership of? Has the remit changed? What will they walk into on day one?

These are particularly useful questions when you're considering a broader leadership position.

I recently worked on a retained search for a Director of Billings at an Am Law 200 firm that involved four interview stages and a national team of more than 50 people. None of the shortlisted candidates was actively looking for a move, so understanding the opportunity and what sat behind the hire was an important part of the process.

You need enough information to prepare properly, and crucially, to decide whether the job is one you actually want.

8. Draw on your recruiter's expertise

A specialist recruiter should be able to tell you considerably more than what's written in the job description.

If we've spent time with the firm taking the brief, we understand why they're hiring and what they're looking for. We also know who you're meeting and can give you context before each stage.

That's particularly useful when you're moving into an adjacent area or meeting people from different parts of the firm. We can challenge you on the examples you're planning to use and help you work out where your experience has the strongest relevance.

Sometimes I may run a detailed preparation session. Or, it might just be a quick call before an interview.

However successful your career has been, if you haven't interviewed for years, preparation is essential. Lean on your recruiter for support - they guide candidates through the process every day, they know the market, they know you.

We've written more about how to work with a recruitment consultant and why specialist market knowledge can be useful throughout a recruitment process.

Preparing for your next senior law firm interview

A senior interview requires you to take a long and sometimes complicated career and make the relevant parts clear in a relatively short amount of time.

As law firm leadership roles become broader, firms won't always find someone who has already done every element of the job. They will also be assessing whether your experience can transfer and how you will operate in their environment.

If you're considering your next move in Client Value, Practice Management, Innovation or Business Development, or indeed another senior law firm function, I am available for a confidential conversation about the opportunities available and what to expect from the recruitment process. You can contact me here.
 

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