What should you ask a real estate attorney in an interview? Questions and what good answers sound like
An employer-side screening bank for partners and firm administrators hiring a real estate associate — skills questions with answer guides, a mock-file exercise, the questions that create legal risk, and what a candidate's own questions tell you.
The right questions to ask when hiring a real estate attorney have one job: establish whether the resume can actually paper a deal — draft and negotiate the purchase agreement, clear title, run diligence and take a closing to the table — on deadlines that do not move.
Below is an employer-side question bank: what to ask, what strong answers sound like, a practical exercise, and the questions that put your firm at legal risk.
Before the interview
Design the screen before you sit down.
Decide what the seat actually does — the duties in your posting are the test blueprint, and the real estate attorney job description template lists the day-one duties a real estate hire should be able to do.
Tie each question you ask to something that seat does weekly; anything else is interview theater.
Keep any exercise lawful and useful.
The EEOC's guidance says a test you require must be necessary and related to the job, and may not exclude people of a particular race, color, religion, sex or other protected group, or people with disabilities.
And under the Fair Labor Standards Act — which defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work" (29 U.S.C.
203(g)) — a candidate doing real, usable work for the firm (marking up the agreement on your live closing, for example) may be an employee owed wages, so a short exercise on a mock file is the safer design.
If an applicant with a disability needs an accommodation to apply for a job — a sign language interpreter, for example — the EEOC's guidance says you are required to provide it, so long as it does not cause the firm significant difficulty or expense.
One conflicts check belongs before anyone gets an offer.
Under ABA Model Rule 1.10(a), a conflict under Rules 1.7 or 1.9 of any one lawyer in a firm is imputed to all lawyers in the firm unless an exception applies — which is how a lateral's former clients become your firm's problem.
Under Model Rule 1.10(a)(2), a lateral's former-client conflict from a prior firm is not imputed if the lawyer is timely screened and apportioned no part of that matter's fee, the affected former client is promptly given written notice, and the screened lawyer and a partner provide certifications of compliance on the former client's written request and when screening ends — but states differ on non-consensual screening, and our research did not verify which states accept it; check your state's version of Rule 1.10 and confirm the mechanics with your state bar's ethics counsel.
Ask every candidate to flag matters that could need a screen (the question bank below includes one), then run your own conflicts check regardless.
Which skills questions reveal real real estate attorney experience?
Walk me through the last purchase-and-sale file you handled from contract to closing. What did you personally do at each stage?
What to listen for: A candidate with real seat time narrates the file in documents: drafting or negotiating the agreement, reviewing the title commitment and clearing exceptions, the diligence items, preparing closing documents, the table.
They are specific about their own hands versus the paralegal's and the partner's.
Vague "we closed a lot of deals" answers are the tell that you are interviewing a coordinator, not the lawyer who owned the file.
Which real estate documents have you drafted from scratch, and which have you only marked up on the firm's forms?
What to listen for: Ask for an inventory and separate drafting from reviewing: purchase agreements and riders, deeds, closing or settlement statements, leases, loan documents and closing instructions if they have done lender-side work.
A junior associate who says they draft from the firm's forms under review is giving you an honest answer you can plan training around; a candidate who claims original drafting on everything is describing a form library they once opened.
How do you review a title commitment, and what do you do with the exceptions it lists?
What to listen for: Strong answers describe a process, not a conclusion: they read every exception, sort the ones they can cure from the ones the client must accept, order payoff letters or other cures, talk to the title company about what can be removed, and put the rest in front of the client in plain language.
Listen for named exception types and an actual cure they have run.
"The title company handles that" is the answer that scares you — it is how an uncured lien reaches a closing.
What does your due diligence look like on a commercial acquisition, and how do you sequence it?
What to listen for: You want ordering, not a checklist recital: lease and estoppel review against the rent roll, zoning and permitting verification, the survey read against the title report, service contracts, environmental reports — and a view on which items drive the timeline and which can run in parallel.
Strong candidates also say what changes with the property type; a candidate who runs the identical diligence list on a single-tenant building and a shopping center has done one deal many times, not many deals once.
A closing is set for Friday and a title problem surfaces Wednesday. Walk me through the rest of the week.
What to listen for: This is the judgment question for a transactional practice.
The competent version: assess the exception and the cure options immediately, tell the client and the lender before the problem tells them, line up what the cure needs and who has to agree to a delay, and document the advice either way.
Watch for candidates whose first move is hope — that the title company will fix it, that nobody will notice.
Which clients have you represented — buyers, sellers, lenders, landlords, developers — and how does your work change for each?
What to listen for: Role clarity is the test.
Buyer-side work leans on diligence and contract negotiation; lender-side leans on loan packages, opinion letters and closing instructions; a landlord's lawyer papers form leases at a different rhythm.
A candidate who can articulate what flips when the client flips understands whose risk they are papering — and you can match the answer against the client mix in your posting.
How do you run the closing itself — documents, funds, the parties involved — and what happens after?
What to listen for: Listen for mechanics they can only know from having done it: a closing checklist everyone works from, the document set assembled and circulated ahead of the date, coordination with the lender, title company and brokers, care in how funds move and get reconciled, and follow-through after — recording, policy issuance, file closure.
"I show up and sign" means someone else was running the closing, and you should find out who before you hire them instead of you.
Which behavioral questions test judgment, confidentiality and deadlines?
Tell me about a deal that nearly fell apart. What did you do, and what happened?
What to listen for: You are listening for sequence and honesty: when they spotted the problem, who they told first, the options they laid out with prices attached, and an outcome they can state without spin.
The war story where the lawyer single-handedly saved everything deserves a follow-up — real rescues have a lender, a title officer and a client decision in them somewhere.
Describe a time you caught an error in a document someone else prepared — opposing counsel, the title company, your own paralegal.
What to listen for: Two things at once: the correction instinct (raised fast, fixed before the closing rather than papered over) and how they treated the person who made it.
A candidate who corrects without theatrics keeps the opposing relationships a deal practice runs on; a candidate whose every story features someone else's error is telling you where the next error will come from.
Tell me about the last time a client wanted to close over an issue you had flagged. What did you do?
What to listen for: Real estate files run into this regularly: the survey exception, the old lien, the repair credit.
Strong candidates explain the risk in writing, in plain language, get the client's decision documented, and can live with advice their client overrode.
The answers to worry about are the two extremes — the lawyer who simply refused and watched the deal die, and the one who quietly proceeded with no record of what the client was told.
Real estate files hold valuable information — acquisition plans, financing terms, a client's portfolio. Tell me about a time you protected deal information under pressure.
What to listen for: Concrete habits, not slogans: information kept on a need-to-know basis inside the firm, care with what goes into email versus a secure portal, no deal talk with brokers, other clients or at dinner parties, redaction instincts on shared documents.
A candidate who answers "we have software for that" has never thought about the threat model — and in a practice where a leaked acquisition plan can move a price, that is expensive innocence.
Tell me about a contract or closing deadline you nearly missed. What happened, and what changed in your system afterward?
What to listen for: The near-miss itself is not the problem; what you are testing is whether they built a system after — a critical-date calendar with buffers, contingency deadlines tracked from the day the contract is signed, a second check they do not run alone, early escalation to the client and the partner.
"I have never come close to missing one" is either a short career or a short memory.
If we hired you next month, which of your current and former matters would our firm need to check for conflicts or screen around?
What to listen for: You want specifics without confidentiality breaches: the property types and price bands they worked on, the lender and title-company relationships they would recuse themselves from, the courts and agencies where they have appeared.
Then run your own conflicts check regardless — the candidate's memory is a starting point, not the system.
What practical exercise or test should a real estate attorney complete?
The mock contract markup (ninety minutes). Hand the candidate a purchase-agreement excerpt on a mock file with planted defects — a term used but never defined, a closing date that falls inside a contingency window, an exception on the title report that the diligence file contradicts, a notice provision aimed at the wrong entity — and ask for a markup plus a half-page note on what they would raise with the other side, and in what order.
What to listen for: Coverage and ranking.
Strong candidates find the planted issues, lead with the ones that move the closing, and mark up with comments rather than rewriting the document around them.
The half-page note is the second test: a client letter a first-time homebuyer or a commercial investor could both follow.
Score the writing — real estate clients read prose, not a law-review draft.
The diligence triage (forty-five minutes). Give them a one-page fact pattern — a buyer under contract, an extract from the title commitment with its exceptions, a survey note, a financing deadline — and ask what they would order, what they would review first, and what they would tell the client today.
What to listen for: Sequencing and delegation.
Strong answers separate the curable from the acceptable, say who they would task with what (paralegal, title company, surveyor), and put the client communication first — before Friday, not after.
A candidate who starts by drafting a memo to the file has answered a different question.
A redacted writing sample from a real matter. Ask for a purchase agreement, lease or client letter they wrote, with client and property identifiers removed.
What to listen for: This tests two things at once: the writing itself — structure, precision on defined terms, whether a non-lawyer could follow it — and the redaction instinct.
A candidate who sends a sample with full names, property addresses and deal terms still in it is showing you how they will treat your clients' files.
The closing-week calendar clash (ten minutes). Read out four fictional collisions landing in the same week — a closing, a financing commitment that expires, a title cure waiting on a payoff letter, and a lease negotiation due — and ask how they triage.
What to listen for: Strong answers protect the date that kills the deal if it slips, get ahead of the parties who need notice of any change, and delegate what can be delegated.
Nothing quietly slides — the lease negotiation that absorbs the payoff-letter chase is how a real estate docket fills with angry lenders.
This is the cheapest ten minutes of screening you will run for a deadline-driven practice.
What do strong vs weak answers sound like?
"Why real estate law?"
What to listen for: Strong: a specific pull with evidence — they like that the work produces something tangible, a deal they can name that hooked them, comfort with a document-driven practice where precision decides outcomes — plus a clear-eyed view of the volume and the closing-day deadline rhythm.
Weak: "I like houses" or economics framed purely as safety — a motivation that can walk out the door the first time another practice pays better.
"Walk me through your last closing."
What to listen for: Strong: names the property type and the client, separates their documents from the team's, gives the outcome and the numbers, and can articulate one thing they would do differently.
Weak: a deal-blur where "we" did everything, no outcome, no reflection — you are hearing a spectator's story about someone else's closing.
"How do you keep a pipeline of closings organized?"
What to listen for: Strong: a named system — a closing checklist per file, critical dates calendared the day the contract is signed, a docketing check they do not run alone, a weekly scan of everything closing in the next thirty days.
Weak: "I just stay on top of it," which is how a contingency deadline becomes a malpractice letter.
"Tell me about a mistake you made in a matter."
What to listen for: Strong: a specific, real mistake, owned plainly, with the correction and the system change that followed.
Weak: "I hold myself to a high standard" or a humblebrag — a candidate who cannot produce a real mistake has either never owned one or never noticed one, and in a practice where errors surface in recorded documents and settled closings, both are expensive.
"A client asks whether they can skip an item of diligence to save money and close faster. What do you do?"
What to listen for: Strong: they explain the risk in plain language, price the shortcut honestly against what it protects, document whatever the client decides, and do not quietly absorb the risk into their own file.
Weak: a reflexive "we don't do that" with no counseling, or visible eagerness to drop the work — a lawyer who either hides from the conversation or pads the file later when the risk lands.
Which questions are illegal or risky to ask?
Risky: anything that maps to a protected trait — "When did you graduate from law school?" "Where are you from originally?" "What church do you attend?"
What to listen for: The EEOC's guidance says pre-employment questions should be limited to what is essential for determining whether a person is qualified, and that information about race, sex, national origin, age and religion is irrelevant to that decision.
Federal law does not clearly forbid every question touching those traits, but the EEOC notes such inquiries may be used as evidence of an employer's intent to discriminate unless the questions are justified by a business purpose — which is why this page calls them risky rather than illegal.
EEOC protection covers applicants, not just employees.
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 age-discrimination law (ADEA) covers private employers with 20 or more employees who worked at least 20 calendar weeks in that window, per the EEOC's coverage guidance; state thresholds differ and our research did not verify them — confirm yours with employment counsel.
Risky: "Are you married?" "Do you have kids?" "Who watches your children when a closing runs late?"
What to listen for: The trap: closings can run into evenings, so the question feels like scheduling logistics — but the EEOC publishes separate guidance flagging pre-employment inquiries about marital status and number of children, among other topics.
Ask about the work instead: evening and weekend closings, on-call coverage for lender deadlines, travel — the role's demands, not the parent's arrangements.
Banned by statute in the states our research covered: "What did you make at your last firm?"
What to listen for: The salary-history trap.
California Labor Code 432.3 bars any employer — any size — from seeking an applicant's salary history, including compensation and benefits, orally or in writing, and from relying on it in hiring or pay decisions.
New York Labor Law 194-a bars relying on wage or salary history and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed, considered, hired or promoted; under the same law an employer may confirm prior pay only after a compensation offer, when the applicant responds by citing it to support a higher number.
Illinois law (820 ILCS 112/10(b-5) and (b-10)) makes it unlawful to screen applicants by salary history, to request it as a condition of an interview or offer, or to seek it from a current or former employer.
Massachusetts (General Laws chapter 149, section 105A(c)(2)) bars seeking a prospective employee's wage or salary history from the candidate or a current or former employer, with confirmation only after voluntary disclosure or after an offer with compensation.
Connecticut bars asking about wage and salary history unless the applicant volunteers it, and Virginia and Nevada ban seeking salary history as well.
Those are the jurisdictions our research read — we did not compile the national list, and many other states and cities have their own rules, so treat every salary-history question as off-limits until employment counsel clears it.
The lawful alternative our research can name is California's: Labor Code 432.3(j) expressly lets you ask a candidate's salary expectation for the seat and consider salary history the candidate volunteers unprompted — outside California, confirm with employment counsel what you may ask.
Timed by fair-chance laws: "Have you ever been arrested or convicted of anything?"
What to listen for: The timing rules.
Asking about an applicant's background is generally not illegal under the FTC/EEOC's joint guidance, except for certain medical and genetic information restrictions — but state and city fair-chance laws control when you may ask about conviction history.
California's Fair Chance Act (Government Code 12952) bars employers with five or more employees from asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer, and a California employer planning to deny a job 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.
New York City's Fair Chance Act, part of the NYC Human Rights Law since October 27, 2015, makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider applicants' criminal history before a conditional offer.
Illinois's Job Opportunities for Qualified Applicants Act (820 ILCS 75/15) 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.
Those three jurisdictions are what our research read; we did not count the others, and other states and cities may have their own fair-chance rules — check yours before this question goes in your script.
Pre-offer medical: "Any health issues we should know about?"
What to listen for: The FTC/EEOC's guidance says employers should not ask medical questions before a conditional job offer.
If the concern is a travel-heavy or evening-heavy calendar, ask about the work instead ("this seat runs Saturday closings through the spring; does that schedule work for you?").
And if a candidate needs an accommodation to apply — an interpreter, for example — the EEOC's guidance treats providing it as required unless it causes the firm significant difficulty or expense.
Risky: "How is your credit? Do you own your own home or any investment property?"
What to listen for: The financial-information topic — one of the pre-employment inquiry subjects the EEOC publishes separate guidance on.
The instinct behind it — you want someone who understands property and is careful with money and client funds — is better tested by the exercise above and by your own background and reference process than by prying into a candidate's personal finances in the interview.
What should a real estate attorney candidate ask you, and what does it signal?
"What deal mix would I own — residential purchase and sale, commercial, lender-side, leasing — and which files are actually mine?"
What to listen for: a candidate screening you for the real work, not the title.
They have been hired into a "real estate" seat that turned out to be one narrow slice before, and they do not want to repeat the experience.
Answer with the same mix your posting states; a mismatch between the two surfaces at six months either way.
"Who supports the closing table — paralegals, title coordinators — and how is the work divided?"
What to listen for: operational realism from someone who has run closings inside a team and knows the difference between a lawyer and a one-person production line.
Have a concrete answer: who assembles the closing checklist, who chases payoff letters, what software the workflow runs on.
Vagueness here reads as a firm where the new hire inherits all of it.
"How do you handle conflicts when a former client's property or lender shows up on the other side?"
What to listen for: conflicts literacy — a candidate who has lived through a disqualification scare or a proper screen, and who is asking whether your firm runs conflicts from memory or from a system.
Answer it concretely: when the check runs, who clears conflicts, and how a screen works when one is needed.
This is also a fair question to turn around: ask what matters of theirs will need screening, and check their answer against your own conflicts process.
"Can you walk me through the pay range for this role?"
What to listen for: basic diligence, not aggression.
In some of the jurisdictions our research covered, you owe them the number: California employers must provide a position's pay scale to an applicant on reasonable request, regardless of firm size, and Nevada employers must give the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview.
Where the posting itself had to carry a range, the candidate already has it — asking whether your range is real is a fair question, and answering it plainly is part of the sell.
"Why is the seat open?"
What to listen for: healthy directness — and your answer sets their expectations.
Growth, a departure you can describe professionally, a partner retiring, a book of lender work that outgrew the team: answer it the way you would want your firm described in a reference call.
Defensiveness here costs you a strong candidate who had nothing but process questions left.
Red flags in a real estate attorney's interview answers
Judge patterns, not single answers.
One of these is worth a follow-up question; several should end the process.
- Confidentiality leaks dressed as war stories. A candidate who describes former clients' deals in identifying detail — names, properties, purchase prices, lender terms — is showing you your firm's future leak.
- The "we" blur. No document they can name that they drafted, no exception they personally cured, no closing they ran without a partner in the room: you may be interviewing a coordinator, and the salary you budgeted was for a lawyer.
- No numbers anywhere. Purchase prices, loan amounts, the closing volume they personally ran in a month — a practitioner who cannot approximate the numbers from their own files has not been running them.
- Contempt for the participants. "Residential clients are insane," "brokers are idiots" — a real estate practice runs on brokers, lenders, title officers and repeat clients, and this predicts the referral relationships you would be repairing.
- Title-review disdain. A closer who brags about skipping the exceptions page — the exception that bites is the one nobody read.
- Deadline denial. "I have never been at risk on a closing date," with no near-miss story and no system described: either a very short career or a very selective memory.
- Outcome promises in the exercise. "That exception is nothing, I would close right over it" — delivered before they have read the diligence file. The mock exercise exists precisely to catch this.
- Zero questions back. A candidate who reaches the end of a real estate interview with nothing to ask has not pictured doing the job.
After the interview
Score every candidate on the same sheet, within an hour of the interview while answers are fresh: deal ownership (did they run files or support them), drafting and diligence depth from the markup exercise, judgment under pressure from the behavioral set, confidentiality instincts, deadline systems, and client communication.
Compare notes only after everyone has scored independently — group-first scoring lets the strongest early impression pick the hire.
Keep what you produced.
The FTC/EEOC's background-check guidance tells private employers to keep personnel and hiring records — including applications from people they did not hire — for at least one year from when the record was made or the personnel action occurred, whichever is later — and longer periods apply to some federal contractors and once a charge is filed.
Keep your interview notes and exercise scores in the same file.
From question set to offer, this page is the screening step in how to hire a real estate attorney — and the real estate attorney jobs page shows what candidates see on the other side of your posting.
Employer information, not legal advice. Interview, testing, pay-disclosure, fair-chance and conflicts rules change and vary by state and city — have employment counsel review your interview script and exercises, and your state bar's ethics counsel confirm your conflicts and screening process, before you hire.
More hiring resources
Hiring a real estate attorney?
Post the seat with the deal mix, duties and pay range you actually offer — the candidates you just screened are reading your posting the same way you read their answers.