Ask the Right Questions: A GC’s Guide to Interviewing Legal Team Members
When hiring a legal team, job interviews are key to determining if a candidate will succeed. Hear from experienced general counsels on the best job interview questions for lawyers.
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During the hiring process, interviews provide a key window into potential new members of your legal team. During these face-to-face (or screen-to-screen) interactions, you can glean essential insights into a candidate’s experience and working style and see how well they’ll mesh with your company.
However, interviewing can be a time- and resource-intensive process, so it’s essential to get it right. Below, general counsels from The L Suite community share their best advice for creating an effective interview process, as well as some of the questions they use to determine if a candidate is the right fit.
Key Takeaways:
Involving the right people makes the interview process more effective and efficient. Include a diverse cross-section of representatives—both lawyers and non-lawyers—but only those who will work closely with the selected hire.
Use behavioral-based interview questions to identify candidates who demonstrate target behaviors and skills. Ensure you cover both legal experience and soft skills, like communication with cross-functional teams and working in a constantly changing environment.
Make sure your questions reflect what you’re looking for in the new legal hire. L Suite members’ typical questions range from asking how someone has solved an issue with limited budget to how they handle wild ideas from the product team.
If the candidate will manage others, ensure your interview includes questions on leadership and empowerment of others.
To effectively compare candidates and reduce bias, ensure you ask each interviewee the same set of questions.
Involve the Right People
Recruiters will likely conduct initial screenings to determine which candidates meet the general job requirements and should move on to a more involved interview. At that point, many companies then move on to a panel of interviews to allow a variety of team members — particularly those who will work closely with the selected hire — to meet and vet the candidates.
One L Suite member, who serves as both a GC and Chief People Officer, recommends involving two to four people, both other lawyers and cross-functional partners, on the panel. “Give lots of thought to who’s on the panel, and don’t include people who ding candidates for bad reasons,” she says. “Try to include culture champions, even if outside of the group.”
Ensure there is a clearly documented plan outlining which cross-functional team members will be included in the interview panel and which areas they will each focus on. Socialize this plan with the interview panel in advance and provide the opportunity for their comment. For example, if hiring for a legal privacy role, consider including at least one person from your security team, engineering team, product team, and marketing team. Each of these team members would focus on the considerations most relevant to them when working with this candidate.
Focus on What’s Important to Your Unique Company
The best interview questions hone in on what’s most important to the specific role and your company culture.
For instance, if you are a growth-minded start-up with a limited budget, you might ask, “Tell me about a time you solved a problem with no money.”
One GC at a SaaS company digs into candidates’ specific experience with SaaS agreements by asking about the first points they look at in agreements to determine whether it’s a reasonable starting place.
Another GC provides his questions 24 hours in advance and requests that the candidates take up to 90 minutes to prepare. His questions include a dispute question based on a real scenario and a product-related regulatory and trademark question based on “a totally bonkers idea” from his product development function.
It is important to consider key impacts and interactions the role will drive. For example, if the candidate will be regularly dealing with third parties, such as strategic partners or government regulators, it is important to focus questions on how that person handles those interactions. If the candidate will be building internal programs (in areas such as IP or privacy for example) it is important to ask focused questions on how that person builds with cross-functional internal stakeholders and helps drive effective change management.
Prioritize Behavioral-Based Questions
Behavioral interview questions — those phrased as “Tell me about a time when…” or “Give me an example of…” — assess a candidate’s ability to meet the job requirements and demonstrate target behaviors and skills based on performance in previous roles.
AnaLisa Valle, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Sphero, recommends first identifying desired competencies and skills for the role — which should be included in the job requirements portion of the job listing, she notes. This can be a mix of soft skills (i.e., communication style) and hard skills (i.e., experience with certain types of transactions).
“The questions are designed to gather specific examples of how the candidate has demonstrated the skills and behaviors in question,” she explains. The company should also define the expected or desired response — in other words, what would demonstrate that the candidate has the skills needed to succeed in the role.
Some of the behavioral interview questions L Suite members ask in interviews include:
Tell me about a time you had to give unwelcome advice to a client. How did you present it, and how did you ultimately resolve it?
Tell me about one of your influential mentors. Have you been a mentor to anyone else yet in your career or life outside of work?
Tell me about a mistake you made and how you dealt with it.
Imagine you have five tasks that are all urgent. How do you prioritize them?
Tell me about something you accomplished that required you to leave your comfort zone and develop a new proficiency.
It is important to learn the candidate’s approach to assessing risk and advising the business on risk-based decisions. Helpful questions include: 1. Tell me about a time you advised the business on a complex or thorny risk – how did you navigate the process and help the business make a decision? 2. Tell me about a time when the business did not take your advice on a recommendation to mitigate risk and how you navigated that.
If the candidate will be managing others on the team, it is important that you include questions on their approach to delegation of work and empowering the team. You want to ensure the candidate is values-aligned and can effectively lead others on your team.
Ask the Same Set of Questions
Beyond any resume-related questions, use a consistent set of interview questions to compare candidates directly. “I like to use the same format and questions for an initial interview for reasons of consistency and fairness,” says Corinna Mitchell, General Counsel at Symphony.com.
In an example grid available in The L Suite Braintrust, Mitchell provides groupings of questions that dig into candidates’ motivations (“What do you find appealing about an in-house role?”), working styles (“How would you describe your negotiating techniques?”), and legal and technical competence (“How would you ensure that we get value for our money when we engage third-party advisors?”).
Valle agrees. “This gives all candidates the same opportunities to showcase their experience and also helps to focus on skills and not gut feelings, which could be the result of biases — positive or negative,” she says.
Pay Attention to Non-Verbal Communication
Beyond assessing the substance of an interviewee’s answers, also consider their body language and enthusiasm.
One L Suite member, for instance, likes to ask candidates how challenging they found the questions and whether they enjoyed thinking about them. “The response and the body language as they respond is key,” he says. “If they hated it or were on the fence, that says a lot. The best candidates kick around ideas, debate, challenge my thinking, revise their answers, and have a good time doing it. These are the people I take to the business.”
Asking the right questions in a consistent manner will allow you to pinpoint the candidates who will be the right additions to your legal team. Want to brainstorm additional interview questions or strategies for hiring a legal team? L Suite members can generate meaningful discussions on our Braintrust platform. Apply for membership now.
About The L Suite
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For more information, visit lsuite.co.