What should you ask an employment attorney in an interview? Questions and what good answers sound like
A question bank for law firms interviewing employment attorney candidates — the side-of-the-docket and charge-work questions that reveal real experience, answer guides, a practical exercise on a mock file, and the questions that are risky to ask.
The interview questions worth asking an employment attorney are the ones that pin down which side of the docket they have actually worked, the matters they personally carried — agency charge responses, demand letters, handbook counseling, settlements — and the judgment they showed under deadline and confidentiality pressure.
Below is that question bank: what each question reveals, what strong and weak answers sound like, one practical exercise on a mock file, and the questions to treat as risky rather than harmless.
Before the interview
Write the questions from the job description, not from a generic list.
If you have not settled the role itself — which side of the docket the hire joins, the advisory-to-litigation mix, who supervises — start with our guide to how to hire an employment attorney, then sharpen the questions once the employment attorney job description says what the hire will actually do.
The interview's job is to test the claims that posting makes.
Know your own answers before you interview anyone: the side you are hiring, your agency charge volume, the share of the work that is counseling rather than litigation, and who reviews what.
In this practice the side question matters before anything else — a plaintiff-side contingency docket and a management-side counseling docket are different jobs — and a candidate's side story is the first thing you are testing.
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 identical for every candidate, and score while the specifics are fresh.
Design the exercise with the same care you would advise a client to use, because your firm is an employer in this room too.
Keep it on a mock file: the FLSA's definition of "employ" includes "to suffer or permit to work" (29 U.S.C.
203(g)), so a candidate doing real, usable work for the firm — drafting the brief you file — may be an employee owed wages, and a short exercise on a mock file is the safer design.
If you require a test, the EEOC's standard is that it be necessary and related to the job and not exclude people of a protected group or people with disabilities.
And an applicant with a disability who needs an accommodation to apply — a sign language interpreter is the EEOC's example — must receive it, so long as it does not cause significant difficulty or expense; say so in your invitation.
Tell every candidate up front that they should not share client-confidential detail in the room: ask about the kind of matter, not the parties.
Employment matters run on sensitive personnel facts, so how a candidate handles that instruction is itself a data point.
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 employment attorney experience?
Which side of the docket have you worked — employees or employers — and what stage of a matter did you personally own?
What to listen for: A strong answer names the side without hedging, then the stages: case evaluation, charge responses, discovery, mediation, counseling, trial support — and separates what they did from what the team did.
A candidate who claims both sides should be able to describe the move and what changed.
If your posting named a side, this is the first test of it.
Walk me through one agency charge or demand you handled from intake to resolution. What did you draft, what did you recommend, and how did it end?
What to listen for: Strong answers name the agency, the claim and their own documents — the position statement or charge response, the demand letter, the mediation brief — plus the recommendation they made and the outcome.
Plaintiff side, listen for how they evaluated the case before the firm took it; management side, for what they conceded and why.
Pick one detail and probe: a real matter gets more specific under pressure.
What have you drafted in the past month that a client, an agency or a court actually used?
What to listen for: A strong candidate names current, personally authored work product — handbook or policy sections, separation agreements, discovery, a brief — and can discuss the edits and pushback it received.
Weak answers point to documents a team produced years ago, or to nothing current at all.
This question also sets up the writing sample: ask for the document, redacted.
Tell me about advice you gave that the client did not want to hear — a discipline call, a separation, a case you recommended against pursuing. What did you say, and what happened?
What to listen for: Strong answers show advice as a process: the options, the risks, the recommendation in writing, and the client's decision respected.
Weak answers have no memory of giving unwelcome advice, or the story ends with the lawyer overruling the client.
You are listening for counsel as a discipline, not confidence as a personality.
Which slice of employment law is actually deepest on your current docket — discrimination, wage and hour, leave, handbook and policy work, separations — and which matters there were yours?
What to listen for: A strong answer is an honest depth map that matches the slice your firm is hiring, with named matters behind it.
A candidate who claims equal depth in every slice is describing a practice area, not a docket.
Hold the answer against the case mix you wrote into the job description, and decide day-one competence versus trainable on purpose.
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, anything in motion — offered without prompting; evasion about status or dates is its own finding.
Treat the answer as a claim to verify before the offer, not a credential to take from the resume.
Which behavioral questions test judgment, confidentiality and deadlines?
Employment matters run on sensitive personnel facts. Tell me about a time you had to keep a live matter quiet — from colleagues, other counsel, or everyone outside the team. What did you say, and to whom?
What to listen for: Strong answers decline to name parties even now, describe the system instead — need-to-know, documents handled deliberately, one spokesperson — and keep the telling dull.
The dangerous answer is the entertaining one: a candidate who walks you through a former client's harassment claim, complete with personalities, is showing you how they would treat yours.
Score discretion above storytelling.
Tell me about a client who wanted to act first — terminate the whole team, answer a charge themselves, reject a settlement you recommended. What did you do?
What to listen for: Strong answers lay out options and consequences, put the advice in writing where it mattered, and let the client decide — then describe what they did when the client chose the risk anyway.
Weak answers are war stories where the lawyer simply overrode the client, or where the advice never quite got documented.
The habit you are testing for is the paper trail.
Your first week here, a new matter comes in adverse to a client of your former firm. What happens next?
What to listen for: Strong answers flag it immediately, let the firm run its conflicts process, and do no work on the matter while the question is open — they do not self-clear.
A strong lateral also knows why the firm cares: under the ABA's Model Rule 1.10(a), one lawyer's conflict is imputed to every lawyer in the firm unless an exception applies, and the model rule's screening provision (1.10(a)(2)) keeps a lateral's former-client conflict out of the firm where the lawyer is timely screened, takes no part of that matter's fee, and the former client gets prompt written notice describing the screen.
Whether a state allows screening without the former client's consent differs — our research did not confirm it state by state, so check your state's version of Rule 1.10.
In employment practice the question lands close to home: a candidate's former client can be the employer on the other side of your active matter.
Walk me through a week when agency deadlines and court deadlines collided. What moved, and who did you tell?
What to listen for: Strong answers triage by consequence, escalate to the supervising attorney early, and seek extensions in time rather than miss them.
Weak answers amount to “I worked harder,” with no calendar system and nobody told.
Ask what they changed in their 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, tell whoever needed to know, and change the process so it cannot repeat.
Weak answers blame a paralegal, a vendor or the agency — or insist it has never happened.
A candidate who can describe a well-handled mistake is safer than one with no mistakes at all.
What practical exercise or test should an employment attorney complete?
Ask for a writing sample they personally drafted in the last year — a position statement, demand letter or separation agreement — 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, what the other side argued.
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 in this practice area, not an excuse to skip it — and how cleanly a candidate redacts personnel facts is a confidentiality test of its own.
Give a short, timed review of a disguised fact pattern or mock charge drawn from a matter like yours, ending in a recommendation.
What to listen for: Strong reviews spot the real issues rather than the obvious ones, structure the analysis before writing, hedge where the facts are thin, and land on a recommendation with next steps.
Weak reviews summarize law without applying it, or miss the issue the fact pattern was built around.
Keep the exercise identical for every candidate so the comparisons mean something.
Run a mock client call: a short scenario, you play the client — an employer weighing a discipline call, or an employee describing a possible claim — and 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 a counseling-heavy role, this exercise outweighs the rest of the interview.
Hand them a redacted position statement or demand letter from one of your own closed matters and ask for a critique.
What to listen for: Strong candidates read the posture correctly, name the gaps in the record and the argument the drafter dodged, and say what they would have done differently.
Weak candidates compliment the writing without engaging the strategy.
One conversation over a real document beats another round of questions.
What do strong vs weak answers sound like?
Stage ownership: “I drafted the position statement and second-chaired the mediation” — strong. “I worked on a lot of employment cases” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong version contains work you can verify — documents filed, arguments made, recommendations on record, outcomes — and the candidate goes 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 can’t discuss the parties — here is the kind of issue it raised” — strong. The detailed story about a well-known client’s workplace claim — weak, and disqualifying.
What to listen for: The strong answer protects the client and describes the behavior, not the story.
The weak answer is entertaining, which is exactly the problem: a candidate who talks through a former client's personnel disputes in your interview could talk about yours somewhere else.
Score charm lower than discretion.
Judgment: “I put the risks in writing and recommended against it; the client decided” — strong. “I told them not to, and then it blew up” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong answer shows counsel as a process that survives an unwelcome decision; the weak one relocates blame to the client after the fact.
Listen for what exists on paper: options given, risks stated, advice confirmed in writing.
In this practice, the paper trail is the difference between counseling and hindsight.
Case value: “I valued it on the record — the documents, the exposure, the weaknesses — and told the client where it was thin” — strong. “It settled for a great number” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong answer shows a valuation method and honesty about weaknesses; the weak one offers a result with no reasoning attached.
Press on the weaknesses — a candidate who cannot name what their own case lacked was not evaluating it.
This is the question that separates a case-builder from a case-passenger.
Deadlines: “I flagged the collision a week out and we moved the response” — strong. “I have never missed a deadline” — weak.
What to listen for: The strong answer shows a system — calendars, early warnings, escalation — plus one specific save.
The weak answer offers perfection, which a real docket of agency deadlines makes hard to believe; press gently, and the follow-up tells you which version you are hearing.
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 firms, and that coverage was outside our research, so confirm what applies to your firm.
The honest frame for this section: only a specific statute bans a question outright, and the EEOC's position is that 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, and pre-employment questions should be limited to what is essential to deciding whether a person is qualified.
Treat the flags below as risky rather than harmless.
One more reason this list matters here: you are interviewing a lawyer who may practice this very area, and a sloppy question can cost your firm credibility in the room.
Have employment counsel confirm the final list before your first interview.
- Salary history — “What did you make at your last firm?” The states our research read bar it: California's Labor Code 432.3 bars all employers, any size, from seeking an applicant's salary history — compensation and benefits, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent — and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions; New York's Labor Law 194-a bars relying on wage or salary history and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted, or seeking it from a current or former employer; Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bars screening applicants by salary history and requesting it as a condition of an interview or offer; Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bars seeking it from the candidate or a current or former employer; Connecticut bars asking about it unless the applicant volunteers it; and Virginia and Nevada ban seeking salary history as well. That is the map 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: California's law expressly allows an employer to ask about salary expectations for the position. New York allows history to be confirmed only after an offer with compensation, when the candidate responds by citing prior pay to support a higher number; Massachusetts allows confirmation only after voluntary disclosure or an offer with compensation.
- Medical questions before an offer — health conditions, past injuries, medications, how much sick leave someone took. The FTC and EEOC's joint background-check guidance says employers should not ask medical questions before a conditional job offer; before an offer, keep the questions on how the candidate would handle the job's actual demands.
- Questions about who the candidate is rather than the work — graduation years and other age probes, religion, family plans, who watches their children, citizenship or national origin, height and weight, financial information, or unemployed status (“why have you been out of work so long?”). The EEOC publishes separate guidance on pre-employment inquiries about race, height and weight, financial information, unemployed status, religious affiliation, citizenship, and marital status or number of children. Ask about the schedule, the travel and the caseload the role involves instead.
- Criminal history, asked casually or too early. Federally, the same FTC and EEOC guidance says it is generally not illegal 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. Timing is the state-law trap: California's Fair Chance Act bars employers with five or more employees from asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer, and an employer planning to deny the job over it must make an individualized assessment, notify the applicant in writing, and give at least five business days to respond before a final decision; New York City's Fair Chance Act makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer; and Illinois bars covered employers from asking until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview — or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer. Other states and cities have fair-chance rules we did not read, so confirm yours before the loop. For an attorney, the job-related question is licensure standing — and the verification 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 — the matters, the drafts, the bar status — so the next round of diligence has something concrete to check.
Interview answers are claims; the verification is yours to run.
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 — and some situations run longer, for instance for some federal contractors or once a charge is filed.
The questions a candidate asks you — and what they signal.
Leave real room at the end, because the questions are data too:
- "What does the docket actually look like — the agency charge volume, the advisory share, who staffs trials?" — a candidate pricing the reality of the job rather than the title. Have your honest mix ready, because the answer decides whether they accept the offer.
- "Who reviews my work, and how do matters get staffed?" — signals they have worked under supervision somewhere, good or bad. It is your cue to be honest about partner access and mentoring.
- "How do you run conflicts for new hires — do you screen?" — a candidate asking about your conflicts process is showing diligence, not doubt, and is asking how you will treat their client base. Answer it straight, and have the answer ready before the interview.
- "What is the pay range for this role?" — a reasonable question and, in places, one with a legal answer behind it: Nevada requires the employer to give an applicant the wage or salary range once they have completed an interview, and California requires the position's pay scale on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size. Have the range ready, consistent with the posting.
- "What would my first months look like?" — a candidate thinking about deliverables and review rather than the title. Have a concrete answer ready.
- 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, your exercise design and your pay-disclosure duties with employment counsel, your state labor agency and your state bar's ethics counsel before the first interview.
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