What should you ask an attorney in an interview? Questions and what good answers sound like
A question bank for law firms interviewing attorney candidates — skills, judgment, confidentiality and deadlines — with answer guides, a practical exercise, and the questions to keep off your list.
The questions to ask when hiring an attorney are the ones that surface the work a candidate personally did, the judgment behind it, and how they handle confidentiality, deadlines and clients — followed by one practical exercise and the same scoring sheet for everyone.
Below is that question bank: what each question reveals, what a strong answer sounds like, the questions to keep off your list, and what a candidate's own questions tell you.
Before the interview
Write the questions from the job description, not from a generic list.
If you have not settled the role itself — the seniority, the practice area, who the hire answers to — start with our guide to how to hire an attorney, then sharpen the questions once the attorney job description says what the hire will actually do.
The interview's job is to test the claims that posting makes.
Decide two things before the first candidate sits down: the practical exercise you will use, and the scoring sheet you will fill in right after each interview.
Keep both the same for every candidate, and score while the specifics are fresh — comparisons made from memory weeks later are comparisons made from charm.
Tell every candidate up front that they should not share client-confidential detail in the room: ask about the kind of work, not the parties.
It protects everyone, and how a candidate handles the instruction is itself a data point.
Decide how you will verify what the answers claim before you act on any of it.
The ABA's licensing directory names the state agency in each state that licenses lawyers, and that agency can confirm whether a person has a law license and may practice there — our guide to bar status verification covers the check.
Interview answers are claims; the verification is yours to run.
Finally, check your draft list against the risky-questions section below, and have employment counsel confirm the final version — the rules vary by state and they move.
Which skills questions reveal real attorney experience?
Walk me through a matter you handled from intake to resolution. What did you do personally at each stage?
What to listen for: Strong answers name the forum, the claims and the specific work they owned — the pleadings or contracts drafted, the motions argued, the negotiations led — and separate it from what the team did.
Weak answers stay at the level of the practice area, with nothing you could verify.
Pick one detail and probe it; a real matter gets more specific under pressure.
What is the last motion, brief or contract you wrote that you would still put your name on? What was the issue, and what happened?
What to listen for: A strong answer states the legal issue in a sentence, the position taken, and the outcome — including the edits a supervising partner made.
A weak answer remembers the document but not the issue, or cannot say what the other side argued.
The question doubles as the writing-sample conversation: ask to see it, redacted.
Which case-management, e-filing, research and document systems did you use daily, and which did you set up or administer?
What to listen for: Strong answers name systems, describe how the work flowed through them, and claim anything they configured or trained others on.
Weak answers say “whatever the firm had.”
Hold the answers against the stack your firm actually runs, and decide day-one competence versus trainable on purpose rather than by impression.
Where are you admitted to practice, and is anything pending or limiting that we should know about before we verify?
What to listen for: A strong answer is direct: the jurisdiction, the status, and anything in motion — offered without prompting.
Evasion about status or dates is its own finding.
Treat the resume line as a claim to verify: the state agency that licenses lawyers can confirm whether a person has a law license and may practice there, so run the check before you rely on the answer.
Which behavioral questions test judgment, confidentiality and deadlines?
Tell me about a time a client wanted to do something you had advised against. How did you handle it?
What to listen for: Strong answers lay out the options and consequences, put the recommendation in writing where it mattered, and let the client decide.
Weak answers tell a story where the advice is missing — or where the candidate simply did what the client wanted and hoped for the best.
You are listening for advice as a process, not confidence as a personality.
Describe a time someone pushed you for details about a matter — at dinner, in another firm's office, online. What did you say?
What to listen for: Strong answers decline without drama, confirm nothing, and keep real client names out of the telling.
The dangerous answer is the entertaining one: a candidate who walks you through a former employer's confidences is showing you how they will treat yours.
Score discretion above storytelling.
Walk me through a week when several deadlines collided. What moved, and who did you tell?
What to listen for: Strong answers triage by consequence, escalate to the supervising lawyer early, and seek extensions in time rather than miss them.
Weak answers amount to “I worked harder,” with no system and no one told.
Ask what changed in their calendar process afterwards — the fix is the real answer.
Tell me about a filing or deadline mistake that happened on your watch. What did you do next?
What to listen for: Strong answers own it fast, fix it, inform whoever needed to know, and change the process so it cannot repeat.
Weak answers blame a paralegal, a vendor or the court — or insist it has never happened.
A candidate who can describe a well-handled mistake is safer than one with no mistakes at all.
A new matter comes in that looks close to work you did at your last firm. What happens next?
What to listen for: Strong answers flag it immediately and let the firm run its conflicts process — they do not self-clear, and they do not start work while the question is open.
Weak answers say it should be fine or clear it themselves.
The question also tells candidates early that your firm checks, which is worth the interview slot on its own.
What practical exercise or test should an attorney complete?
Ask for a writing sample they personally drafted in the last year — a motion, brief or contract, redacted before it reaches you.
What to listen for: A strong candidate produces one quickly and can walk through every choice in it: the issue framing, what was cut, who it was aimed at.
A weak showing is an old sample, a document someone else largely wrote, or one the candidate cannot discuss in detail.
Redaction is part of the exercise, not an excuse to skip it.
Give a short, timed research-and-recommend memo on a disguised fact pattern from a matter like yours.
What to listen for: Strong memos spot the real issues rather than the obvious ones, structure the answer before writing, hedge where the facts are thin, and land on a recommendation.
Weak memos summarize the law without applying it, or cite authority that does not check out.
Keep the exercise identical for every candidate so the comparisons mean something.
Run a mock client call: a short scenario, you play the prospective client, the candidate leads.
What to listen for: Strong candidates explain in plain English, give concrete next steps, answer cost and timeline questions honestly, and promise nothing about outcomes.
Weak candidates retreat into jargon, dodge the fees question, or start guaranteeing results.
For intake-driven practices this exercise outweighs the rest of the interview.
Hand a litigator a redacted motion from one of your own filed matters and ask for a critique.
What to listen for: Strong candidates read the posture correctly, name the evidence gaps and the argument the movant dodged, and say what they would have done differently.
Weak candidates compliment the writing without engaging the strategy.
One conversation over a real filing beats another round of questions.
What do strong vs weak answers sound like?
Case ownership: “I took the two key depositions and wrote the summary-judgment motion” — strong. “I worked on a big case” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong version contains work you can verify — documents filed, arguments made, deadlines owned, outcomes — and the candidate can go a level deeper on any of it when you probe.
The weak version describes a practice area, a firm or a team, with no personal doings anywhere in it.
Every follow-up you ask tests which version you are hearing.
Confidentiality: “I declined to comment and moved the conversation on” — strong. “Let me tell you about my best-known client” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong answer protects the client and describes the behavior, not the story.
The weak answer is entertaining — and disqualifying: a candidate who talks through a former employer's client confidences in your interview will talk about yours somewhere else.
Score charm lower than discretion.
Deadlines: “I flagged the collision a week out and we moved the deposition” — strong. “I have never missed a deadline” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong answer shows a system — calendars, early warnings, escalation to the supervising lawyer — plus one specific save.
The weak answer offers perfection, which a real caseload makes hard to believe; press gently and the follow-up tells you which one it is.
Which questions are illegal or risky to ask?
Interviews are part of the hiring process the anti-discrimination laws reach: protections enforced by the EEOC extend to job applicants and former employees, not just current staff.
Title VII, the ADA and GINA cover private employers with 15 or more employees who worked at least 20 calendar weeks in the current or prior year, and the ADEA's age protections cover private employers with 20 or more employees who worked at least 20 calendar weeks in the current or prior year.
State and local laws can reach smaller employers — that coverage was outside our research, so confirm what applies to your firm.
Two areas deserve the most care in an attorney interview: medical questions, which the FTC and EEOC's joint background-check guidance says should wait until after a conditional job offer, and salary history, which Connecticut bars asking about unless the candidate volunteers it and Virginia and Nevada bar seeking outright.
The flags below are the areas to stay off, with what to ask instead — and employment counsel should confirm the final list before your first interview.
- Salary history — “What did you make at your last firm?” Connecticut bars asking a prospective employee about wage and salary history unless the candidate volunteers it first; Virginia and Nevada bar seeking salary history as well. Those are the states our research verified, not the full map — other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours. Ask “What are you looking for in pay for this role?” instead, and keep the posting's range consistent with the answer.
- Medical questions before an offer — health conditions, past injuries, medications. The FTC and EEOC's joint guidance says employers should not ask medical questions before a conditional job offer; before an offer, keep questions on how the candidate would handle the job's actual demands.
- Questions about who the candidate is rather than the work — age probes such as graduation years, religion, family plans, who watches their children. The EEOC's position is that pre-employment questions should be limited to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified, and that questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion are irrelevant to that decision; federal law does not clearly forbid every question touching race, sex, national origin, religion or age, but the answers can be used as evidence of intent to discriminate unless the question is justified by a business purpose. Ask about the schedule, the travel and the court calendar the role involves instead.
- Criminal history, asked casually. The same FTC and EEOC guidance says it is generally not illegal for an employer to ask about an applicant's background or require a background check, with restrictions around certain medical and genetic information — but it warns that a criminal-record exclusion that significantly disadvantages a protected group and does not predict job performance can be unlawful disparate impact. State and city fair-chance laws that restrict when you may ask were outside our research, so confirm yours before asking. The job-related question for an attorney is about licensure standing, and the check you run yourself beats the interrogation.
- Anything you could not connect to a duty in the job description — “Where are you really from?”, comments on appearance, a maiden name. If a question survives that test awkwardly, replace it with the job question you actually meant; the work itself gives you more than enough to ask about.
After the interview
Score every interview on the same sheet while the details are fresh: the skills answers, the behavioral answers, the exercise, and anything the candidate volunteered that you did not ask about.
Compare candidates against the rubric and the job description rather than against each other's polish, and write down the specifics you intend to verify — matters, motions, systems, bar status — so the next round of diligence has something concrete to check.
Keep what you wrote down.
The FTC and EEOC's joint guidance says private employers must keep personnel and hiring records, including applications from people who were not hired, for one year from the date the record was made or the personnel action taken, whichever is later.
The questions a candidate asks you — and what they signal.
Leave real room at the end, because the questions are data too:
- “What would success look like in my first months?” — a candidate thinking about deliverables and review rather than the title. Have a concrete answer ready.
- “How is work assigned, and who reviews it?” — signals they have worked under supervision somewhere, good or bad. It is your cue to be honest about partner access and mentoring.
- “Where does the work come from?” — business awareness, and a fair question. Know your honest answer about the client base before you interview anyone.
- “What is the pay range for this role?” — a reasonable question and, in places, one with a legal answer behind it: Nevada requires employers to give an applicant the wage or salary range once they have completed an interview. Have the range ready and consistent with the posting.
- No questions at all — explore it rather than reading it as disinterest; asking what they are still weighing tells you more than moving on.
This page is employer information, not legal advice. Interview rules come from federal and state laws that change and vary by jurisdiction — confirm your question list, background-check process and pay-disclosure duties with employment counsel and your state fair-employment or labor agency before the first interview.
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