Coach
Jun 5th, 2010
Jun 5th, 2010
The Legal Job Interview: Winning the Law-Related Job in Today’s Market
- ISBN13: 9781427797964
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
As a result of dynamic changes in the current legal job market, most legal professionals today have to spend a substantial amount of time planning their careers while still in law school, refining those plans as their careers unfold, and keeping their eyes open for changes in the legal environment. With so many of their peers vying for the same positions, legal job candidates who understand the special art of interviewing for legal jobs will stand out from the crowd. This unique guide covers all the topics they need to know, including:
- What’s different about legal job interviewers
- What work needs to be done before scheduling and arriving at the interview
- The step-by-step process of a typical interview
- What to do (and not to do) to maximize the chance of getting that job offer
- Guidance for lunch, cocktail, or dinner interviews (whose purpose is often different form the in-office interview)
- Strategies for dealing with common legal job interview questions
- Using your interviewing skills after you’ve landed the job you want
The Legal Job Interview: Winning the Law-Related Job in Today’s Market
5 Responses to “The Legal Job Interview: Winning the Law-Related Job in Today’s Market”
Do us both a favor. Buy this book now!
This is a favor to you because I guarantee it will, at a minimum, materially improve your chances of getting that critical legal job you need in this difficult economic climate. Your purchase of this book is a favor for me because I know that if you purchase it, I have helped someone who is in a similar situation to where I was prior to my purchasing the book. And that’s a good feeling.
Prior to devouring this eminently readable book, I believed that the legal interview process was akin to a random one. In other words, my perspective as to whether I would get the offer and how I did in the interview seemed to have little relationship to whether I got the job. Sometimes I was sure I was a smash hit and no offer came. Other times I would berate myself after an interview and I would get a great offer. This book debunks the notion that the process is substantially random. It is not. It’s just that most candidates are clueless.
The author started his legal career in a very prestigious Wall Street law firm and has interviewed scores of candidates similarly situated to yourself. And his advice and conclusions are a stunning revelation that almost EVERYTHING you have been told about how to conduct yourself in a legal interview is false. Interviewing for a legal position is RADICALLY different than 95% of all other job interview contexts.
For example, the author proves how the most important rule in a legal interview is to SAY AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE! Keep your mouth shut!
One key reason for this is that most lawyers who will interview you are NOT trained interviewers, so they instead bring an extremely risk averse approach to interviewing candidates. The primary goal of most attorneys interviewing you for a position is to NOT make a big mistake and recommend hiring someone who will not work out for the firm. Therefore they revert to choosing low-risk, bland candidates over polished “salesmen” who continually try to showcase their talents. The lawyer interviewing you is your ADVERSARY and will seize upon ANY slight mistake you might make during your incessant self-promotion to strike you from the pool.
Your resume and your connections got you in the door. Let them speak for themselves. Never oversell yourself. Lawyers can smell a smarmy salesman a mile away and they generally reject them. It’s MUCH easier to reject a candidate than to choose one. Simply discuss the facts and the options between you and the interviewer as if you were in court calmly discussing the facts of a legal case to see if you are a good fit with the firm.
My review of this book unfortunately falls short in conveying what a life changing experience reading it was for me. Suffice it to say I now have the quiet, calm and deep confidence I need to ace most interviews. And in the process the author has managed to insert several hilarious anecdotes to illuminate his points succinctly.
And when you’re looking for a new job, it’s great to laugh. Good luck in your search.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m a 1L who needed a summer internship and typically does poorly in interviews. Well, *did* poorly until recently. Apparently now I am awesome.
Here’s the deal. When you watch movies, the one who gets the job is the one who stands out and does something spectacular. I’m thinking of an old E.R. episode where the doctor was interviewing candidate after candidate and every one of them said they wanted “to help people.” Finally, a candidate said he was “in it for the money,” and he got the job. I always thought that the stand-out behavior was how people get those really awesome jobs. I read a bunch of books from my school’s career center. None of them shattered that notion – in fact they nurtured it. Except Ennico’s. I feel like the wisdom in this book was the most effective, simple, rational, and also, entertaining. Not to say that the other books don’t have their place too, but this one is a must-read. By the way, if you go to [...] you can read up to 40 pages of this!
Ennico recommends nothing bizarre or uncomfortable. In fact, the more shy or reserved or nervous about interviews you are, the more you should read this because it will put you at ease.
In conclusion, I am proud to say that this one worked! AFTER I used the advice in this book, I got every single offer. This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. I interviewed at 4 places and got those 4 offers! Even with one interviewer that was notoriously difficult, I was able to handle the interview with ease and I got the offer! I would write more but I have to read Contracts, (the Consequences of Non-performance.) If you are reading this, good luck in your job search.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a book that helps handle real situations and problems with real (and effective!) solutions.
The most important thing to say about Ennico’s tips is that they are effective: I bought this book before a round of 4 interviews and I got 4 offers! (It’s not a big scale I know, but 100% success is the first time in my life..). Funnily, the book solved me also the problem of how to make a choice between different offers
I think that the reason of this success is one: this book made me considering issues and aspects of the job seeking process I’ve never taken care (or even had consciousness) before.
I am an Italian lawyer and I was seeking a lateral to a senior associate role in a new firm. There are no books focused on legal job interviews in Italian, and before buying this one I feared that cultural differences in the hiring process between US end Europe might render the insight of the book less useful, but that was NOT the case; Ennico’s tips are really “worldwide” useful!
This is why I feeled I had to put my review (sorry for my bad English sytntax but I am Italian…).
Rating: 5 / 5
Only read this book if you want to learn about the history of legal practice. It’s written by person about his own experiences, and there is very little actual advice. I was dissapointed about how little, if anything, it taught me about interviews.
Rating: 2 / 5
I bought this book together with another interviewing book (“Nail Your Law Job Interview”) as a gift for a friend’s law school graduation. She thought this book offered very little practical advice and was a long and boring read. She really liked the other book though and felt it was much more useful. Having reviewed both of these books myself, I tend to agree with her. This book reads more like a personal bio than a practical guide. I don’t think it’s worth the money. But I would recommend buying “Nail Your Law Job Interview” – it was a fun read.
Rating: 1 / 5