What should you ask an associate attorney in an interview? Questions and what good answers sound like
An employer-side question bank for law firms — skills questions, judgment and confidentiality probes, a practical exercise, and the questions to keep out of the room.
The questions to ask when hiring an associate attorney are the ones that make a candidate reconstruct real work: a brief they drafted, a deadline they nearly missed, a conflict they spotted early.
This page is a question bank for each stage — skills, judgment and confidentiality, a short practical exercise — with what strong and weak answers sound like, the practical test to set, and the questions the law bars or the EEOC's guidance flags as risky.
Before the interview
Write the script before the first candidate walks in.
Decide what this hire must actually do — the duties in your associate attorney job description — and build each question around verifying one of those duties, not around whatever comes to mind in the room.
Design any practical exercise to be necessary and related to the job: under the EEOC's rules for required applicant tests, a test must be necessary and related to the job, and the employer may not exclude people of a protected group or people with disabilities by the way it is built.
A disabled applicant who needs an accommodation to apply for the job — extra time or a different format for a test stage, for example — is entitled to that accommodation unless it causes the firm significant difficulty or expense.
Keep the exercise on a mock file.
The FLSA defines employ to include to suffer or permit to work (29 U.S.C.
203(g)), so a candidate drafting real, usable work product for the firm may be an employee owed wages; a short exercise on a disguised fact pattern is the safer design.
And run the same script with every candidate — it makes answers comparable, and it is the simplest guard against the improvised questions in the risky-questions section below.
Skills questions that reveal real associate attorney experience
Walk me through one brief or motion you drafted from start to finish: what you wrote, what your supervising attorney changed, and where the matter ended up.
What to listen for: A strong answer names the forum, the issue, the sections they personally drafted, and the edit cycle — what survived, what got cut, and why.
A weak answer stays at the altitude of helping on briefs, cannot separate their contribution from the team's, or describes a document they somehow cannot discuss.
When you get a research question you have never researched before, what do you do first — and how do you know when to stop?
What to listen for: Strong candidates start from the jurisdiction and the procedural posture, check whether the authority they find is still good, and describe an actual stopping point: enough support to commit to a position.
Weak candidates name a research database but no method, and have no answer for validating authority that may have been narrowed or overruled.
Which courts have you filed in or appeared before, and what was the last thing you personally filed?
What to listen for: A strong answer names the court, the document, and the mechanics: how it went out, what confirmation came back, what happens if the clerk rejects it.
Weak answers are vague about the forum or describe filings someone else plainly handled.
What have you owned with minimal supervision, and how did the supervising attorney check your work?
What to listen for: Strong candidates name specific tasks they ran and a real review process behind them — drafts read before filing, decisions confirmed in writing.
Candidates who claim broad independence with no oversight are describing a supervision gap, and in a firm that gap lands on you.
Behavioral questions that test judgment, confidentiality and deadlines
Tell me about a time you nearly missed — or did miss — a court or filing deadline. What happened, and what did you change afterward?
What to listen for: Strong answers flag the problem early, own the miss without deflection, and name the control they added afterward: calendar buffer, written confirmation of extensions, a docketing check they refused to run from memory.
Weak answers blame a paralegal or a partner, minimize what happened, or changed nothing.
This role sits inside other clients' confidences. Tell me about a time you had to protect client information — and what you will not share in an interview like this one.
What to listen for: Strong candidates describe concrete habits: nothing about a matter leaves the team, third parties get nothing without sign-off, files get closed out cleanly.
The red flag is a candidate who volunteers a former client's confidential details to impress you — they will handle yours the same way.
Describe a time you disagreed with how a supervising attorney wanted to handle something. What did you do?
What to listen for: Strong answers raise the disagreement privately, argue it with reasons, and then either execute the decision or escalate through a real channel when the issue touches a deadline or a client.
Weak answers went around the supervisor, said nothing until after it blew up, or recast every disagreement as the supervisor being wrong.
A prospective client starts describing a dispute, and you realize the opposing party might be a client of your firm. What do you do next?
What to listen for: Strong candidates stop the fact-gathering where it stands, collect nothing further, and take it straight to a supervisor so a conflicts check runs before anyone else touches the matter.
Weak candidates keep listening to be helpful, or try to resolve the conflict themselves.
A new associate's conflicts instincts are worth more than their research speed.
Tell me about a time you had to give a client bad news — a loss, a delay, a fee surprise.
What to listen for: Strong answers deliver early, in plain language, with options and the supervisor kept in the loop.
Weak answers sat on the problem, left the call to someone else, or softened the message until the client was blindsided later.
What practical exercise should an associate attorney candidate complete?
Set the same short exercise for every finalist: a redacted mock file — disguised facts, no real parties — plus a short written case assessment covering the issues, the open questions, and the sensible next steps.
What to listen for: A strong assessment leads with the real issue, separates facts from assumptions, and flags what is missing and what they would ask the client first.
A weak one summarizes the file back to you, or reaches a confident conclusion without noticing the gaps.
Add a live edit or a structure problem: a short, badly organized passage to fix on the spot, or a motion to respond to out loud, in outline form.
What to listen for: Strong candidates fix the order of the argument before they touch a sentence, cut boilerplate without prompting, and can explain why each change helps.
Weak candidates reword sentences and leave the broken structure standing.
Close with a judgment prompt: several matters with overlapping deadlines land in the same week. What gets done first, and what do they raise with a partner immediately?
What to listen for: Strong candidates separate court-controlled deadlines from internal ones, ask which dates are actually hard, and escalate early rather than silently reordering.
Weak candidates order the pile by personal preference and ask nothing.
Which questions are illegal or risky to ask an associate attorney candidate?
The questions that get firms in trouble are better understood as risky than as flatly illegal.
Under the EEOC's guidance, federal law does not clearly forbid every pre-employment question that touches race, sex, national origin, religion or age; those inquiries can instead be used as evidence of discriminatory intent unless the question has a business purpose, and the guidance is to keep pre-employment questions to what is essential to deciding whether a person is qualified.
Firm size changes coverage: Title VII, the ADA and GINA reach private employers with 15 or more employees who worked at least 20 calendar weeks in the current or prior year, and the ADEA reaches private employers with 20 or more employees on the same weeks-worked condition — while state and local rules can reach smaller firms, and those state thresholds were not part of our research, so confirm yours with counsel.
The statutes named below are among the rules our research verified; many other states and cities have their own rules on salary history, and other states and cities may have their own rules on criminal history.
- How old are you? When did you graduate from law school? — Age is on the EEOC's list of information irrelevant to deciding whether a person is qualified, and a graduation year mostly serves to date people. If the seniority of the role matters, ask how long they have practiced instead.
- Are you married? Do you have children — or plan to? — Marital status and number of children are among the inquiry topics the EEOC publishes separate guidance on. If the concern is availability, describe the actual schedule and let the candidate respond to that.
- What religion are you, or where do you worship? — Religious affiliation is both on the EEOC's irrelevant-to-qualification list and the subject of its own inquiry guidance. If the concern is schedule fit, describe the actual schedule and let the candidate respond to that.
- Where are you from — where were you born? Is English your first language? — National origin is on the EEOC's list of information irrelevant to deciding whether a person is qualified, and citizenship is the subject of its own inquiry guidance. If the work demands a language, ask about the language skills the role requires, not where the candidate is from.
- Do you have any health conditions, disabilities, or past injuries? What medications are you on? — Medical questions should wait until a conditional job offer is in hand. If a disabled applicant needs an accommodation to apply for the job — including to take the interview or the exercise — provide it unless it causes the firm significant difficulty or expense.
- Have you ever been arrested or convicted of anything? — Where this question may be asked is date-and-place specific. California bars employers with five or more employees from asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer; New York City makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer; Illinois bars covered employers from asking until the candidate has been found qualified and selected for an interview or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer. Elsewhere, the FTC and EEOC warn that criminal-record exclusions which significantly disadvantage a protected group and do not predict job performance can be unlawful disparate impact.
- What are you making now? What did you make at your last firm? — Salary history is barred by statute in states including California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, the statutes this page details. California bars all employers from seeking an applicant's salary history, including benefits, and from relying on it in deciding whether to hire or what to pay; New York bars relying on it and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed or hired; Illinois makes it unlawful to request it as a condition of an interview or offer, or to seek it from a current or former employer; Massachusetts bars seeking it from the candidate or a current or former employer, and allows confirmation only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation. Ask about salary expectations instead — California's statute expressly permits that — and note that in New York you may confirm prior pay only after an offer with compensation, and only when the candidate cites prior pay to argue for a higher number.
- Questions about the candidate's finances — debts, garnishments, credit history, a past bankruptcy — are on the EEOC's published inquiry-guidance list, and the EEOC's guidance overall is to keep the pre-employment process to what is essential for deciding whether a person is qualified.
After the interview
Score every candidate against the same rubric, immediately after each interview, while the answers are fresh.
The rubric is the job description you wrote, not the candidate you liked: research depth, drafting ownership, deadline controls, confidentiality instincts, conflicts reflexes, and the exercise.
One line per area beats a page of impressions.
Across the bank, strong answers share a shape: a specific matter, the candidate's own role in it, what went wrong, and what they changed afterward.
Weak answers share a shape too: generalities, credit-shifting, work they cannot describe in detail, and no system that ever improved.
When finalists run close, weight the practical exercise and the deadline and confidentiality answers over polish — interviewing well and practicing carefully are different skills.
Then flip the room: the questions a candidate asks you are evidence too.
Questions about the matters they would touch, who supervises, how work is assigned and reviewed, and what success looks like in year one signal someone thinking about the job you actually need done.
Expect pay questions, and answer them plainly: in California, an applicant can request the pay scale for the position on reasonable request, whatever the firm's size — so know your range before the interview rather than deciding on the spot.
The rules do not loosen once you have picked someone.
Medical questions should wait until a conditional offer is in hand.
In California, a firm that plans to deny a hire over conviction history must make an individualized assessment, notify the applicant in writing, and give at least five business days to respond before a final decision.
And if you order a background report from a screening company, the FCRA requires a stand-alone written disclosure and the candidate's written authorization first, and — before you decline based on the report — a copy of the report and the summary of rights.
Under the FTC and EEOC's federal guidance, asking about a candidate's background is not itself illegal outside medical and genetic information restrictions — but the state and city criminal-history and salary-history rules in the risky-questions section above still apply.
From here, finish the checks you started — references, and bar status with the authority that admitted the candidate — and send the offer.
For the whole sequence from posting to offer, our guide to how to hire an associate attorney puts this interview in order.
This page is employer information, not legal advice; hiring and interview rules are federal, state and local, and they change — confirm your interview script and offer process with employment counsel, and conflicts questions with your state bar's ethics counsel.
More hiring resources
Hiring an associate attorney?
Post the role with the duties and pay range you will actually hold the hire to — the candidates who answer an honest posting are the ones this question bank is built to test.