What should you ask an estate planning attorney in an interview? Questions and what good answers sound like
An employer-side question bank for law firms — drafting and intake questions, judgment and confidentiality probes, a practical exercise, and the questions to keep out of the room.
The estate planning attorney interview questions worth asking are the ones that make a candidate reconstruct real work: a plan they drafted document by document, a first meeting they ran with a family, a trust they had to fund after signing, a signing meeting they stopped.
This page is an employer-side question bank — skills, judgment, confidentiality, a practical exercise — with what strong and weak answers sound like, and the questions that are risky or barred.
Before the interview
Write the script before the first candidate sits down.
Decide what this hire must actually do — the duties in your estate planning attorney job description — and build each question around verifying one of those duties: drafting, client intake, trust funding, family communication, whichever ones your practice actually lives on.
An interview that drifts collects impressions, not evidence.
Design any exercise you plan to give with the EEOC's rules for required applicant tests in mind: the 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.
If a disabled applicant needs an accommodation to apply for the job — extra time on the exercise or a different format, for example — the firm must provide it unless it causes 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 documents for a live client of the firm may be an employee owed wages; a short exercise on a disguised family 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 estate planning attorney experience
Walk me through one client's complete plan you drafted: every instrument you prepared, and what each one was there to do.
What to listen for: A strong answer names the instruments and their jobs — the will, any trust, the powers of attorney, the health care directives, the beneficiary designations — and can say why each earned its place in that family's plan.
A weak answer recites a document package like a product menu, or cannot describe what still had to happen to a trust they drafted between signing and the client's death.
Where they take the follow-up — funding, titling, designations — tells you more than the first sentence does.
A couple sits down across from you for a first meeting. Walk me through that meeting, before any drafting starts.
What to listen for: Strong candidates run a goals meeting: what happens on incapacity, who raises the children, who inherits and who does not, prior marriages, how the assets are titled, and who the fiduciaries should be — and they probe the family dynamics politely but directly instead of leaving them to surface mid-drafting.
Weak candidates open with product choices or a fee quote, and never establish who the clients are when a married couple is sitting in the room together.
Tell me about a plan of yours that had a problem after signing — an unfunded trust, an asset that went somewhere the family did not expect, a document that no longer matched the client's life.
What to listen for: Strong answers treat signing as the middle of the engagement, not the end: they chased funding, coordinated with the client's financial advisor, owned the miss if the miss was theirs, and named the check they added afterward.
Weak answers cannot produce an example at all — which suggests nobody ever audited their work — or hand every failure to the client.
Explain a revocable living trust to a client who thinks trusts are only for wealthy families. Explain it to me, right now, in plain language.
What to listen for: This is the hire's core client skill, so listen to it live.
Strong candidates translate — what the trust does, what it does not do, what the client still has to do after signing — without jargon, check that the explanation actually landed, and are honest about where a trust adds cost without benefit.
Weak candidates retreat to definitions and statutes, oversell, or cannot adjust when you tell them you did not follow the explanation.
How do you keep a finished plan from going stale? What would your review process be inside this firm?
What to listen for: Strong candidates name concrete triggers — a move, a marriage or divorce, a new child, a business sale, a change in the law they read about — and say who owns the outreach: the firm or the client.
Weak candidates say clients should call when something changes, which leaves the plan staying current to the client's memory.
Behavioral questions that test judgment, confidentiality and deadlines
Tell me about a follow-through step in an estate planning matter that slipped on your watch — a funding task, a filing, a delivery to the client. What happened, and what did you change?
What to listen for: Strong answers flag the slip early, own it without deflection, and name the control they added: a funding checklist on every file, docketed follow-ups, written confirmation when a step completes.
Weak answers blame a paralegal or the client, minimize what slipped, or changed nothing.
The adult child of one of your clients calls and asks what they are inheriting. The client is your client, not them. What do you say?
What to listen for: Strong candidates give the caller nothing — not the plan's existence, not a hint at the terms — tell the caller that information comes from the client, and log the call for the client's file.
Weak candidates soften because the caller is family, or narrate a fascinating fact pattern they once handled.
Estate planning runs on family confidences; a candidate who shares someone else's with you will share yours.
Partway through a signing meeting you start to doubt the client is following what the documents actually do. What do you do — and what do you not do?
What to listen for: Strong candidates stop the signing, separate the meetings if a spouse is present, raise it with the supervising attorney, and document what they saw and when — some will tell you they would send the client for an independent evaluation rather than push through.
Weak candidates keep going because the family flew in for this, or treat the doubt as someone else's call.
You are listening for a lawyer who slows down when the stakes are highest.
A new client's matter might conflict with a client of the firm you are leaving. What happens on your side before you touch anything?
What to listen for: Strong candidates say the word “conflicts” unprompted: the check runs before they accept the matter or open a file, no client papers travel until it clears, and they know the mechanics — under the ABA's Model Rule 1.10(a)(2), a lateral lawyer's conflict from a prior firm is not imputed to the new firm if the lawyer is timely screened and takes no part of that matter's fee, though states differ on non-consensual screening, so they confirm their own state's version of the rule.
Weak candidates assume a conflict is the hiring firm's problem to catch.
Tell me about a time you had to tell a client that the plan they insisted on would not do what they thought it would do.
What to listen for: Strong answers deliver the message early, in plain language, put the advice and the client's decision in the file, and rebuild the plan around the actual goal without turning the fee conversation into a standoff.
Weak answers drafted what the client insisted on to avoid the conversation, or lectured until the client stopped listening.
What practical exercise should an estate planning attorney candidate complete?
Set one disguised family fact pattern — invented names, no real parties — and ask for a short intake memo: the client's goals as you understand them, the information still missing, the instruments you would prepare and why, and the two questions you would ask the family first.
What to listen for: A strong memo separates goals from assumptions, notices the complication buried in the fact pattern — a prior marriage, an estranged child, an asset that cannot simply be retitled — and asks before it assumes.
A weak memo lists documents like a menu and never asks the family anything.
Add a plain-language stage: hand them one instrument from the fact pattern and have them explain it to you while you play the client. No legal vocabulary allowed.
What to listen for: Strong candidates explain what the document does in the family's own words, check that you followed, and answer the cost question honestly.
Weak candidates read the recitals back to you, or explain to impress you instead of to inform the client.
Close with a fix-the-plan exercise: a short drafted provision that does not accomplish what the fact pattern says the family wants. Ask them to find the gap and say what they would change.
What to listen for: This is the closest a short exercise gets to the real job.
Strong candidates find the mismatch, explain it without condescension, and fix it with the smallest change that works; weak candidates admire the drafting.
If the role includes supervising a paralegal's first drafts, weight this stage heavily.
Which questions are illegal or risky to ask an estate planning attorney candidate?
Estate planning work runs on family, faith and money — so the rapport-building small talk an interviewer might make sits closest to the questions the EEOC treats as irrelevant to qualification.
The better frame is risky rather than 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, but such questions can be used as evidence of an intent to discriminate unless justified by 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 federal 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.
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 the rules our research verified; other states and cities may have their own rules on salary history and on criminal history.
- How old are you? When did you graduate from law school — and when did you pass the bar? — Age is on the EEOC's list of information irrelevant to deciding whether a person is qualified. If the seniority of the role matters, ask how long they have practiced estate planning.
- 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. Estate planning interviewers ask this to hear whether a candidate understands families; ask about their experience with family clients instead.
- What religion are you? Would you be comfortable with faith-based planning? — Religious affiliation is both on the EEOC's irrelevant-to-qualification list and the subject of its own inquiry guidance, and estate planning's faith-adjacent work — charitable gifts, for example — does not turn it into a business question. Describe your client base 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 practice serves clients in a second language, ask which languages the candidate works in, not where they are from.
- Do you have any health conditions or disabilities? 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 applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer. In every state, the FTC and EEOC's federal guidance also warns 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 the states our research verified. California bars all employers, of any size, 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 permits confirmation only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation; Nevada also bans seeking it. Ask about salary expectations instead, which California's statute expressly permits — 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 own finances — debts, garnishments, credit history, a past bankruptcy — are on the EEOC's published inquiry-guidance list, and the 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: drafting ownership, intake and client-communication skill, funding and follow-through, judgment on capacity and family conflict, confidentiality instincts, and the exercise.
One line per area beats a page of impressions.
Across the bank, strong answers share a shape: a real client situation, the candidate's own role in it, what went wrong or nearly did, and what they changed afterward.
Weak answers share a shape too: document-package recitation, generalities about loving families, work they cannot describe in detail, and no system that ever improved.
When finalists run close, weight the intake memo and the capacity and confidentiality answers over polish — being charming in an interview and being careful with a family's affairs are different skills.
Then flip the room: the questions a candidate asks you are evidence too.
Questions about the matters they would touch, who reviews their drafts, how intake is staffed, and what happens to a finished plan after signing signal someone thinking about the job you actually need done.
Expect pay questions, and answer them plainly: in California, an applicant can request the position's pay scale on reasonable request, whatever the firm's size, and in Nevada an employer must give the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview — 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 — not a line inside the application — 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 generally not itself illegal outside medical and genetic information restrictions — but the state and city salary-history and criminal-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 estate planning 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 estate planning 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.