a lesson learned

I have been so focused on getting to spring break that I haven't blogged about my summer job search. It's done, and I'm happy with my summer plans.

I now offer a helpful tip for any former software engineers doing law interviews:

These are not engineering interviews. There are no trick questions, no nasty coding questions, no "how many different ways can you cut this shape using only four lines" questions.

As you may have inferred, this was information that I did not know prior to my first legal interview.

So, approximately a month ago, I found myself sitting in front of an actual lawyer in an actual law firm. This alone was nerve-wracking enough (Am I really cut out to be a lawyer? Is this really what I want to do? Do I look like a dork?), but the wait for that hardball legal question made it worse.

The first lawyer went through a standard series of questions: "What sort of law do you want to practice?" "What classes have you enjoyed the most?" "Tell me about your former job."

I could tell he wasn't the hardballer, and relaxed into a friendly conversation with the man, who was quite nice.

"It's going to be the next one," I thought, and mentally walked through my list of potential hardball questions. In preparation for my interview, I had reviewed my outines and invented questions. I didn't think this firm would ask any criminal law questions, but I thought property might be a possibility, or perhaps standard civil procedure. Mind you, I did this during the height of moot court brief writing, a time when I had very little free time.

(Subtext: I am a big dork.)

Of course, it wasn't the next one. It wasn't any of them, because as everybody other than me knew, lawyers don't ask legal questions in interviews, at least not to 1L summer associates.

On the plus side, I left the interview thinking it had been one of the friendliest interviews of my life. I also provided my friends with an entire lunch hour's worth of laughs. "You thought what?"

That, at least, is always a good cause.