Anna Hicks-Jaco: Hello, and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life law, school law, school admissions, a little bit of everything. I’m Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey Consulting’s president, and today, we are diving deep into law school admissions interviews. Basically, our goal is to give as much information and advice as we can so that you can go into your interviews knowing what to expect and how to prepare so that you can give your best possible interview.
As a little bit of background, in my 12+ years at Spivey Consulting, I’ve consulted with over 30 law schools, including schools across the spectrum and numerous top law schools, and in the course of those engagements, we’ve recommended that law schools launch new interview programs, advised on interview guidelines and rubrics, and had discussions with probably dozens of law school admissions officers about their interview programs. And over that time, I’ve seen how more and more law schools have added interviews to their processes and how law schools have been emphasizing their interview programs more and more. So, this is an important topic for law school applicants to be aware of and to learn about, and I’m excited to be doing this deep dive.
I am exceptionally fortunate to have with me today two of our amazing Spivey consultants, Paula Gluzman and Sam Parker. I’ll let them introduce themselves in just a moment, but here’s why I’m particularly thrilled to have these two individuals on this podcast today.
Sam is in her first cycle at Spivey Consulting, and she came to us directly from Harvard Law School, where she conducted thousands of admissions interviews. Doing those interviews and evaluating applicants’ performance in them was a huge part of her job, so this is a subject she has a ton of firsthand experience with, and I know she has so many insights to share and so much advice to give. Paula is in her eighth cycle with Spivey Consulting, so she’s had quite a bit of experience coaching applicants and helping them to perform their best in interviews at pretty much every law school that offers them. And, in addition to her admissions experience at UCLA Law and the University of Washington Law, she has experience in law school career services, so her interview knowledge and advice pertain not just to admissions but to the job search process, which, if you’ve listened to our recent episodes about how fast and how early that job search process now begins—and we’ll link that in the show notes—you know how important it is to already be thinking about the job search even before you step foot in law school.
So, Paula, Sam, welcome and thank you for being here. Would you both like to introduce yourselves briefly as well?
[2:18] Sam Parker: Of course! So, as Anna mentioned, I came straight from the Harvard Law School J.D. Admissions Office. In total, I interviewed over 1,200 applicants. The real number is probably closer to 1,300, but I interviewed for the regular cycle, I interviewed for our junior deferral program, and I interviewed people off the waitlist who I then represented in committee when we were making decisions, which was really fun. Definitely excited to share my insights from those experiences with our listeners today.
Paula Gluzman: And I’m Paula Gluzman. Welcome everyone, and Happy New Year. I’m particularly happy to do this topic today and right now in the early parts of January, because interviews are a lot like setting New Year’s resolutions in the sense that it allows you to be reflective, it allows you to think about who you are and where you’re going next, and in that 15- to 30-minute interview that you’re going to have with a law school, that’s exactly what they want to hear from you.
So, my experience, again, like Anna said, comes from handling the interview process at UCLA Law and through career services and as a career advisor, advising all of my applicants for the years that I was at law schools—all of my students, actually; I always have to change what I call them depending on the part of my career I was in—my law students for job interviews, whether it’s legal jobs, OCI interviews, or for their graduate positions as well.
Something else that I think gives me a little bit of perspective is, I was in your shoes. I was going through law school right at the beginning and during the Great Recession, and I will be very, very frank about the fact that I engaged in hundreds of my own interviews looking for legal jobs and working with people who were evaluating me and my performance. So, my advice comes from, not only from the chair of the person doing the interviewing, but with a lot of empathy as the interviewee back in the day.
Anna: Thank you both. I think your insights are going to be super, super valuable here. Let’s jump right in, because we have lots to cover.
[4:09] I want to start with what is a pretty basic question. Why do law schools conduct admissions interviews? I think there’s at least one reason here that applicants almost never think about, but that could make them feel a whole lot better to know, and then there are a bunch that I’m sure people could guess, but that I think could be helpful to just outline here as sort of a foundation for our discussion.
Sam: I sort of usually tell my clients there’s four main reasons that law schools interview—and Paula, feel free to jump in, disagree, agree with me here. I think number one is to assess employability. As we’ve discussed in many podcasts, going into law school, being able to interview for summer internships right away is hugely important, and law schools want to make sure that everyone they’re admitting is going to be able to represent themselves and the school well in interviews with potential employers. Right? And that’s something you’re going to have to do as early as 1L fall. So that’s huge. They want to make sure that you are able to articulate yourself in an interview and answer questions impromptu.
Number two is to assess your interest and fit for the school you’re interviewing with. Interviews are kind of a way to assess if a school can yield you. Are you actually going to come to this school if they give you an offer of admission? That’s hugely important to them. If a school gets a sense that you’re not genuinely invested in attending, if you’re not actually interested in going via your responses in the interview, they’re less likely to want to admit you after that interview. So it’s really important to convey your excitement and enthusiasm for wanting to attend a specific school and giving them concrete reasons why. They’re also trying to make sure that you’re a good fit for the school, right? And that if they admit you, you’re going to be able to thrive and succeed in the environment that they offer.
Third reason is that they’re trying to confirm your reason for getting a JD. Right? One of the most common questions, which we’ll talk about later, is why do you want to go to law school, and why do you want to get a law degree? Right, certainly, they’re going to ask that question and some form during your interview to make sure that what you submitted with your application is consistent with what you’re saying in the interview, and that there’s a cohesive narrative there. So that’s another important reason.
And then last, we’re trying to learn more about the applicant and kind of figure out how they’re going to engage in our community. Who are you going to be on our campus? Are you someone who’s going to spend a majority of your time pursuing pro bono opportunities and clinical work? Are you someone who’s going to be a leader in student organizations? Are you someone who’s going to bake cakes and host people at your house who are in your 1L section? Are you someone who’s going to be, you know, doing research with faculty? Like, who are you going to be on our campus? We’re trying to get a sense of where to place you so that we’re admitting a diverse class, and we know how you’re going to show up in our environment and contribute.
[6:36] Paula: I think that covers most of it. In my time in career services, I can’t tell you how many times we were working with students, and we kind of in the back of our head thought, “Oh my gosh, we wish maybe the student was interviewed,” right? Because even though their numbers and their accomplishments showed so much about them, there were other things that were going to make them a little bit harder for employability. And we had to work really hard with them on interview prep and getting all of their assessments done. And so, if an admissions office can help their career services office down the line in that timeline of that student going through law school and eventually getting into the workforce—and there’s so much less time for that now—if we can do that sort of work and think future-wise, right, for our school, for our alumni network, we are doing that at this stage in the game.
So it’s not just your accomplishments, it’s not just your grades—even though for admissions, that’s incredibly important—it’s your personality, it’s your fit, and it’s your qualifications for being sort of that well-rounded member of the legal profession in the future.
I always tell my clients, at the end of the day, if you can remember that the two main things an interview is trying to assess about you: Can you succeed in law school, in the legal profession, and what skill sets and experiences do you bring to the table? And then the second one is, as we talked about, fit. Are you likable? Are you going to be somebody who’s going to enrich your legal community, your law school class, the legal profession as a whole, or are you going to be somebody who’s going to disrupt that environment or that collegiality and community?
Every question that’s going to be asked is assessing under those two main umbrella topics. And so, if you can always think of a question that, at least in your head, answers, can I show my qualifications? Can I show my fit? Then you’re going to be in good shape with regards to being able to combine your own knowledge and your experience about yourself in an answer.
But at the end of the day, are you employable? What is your personality like, and is it going to be a good fit for our school? Do you know why you want to go to law school, and can you articulate it? And what is it about our school specifically that makes us believe you would accept our offer if we gave you one?
[8:41] Anna: Thank you both. That was very thorough, and I think that’s a great explanation of the ways that law schools are approaching these interviews in such a way that is helpful for you as an applicant to think about as you go into the interview and as you’re doing the interview.
My one sort of “secret” reason, that is maybe not so helpful substantively but that I like to tell people, because I don’t think applicants think about it—and this is something that you only hear from some schools; certainly, some schools see their interviews as very competitive, and, you know—there is certainly a set of schools, many of whom I have talked to, who also see interviews as an opportunity for the school to convince you to come. They see it as an opportunity to have some face time with you, to talk about their school, to brag about their school, to get you excited about them. So keep in mind that for some schools, that’s also another component. You know, they’re also trying to yield you, to court you.
But in terms of the ones that are most important for you, preparing for the interview, Paula and Sam, thank you both for covering that very thoroughly.
So here’s a question that I know the answer is going to be “it depends,” but let’s launch into it anyway, because I do think it’s important. How important are interviews in the law school admissions process relative to the other aspects of the application?
[9:45] Paula: I think that’s a great question, because again, it really does depend on the school, and it depends on what purpose the school is really prioritizing when they interview an applicant. So you have to think of the fact that, especially in this cycle and in the recent cycles, there is such an increase in applications that are coming in, without necessarily an increase in staff or administration to actually go through all of these applications, which is maybe why we’re seeing a little bit of a slower response. So if a school is continuing to interview, that means it’s really important for them. They are taking time and capital and energy to be able to evaluate you and to see what you have to offer in that component of the application.
I wouldn’t say it’s more important than any other component in the application, but it definitely is a reinforcement of them wanting to see you, to actually hear your voice, to see how you answer responses, to kind of put a face to a name so they can assess a little bit more than what they might just be able to see in a written application.
So technically, for some schools, it’s a prerequisite. You cannot be admitted unless you are interviewed. They will not accept anybody until they have interviewed them first.
For other schools, they offer it to everybody, meaning it’s optional, but anyone who has a chance to take the opportunity to interview should. And pro tip, if you get anything from this, if there is an optional interview, take it, do it, show the initiative and the interest and the ability to not be scared to show your face, and to answer questions about the interview or about the school.
There are some schools that it’s discretionary, and they will invite you to interview because they want to know more about you, or they need more information before they can offer you a seat or make a decision on whether to accept you or not.
Within the category of the schools that are discretionary, meaning they’re invite-only, it depends on the school, and it really depends on the cycle, whether it is a good sign that you are in strong consideration for going to the school or whether there is something in the application that they need clarification on and so it’s very neutral on whether they’re moving forward or not. And then for other schools, it’s a very good sign, because again, they’re being very judicious with their resources as to who they’re interviewing, and it’s somebody that they’re going to be very, very serious about and just need the confirmation through the interview process.
So at the end of the day, it can help you; sometimes it can harm you if you’re not prepared or if you don’t take it seriously. But most of the time, it can just be a neutral component like any other component in the application process that they need to check off of their list in making their assessment and evaluation of your candidacy.
[12:15] Sam: I’ll say, you know, in my experience at Harvard Law School, we often interviewed a lot of people that we were on the fence about. We were like, “We see good potential here, but we’re just not sure. Let’s give them the chance to interview to learn more about them. Maybe they’ll really impress us and that’ll help us lean towards admit, or maybe it’ll go the other way and that’ll make it easier for us to make our decision one way or the other.” So that’s something to keep in mind is, there’s a lot of people who are on the fence who are interviewed.
And then, like Paula said, sometimes the interviews are net neutral. The interview is one more data point that an admissions team is considering before they make a decision. It is not more or less important than any other component that you’ve already submitted, including your essays, your resume. At HLS, we admitted lots of candidates who had just okay or average interviews because of the rest of their application was really strong, right? Conversely, we had applicants who had amazing interviews who didn’t get admitted because the rest of their application just didn’t quite match up to that interview.
So all that to say, the interview’s one component. You want to do the best that you possibly can, but it’s not necessarily going to make or break your decision.
Anna: Yeah. Thank you for that. One thing I’ll note, we’ve been talking about how it depends on the school. I think also, certainly, as you’ve both been talking about, it depends on the applicant also. You could be going into an interview, and the school is pretty sure that they’re going to admit you, and you just have to not bomb it in order to get admitted. Or you could be going in and, you know, they could be really, really on the fence with you as Sam was talking about, and it could be hugely important. And it really does depend on a lot of factors.
One thing I’ll note is that at some schools, it is also pretty much just a litmus test, whether you do it or not. And, you know, they’ll probably watch it as they read your application, maybe on 2x speed. Just make sure, you know, vibe check everything’s okay. But you shouldn’t go into an interview thinking of it that way, right? Like, you should go into interviews thinking, “Okay, I’m going to do my absolute best, and I’m going to prepare for this as if it is going to be really important for my application,” because it always might be.
Let’s talk about interview types and formats. What are the different types of interviews that law schools offer, and how do they differ from one another?
[14:15] Paula: Yeah, so interviews have gotten very creative, right? Back in the day, it was an in-person interview or a phone interview, which is a little bit more pressure, right, because it’s in-person and it’s real-time. But again, because schools are very, very busy and very, very judicious with their time, the formats have really expanded. So you have, of course, in-person interviews. Sometimes there are phone interviews. Most of the time now you can do them virtually, either through Zoom or Skype, depending on what the school is using. So it’s still one-on-one and in real time, but through screens, which, of course, is more convenient.
And then a lot of schools now are using a recorded computer system to do that. So one of the most popular ones is a Kira interview, where you are given a certain amount of time to get the question, certain amount of seconds to prepare your response, and then a certain amount of time to record your question before it loops into the next one. So there’s a little bit of pressure there, because you’re recording yourself and you don’t get the feedback of the person who is interviewing you in real time, but it’s a very efficient way to do that. And then I will note that not only are there verbal responses where you’re actually talking into a camera, but there can be a written response component where you’re given a number, amount of minutes to answer in writing a written response to a question that they have.
There are also group interviews. So there are a few schools that will actually bring you into a group of say, 8 to 10 applicants at the same time and will ask you various questions, typically around hypotheticals, but sometimes they are personal questions about yourself. And I think for that, that’s a little bit of a different thing to prepare for, so do keep in mind that there are group interviews that are out there.
As far as who conducts the interviews, you can be interviewed by an admissions officer, like Sam was at Harvard. Sometimes, there are faculty committees or other law school administrators that a school will pull in, so they’ll pull in an advisor from career services. I had the opportunity to do that at a couple of times. They’ll bring in alumni who are very gung-ho and involved in the school and will ask them to interview applicants. And then, of course, some schools will actually hire outside consultants to be a part of that process. There are certain times—and depending on the student and depending if you’re applying to a scholarship or anything like that—where there could be students a part of the interview committee as well. So the gamut of who you will be interviewed by, they’re all affiliated with the school in some form or manner, but it’s not always an admissions officer who will be making the decision. Sometimes, these people who are going to be taking notes and bringing it back to the decision maker.
Anna: So, we’re primarily going to be focused on interviews where it is just you, it’s not a group interview, and where it’s for admission as opposed to for scholarships. And most of the advice that we’ll talk about will be applicable to, if you’re talking face-to-face with an admissions officer, if you’re talking to an alum, if you are talking to a computer screen and no one is there. But I wanted to get, if one or both of you could provide maybe just some like quick tips for group interviews specifically, because those are less common, and we’re not really going to be focused on that.
[17:05] Sam: Group interviews are really interesting, right? Because they’re going to be assessing you alongside all these other applicants. Right, it might be you and 14 other people. They’re trying to assess not only your qualifications, how you engage in person, how you conduct yourself, but they’re also trying to assess how you play well with others and how you engage with others.
So for group interviews, it’s really important to step up and step back. Right? You want to respond when you’re called on. Potentially you’ll have an opportunity to raise your hand and volunteer a response, but you don’t want to take up too much space and talk over other people such that the school’s like, “I don’t know, this person seems like they’re a little bit full of themselves, or they don’t know how to edit themselves,” right? But you also don’t want to take too much of a back seat. You don’t want to, at the end of the interview, have the team say, “We really didn’t hear from this applicant. I didn’t really get a good sense of how they’re going to engage in our community. They were really quiet. They didn’t really say much when we did call on them.” So you kind of want to find that nice middle ground, that balance of providing responses that are professional and well thought out when you’re called on, or maybe you volunteer them, but you don’t want to hide in the background either, right? So the group interviews are really interesting.
Paula: Two things that I’ll add to this is, be aware of the fact that maybe the answer that you have will be responded by or given by somebody who speaks before you. And so, as you are preparing for a group interview, think of other things that you might say than what maybe your first response would be, because it’s a wonderful opportunity for you to not physically show on your face a freak out of, “Oh my gosh, that person just said what I was going to say. What am I going to say? What am I going to say? Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh.” Instead, you can have a couple of backup follow-ups to what you would’ve said if you had the chance to speak again. So prepare a couple of follow-up ideas or maybe some other types of reasoning or elevated types of ideas or analysis on an answer that you would normally give.
The other thing that I think is important about the component of playing well with others is, show that you are confident enough to be in a room with other people who are, at the end of the day, competing for the same thing that you are. And a way that you can do that is being responsive to what other folks say. So if somebody just says something and you agree, you can say something like, “That was exactly what I was going to say. That’s a great answer that my colleague just said. I would add this.” Or if you disagree with what somebody says, you don’t want to be the jerk who sort of just calls somebody out as wrong. But instead, you can say something like, “I was hearing what this person said,” or, “I’m thinking this instead.” So you’re still asserting a different response, but you’re not making anybody feel bad, or you making a judgment on whether they’re wrong or not.
And again, that just shows an emotional maturity and a confidence in your professionalism and allows the people who are evaluating you for the substance of what you’re saying, but also for the way that you play well with others. Those are a few things that I would keep in mind as you’re engaging in a group with other people.
[19:59] Anna: Excellent advice, both of you. Thank you. So we talked about this a little bit when we were talking about the purposes of law school interviews, but what sorts of traits and qualities on a general level should applicants be trying to demonstrate through their interviews?
Sam: We’ve touched on a few of these, but I wanted to kind of re-circle on some of these, because they’re hugely important in the interview if you want to make a good impression.
Number one is being positive. I have interviewed lots of applicants in the past who start off their interview being overly critical or negative, or mentioning a lot of things that sort of create this tone that’s a little bit like, “Oh, this person seems a little bit like a Debbie Downer, or someone who might be overly critical of our school or their experience here if we admitted them.” So being really positive is important and putting a positive spin on your responses, even if you’re talking about something that didn’t go well or a time you failed or something that didn’t go your way. Being really enthusiastic and having good energy is hugely important. That’s actually something we evaluated applicants on at Harvard is, what was their energy like in the interview? Were they enthusiastic about this opportunity to interview with us and to potentially come to our school? People who were more muted or we didn’t get a good sense of kind of their vibe, if that makes sense, had a harder time getting in, because they were a little bit more forgettable, right?
Confidence is hugely important, but you don’t want to be arrogant or overly confident. We talked about employability, but a huge word we used to use a lot when we described interviewees, right, is professionalism. How do you compose yourself and conduct yourself in an interview? Are you flipping your hair a lot? Are you, like, rubbing your nose? Are you bobbing your head? Or are you, like, able to compose yourself and articulate your ideas in a way that people can understand, that’s easy to listen to? Or are you speeding up your responses and talking really fast, such that it’s hard to actually grasp what you’re saying? Or maybe you’re talking too quiet and it’s actually hard to understand. So a lot of it, too, is just professionalism. Can you conduct yourself in a way that shows that you’re ready for this next professional step?
Sense of purpose is something that’s usually important. That’s something we also used to look for in interviews at HLS. It’s not enough to say, “I really like reading and writing, and I really want to do something good with my career, and so law is a great fit,” right? Interviewers and schools are looking for a deeper sense of purpose on why you want to get a JD. So that’s something that’s important to convey.
Similar thing is depth. I’ll talk about this a little bit later, but some applicants will give really surface-level answers that are vague, they don’t give a lot of detail, they don’t allow you to get to know them fully, they’re very average responses. And again, it’s hard to stand out and impress someone in an interview if you’re not providing depth and concrete examples and evidence to back up what you’re saying about yourself and the skills that you’re going to bring to the table.
And then generally speaking, it’s really important that you’re conveying an understanding of law school, an understanding of the legal profession and legal work. I’ve interviewed a lot of people in the past who sometimes will indicate that they don’t actually understand how law school classes are taught. They don’t understand legal work; they don’t actually know what it entails. Their only reference is TV shows like Suits or the movie Legally Blonde. Maybe they don’t understand even the types of legal jobs that are available or what you can do with a JD. Those sometimes indicate that someone’s not ready for law school, so it’s important that you’re conveying a basic understanding of these things, right? And a lot of people fail to do that.
Humility is important. It’s kind of an odd thing to think about for an interview, because it is a chance to advocate for yourself and show your strengths, but you want to it in a way that conveys humility and that you’re open-minded and willing to take other people’s feedback and work well with others.
And then community engagement. Right? They’re trying to see, who is this person going to be in my community? So they’re looking for kind, giving people who think about others, who are there to support other people, build up other people, who are going to be a positive light on campus and give back to the community.
That was a lot, but they’re all really important.
Anna: Every single one important.
[23:57] Paula: Well, and if I can add in a couple of ways to think about some of these and how to convey them in interviews is, the ability to show confidence, to show positivity, to show enthusiasm, to even show humility, is to really think about the concept of “growth mindset,” and to talk about how, even in failures or in mistakes or in negative things that could have occurred in your life, there’s always a way to think about what you can grow from and learn from that mistake, rather than sticking to something just being a negative period, figure out a way to show what you’ve learned from that experience, or maybe how you were fortunate to have experienced what you have, because it taught you X, Y, Z moving forward.
Focus on the effort and the work that you did to get to a success, rather than just speaking about the success. Because again, that shows an ability to grow and to improve, and that you’re really focusing on the progress, not necessarily the perfection of a specific topic.
And then generally just showing initiative-taking, I think, is going to be important in anything that you talk about.
And then one thing to clarify, too, enthusiasm and good energy does not mean that you need to, like, hyper-caffeinate and be like bouncing off the walls in your chair, um, for the interview, because that could actually have a negative effect that can sometimes spook or scare an interviewer. But we’re more talking about just a warmth, a general calmness and confidence. Smile during your interview. Make eye contact during the interview. And just be thoughtful and responsive, and that should really do the trick. We are not advocating to, you know, drink five Red Bulls before your interview so your energy is, like, through the roof. That is bad advice. Don’t do that.
Sam: Yes, please do not drink or take something for the first time before an interview because you’re trying to up your energy levels. That will probably backfire in a way that you don’t want. Thank you for the clarification, Paula.
Paula: It was probably not needed, but all I could picture is somebody literally, like, bouncing in their seat during an interview. It’ll be memorable, but maybe not in the best way.
Anna: Maybe not in a great way.
[26:01] So we’ve been talking about these things and about interview advice at a relatively general level so far. I’d like to start to delve into some specifics. What are the specific types of questions that you are actually going to potentially be asked in these interviews? And it very much does vary from school to school, certainly, so we’re going to try to talk at a broader level, but also give some examples within those categories.
One thing I want to note is that we do actually have a whole podcast episode all about this with Karen Buttenbaum, who also was at Harvard Law School, and she helped start their interview program. So she also knows a ton about this, and I encourage you to go listen to that one as well. We’re going to link it in the show notes.
I’ll quickly go over her five categories, but I want to note that, even in that episode, she talks about how these are by no means the only way that you could look at interview categories; these are not even necessarily how any law school or any interviewer are thinking about the categories, but she’s found it to be a helpful way to talk about the categories with applicants who are preparing for interviews.
So, Karen’s five categories are number one, icebreaker questions. Number two, why law? Number three, why this specific law school? Your interest in the specific law school where you’re interviewing. Number four, how well do you know yourself? And that is a really broad one. And then number five, how well do you get along with others? And that’s another one that can be really broad.
So let’s talk about these types of interview questions and some specific interview questions in some other terms, so people can maybe get another angle on how it might be helpful to think about it in another way.
[27:25] Sam: I think Karen’s categories are still super on point. Generally speaking, this is what we did at HLS, although we had different names for them. I’ll also note that for interviews, at least our process was very individualized, and we would read someone’s entire application before preparing interview questions for that person and make sure our questions were bespoke to the candidate we were talking to. So they did vary quite a bit depending on the person. But in general, there were categories that we were instructed to ask questions within.
The first were legal interests. Right? Which goes back to Karen’s “why law.” Some specific questions we used to ask in that category were things like, “What are your short- and long-term goals after graduating from law school?” “At this point in time, what are some of your legal interest areas?” “Why do you want to go to law school?” or, “What’s motivating your interest in wanting to get a JD?”
Another category that we had to ask a question were behavioral and experiential questions. So questions like, “Can you talk about a humbling experience that you’ve had?” or, “Can you talk about a time you failed and how you responded?” Right? We’re trying to see how someone can react to a situational question and how they would respond, and how they might actually present themselves in our community.
Another category we had was professional or academic experience. So for someone who was still in undergrad, we often asked, you know, “What’s something that you’re most proud of from college?” or, “Can you tell me more about the thesis that you’re writing that we saw on your resume?” Something like that. For someone who had been working, we would typically ask something to the effect of, you know, “What’s one of your biggest professional achievements that you’ve had to date?” or, “What’s been one of your biggest takeaways from the current role that you’re in?” “Can you describe a time where you were frustrated at work, and what did you do about it?” Those are some of the types of questions we would ask candidates in that category.
Of course, we asked a question about their interest in our school. Right? And there were different ways of doing that. A more unexpected one that my colleagues liked to ask when I was there is, “What are you looking for in a law school?” Right? That was sort of a subtle way to ask, “What are you looking for, and does it match what we offer at Harvard Law School?” We also sometimes were more straightforward; we would say, “Can you tell us some of the pros and cons of attending Harvard Law School?” or, “What excites you about attending our school?”
Last couple categories, personal qualities. You know, Karen talks about “how well do you know yourself?” We would ask questions like, “What’s one thing you’ve learned about yourself over the last year?” Which kind of goes back to Paula’s New Year’s resolutions. Good time to reflect this time of year. We would ask things like, “How would your current manager or your friends describe you in three words?” We’re trying to get a sense of, is this person self-aware? Can they articulately convey their strengths or the things, their values, things that they’re good at? Do they know themselves?
And then the last category was always fun. If we had time, we might ask about an interest on someone’s resume. If they, you know, mentioned that Beyonce is their favorite musical artist, we might ask, “What’s your favorite Beyonce song?” or something like that. We also might ask, “What do you like to do for fun?” Right, like, “What do you do in your free time that isn’t anywhere on your application?” or, “How do you relax?” Things like that were always kind of fun to ask at the end of an interview.
Anna: Paula, do you have any other sort of examples of these types of questions that might be helpful for applicants to sort of have in mind as they listen to the rest of this episode?
[30:29] Paula: Yeah, absolutely. So one that is, I think that falls more into the icebreaker category, but pretty much any interview that is a live interview, you will be asked some sort of a, “So tell me about yourself?” or “How are you doing today?” or just a simple question to sort of get you into the framework of talking and creating an opportunity to engage in this organic conversation. And so, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the term “the elevator pitch,” or creating an infomercial about yourself, but think about how you would answer the question of, “Tell me about yourself.” Everybody, most people who are applying to law school have at least a decade or two under their belt of life, and it’s really hard to kind of think about, “How am I going to answer the question about who am I or ‘tell me about yourself’ in such a short amount of time?” So, really focus it towards “why law school,” right? Because that might be a nice entree or segue into that question. And create a little bit of ways that you can tell them a little bit about your past, a little bit about your current situation and where you are and how maybe that led you to wanting to pursue law or law school, talk a little bit about what you’re looking for and what you think is going to be a part of your future, and then I think it’s a nice touch to add at the end, saying, “And that’s why I’m so excited and fortunate to be in this interview with you today. That’s why I’m so excited to talk about Harvard Law or about whatever law school with you today.” So don’t underestimate the fact that you might get that informational interview, tell me about yourself, infomercial question.
A couple of other ones that I’ll mention, too, is some schools will, on purpose, ask you questions specifically about your experiences to see how well you can talk about yourself and your background. And so they’ll be very, very specific about some entry into your resume or something that you had mentioned in your academic career and history. So be able to really talk about what it is that you’ve done, and don’t be the interviewee who was caught off-guard, not necessarily knowing how to answer a question about your own life and your own questions.
And then lastly, they might ask you a question to stump you. And so, that is for the main reason of just seeing how you handle confrontation or how you handle answering a question that you have to improvise, because that’s what you’ll be doing in law school. That’s what you’ll be doing during the Socratic method. And so there are ways to think about how to answer questions like that as well. But otherwise, those categories, I think, are really on point. And a school would be sort of doing themselves a disservice if they didn’t ask why law, who are you, and what qualifications and fit do you bring to the table.
Anna: Thank you, Paula. That’s helpful. And I think it’s probably a good idea for everybody applying to law school, and maybe just everybody everybody, to think about their sort of elevator pitch generally. You know, it could come up in an interview, and as you were saying, Paula, like, you don’t want to be caught off guard about that and not knowing what you want to say about yourself and maybe communicating things that don’t really matter and that you realize afterward like, “Oh, I don’t know why I said that.” It’s a good idea to have those sort of bullet points. And then you also, you never know when you’re going to meet someone who is in some great legal position that you’d be really interested in.
Paula: So true.
Anna: Right? There are lots of opportunities, and networking is really important in law school and in the job search process, and being able to articulate yourself and your goals in that sort of way, just sort of a quick, like, “Here are some things about me,” is really important and can be super, super valuable. So I’m glad you brought that up, and thank you both.
[33:41] So Paula, you started to talk about this a little bit when you were talking about questions that admissions officers might ask basically to stump you. What are some of the trickiest questions you’ve come across that tend to trip up many applicants?
Paula: One of them, and as simple as it sounds, is why law? You know, why law for you? Why are you pursuing a legal education? And the undertone of that is—as opposed to, why are you not pursuing being a social worker or an accountant or a doctor or a marketing executive, right? And so if your answer is not sort of succinct, if it does not match or align with how you articulated your “why law” in your original application, that could be a huge disservice to you, because it’s going to confuse the interviewer about your intentions and how self-determined you are.
So you don’t want to be too surface level, you don’t want to ramble on and go on in tangents, but really think for yourself, what is sort of the stepping stones in my life that have brought me to want to go into law? And if you can specifically say what kind of law and articulate that to a connection to your background experiences, education, that’s a great way of answering it. So really prepare that for yourself before you’re asked it, because you’re guaranteed to be asked in some form or way, why law school, why law, why this school?
Another thing that comes up is, “Tell me about a time that you changed your mind.” And Sam, do you want to talk a little bit more about this? Because I know that this has come up for you at Harvard.
Sam: Yeah, this was a big one people failed a lot last year, which I was surprised by. Because some schools ask this prompt for their essays. Right? So I thought people would be more prepared. But you know, there were some questions like, “Tell me about a time you changed your mind.” “Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone and how you navigated that.” People really struggled with these, I think, because there’s a little bit of fear of not wanting to own up to, “I was wrong in this instance.” And I think there’s some fear of disclosing that in an interview, but that’s what they’re looking for. Schools want you to show that you are open-minded enough to take in new information, to listen to new perspectives, to be challenged on your own ideas and opinions, reflect on that new information, and potentially come out of it with a different way of thinking. Is that always going to happen? No. Do schools expect you to change your mind all the time on things you think? Absolutely not. But they want to know that you have the capacity to do that.
So you want to provide a specific example of a time where maybe you did hear a new perspective, or someone asked you a question you’d never thought of, or you read a new article or book that introduced a new theory or idea you had never considered. You reflected on it, and after reflecting, maybe you did change your mind, or you decided the way you thought about something differed. So I think that’s a really important skill that you need to be able to convey, and it’s okay to admit, “I was wrong about this.”
I’ll be really honest. I’ll give a personal example, right? I went into college not believing in affirmative action. I grew up in a pretty conservative family that did not believe in the value of affirmative action. So when I got to college, I didn’t believe in it. And I took a class where I was exposed to a very different perspective, a professor who was very pro-affirmative action, we read a lot of articles on it, and I actually ended up crying in this class because I was so distraught that I’d only heard one side of the story. And after a lot of reflection, I ended up changing my mind, going into admissions, and being very pro-affirmative action. That was a huge transformation for me. That was big time I changed my mind, right? Schools just want to see that you do have that capacity. So don’t be afraid to talk about that and show your growth over time.
Paula: The one thing I’ll add to that, too, is, pay attention to what is being asked, because maybe you saw some list of potential questions, and it might sound like something that you prepared an answer for, and that’s not what they’re asking. Right? And so make sure that you are doing the best that you can to really listen during, be present, and listen to the interview question. And if you don’t have something top of mind, take the time to say something like, “Oh, that’s a really interesting question. I need a second to think about that.” And if you need a second, you are human, take the second, and give yourself an opportunity to come up with something quick—right, don’t take your sweet time—but it’s better than getting wide-eyed and freezing because the canned answer that you prepared for in your hours of preparation does not fit the mold of what they’re asking.
The other thing that I will say, too, with regards to these types of questions is, I kind of have a formula for anything that’s kind of questioning you or whether you failed or whether you changed your mind. Schools really want to see that you can take accountability and responsibility for something that has changed for you, or something that was negative or a conflict. So my formula for answering these is threefold. One, state what it is that went wrong, or the mistake, or the thing that you changed your mind on. Be honest, but generalized. Don’t give so much detail that it’s going to bring up unnecessary red flags about you. Right? That would’ve never come out had you been bold enough to talk about something that you had to take accountability for. So be honest, but generalized. Take accountability for whatever the mistake, or the frustration, or the failure was, the thing that you had to change your mind about.
And then quickly go into what you did about it. Did you fix it? What did you do to try to rectify the problem? What did you try to do to sort of get in your mind about what perspectives you have and have changed? Show them that you made the effort to be proactive about making whatever went wrong right. And even if you’re in the process of doing that, you can be candid about it, but it’s the effort that you put for that that’s going to be important for them. At the end of the day, it’s not the mistake that they care as much about, but what you did to fix it or to learn from it.
And then that brings me to my third point. Show the growth, show the self-actualization, and show the lesson. Say something like, “What I learned from this experience was,” or again, “I’m really lucky in a weird way that this happened to me when it did, because moving forward, I was able to do this differently and grow from it.” And not only did you answer the question to show accountability and that you can handle a hard question and be confronted by something that might be negative about you, but you’ve also shown confidence and the ability to learn from that mistake and technically not bring it back to that law school, should you get into it.
So that’s my little way of not feeling so overwhelmed by those hard, tricky questions that might come your way.
[39:57] Sam: Everyone makes mistakes, as Hannah Montana famously said in one of her songs. Or maybe it was Miley Cyrus. I don’t know. Own up to it and then show that you’ve learned from it. It’s the best you can do.
Paula: Exactly. To error is to human or to human is to error. Not by Hannah Montana.
Anna: Thank you, Paula, for walking through that sort of way of thinking about it. I think that’s going to be super valuable for a lot of people. And we have this great example in Sam having already talked about hers. I feel like that was a perfect encapsulation of how you could respond to this type of question. Notice how she was relatively succinct. She explained why she had a particular viewpoint at an earlier point, but didn’t over-explain, didn’t talk too much about it, didn’t make excuses. And then you really clearly explained sort of what that evolution was, where it came from, and how you think about things now. And I think that was a really, really excellent example.
And I just want to flag that the vast, vast, vast majority of people change a lot in their time, you know, in college, in their early twenties, in their mid-twenties. That is a good thing. That’s a positive thing. If you froze your personality at age 18 and said, “This is how I’m going to be forever,” you would probably not be a very good 20-year-old or 25-year-old or 30-year-old. So it is expected that you’ve changed. It’s expected that you’ve made mistakes. That is not in any way a negative on you, that you have changed your mind, that you have made these mistakes. And that’s why they ask these questions. It’s not in order to get you to say something horrible about yourself; it’s to see how you self-reflect and to see how you are able to change.
Okay. More tricky questions.
[41:24] Sam: One tricky question at Harvard that I think people thought we were, like, trying to trip them up, but we weren’t, is we often would ask, “Can you talk about some of the pros and some of the cons of attending our school?” A lot of people didn’t know how to respond to this question, right? A lot of people would start with the cons, which I thought was interesting. I think their thinking there was, “If I start with the cons, I’ll end on a more positive note with the pros,” but often what happened in those cases is they would just list too many cons, and, like, it would just be kind of negative. So you don’t want to risk too many cons, right? And you don’t want to say things that suggest you’re actually not a good fit for that school. Because that’s what the school’s going to hear is, you’re telling me to my face we’re not a good fit for you, and there’s a lot of cons here that you see. Start with the pros. Make your pros a very long list. If you have to name a con, you don’t want to say something that’s going to, again, make them think that you don’t want to go there, right? So maybe your con is the cost of law school and financing your law school education. Very reasonable con across the board, right? Law school’s incredibly expensive. You don’t know what your financial aid is going to look like at any given school. So that’s a very realistic con, right? Going to Harvard Law School is very expensive. Not everyone is going to be able to fund that if they don’t get financial aid. So that’s a justifiable thing to bring up. Some people still, like in a funny way, would be like, “Well, I’m from Texas. I’ve never been out at the Southwest. Moving to Boston and having to deal with the cold is a little anxiety-inducing, but like, I’m excited. I’m going to buy a good coat. Can’t wait to see snow for the first time. It’s going to be great.” Make sure you’re putting a positive spin on it.
Another one that people often fail, which I thought was so funny, is, are we your top choice for law school? Some people will get asked this. A lot of people struggle with this one because they want to be honest with the interviewer, and that’s a good instinct, but if you pause, if you hesitate, or if you answer with anything other than yes, or that they’re not your top choice—and maybe they’re not—but it’s going to make them less likely to admit you. So the best response is always, “Yes, I would be absolutely thrilled to be admitted. Thank you so much for asking.” But that’s one that really used to trip a lot of people up.
[43:22] Paula: And then a couple of other ones that you might see if a school is going to be a little bit more specific about you and your specific application. You might get questioned on things that might have been in an academic addendum or in an LSAT addendum. Why did you retake the LSAT, or why did you not retake it? Tell me about that one low grade that you received in this class and how you responded, or what did you do about it? There’s a gap in your resume; what were you doing during that time? If you have a bunch of legal interests that are sort of all over the place, or maybe you did not specify a legal interest or a specific area of focus, they might ask you a little bit about that. What are you up to now if you don’t have a current job listed? And then questions on how do you handle setbacks or how do you handle stress, if there is something in the application that indicates that that might be something that is a struggle for you or that you’re still learning how to do that.
Again, some of these schools are intentionally asking you these questions because they want to see if you can handle the confrontation, if you can handle talking about harder things about yourself. And then other schools are just making sure that you are fit and qualified to come to the school, and that maybe past struggles are not necessarily going to be an issue moving forward. So they just want to hear in your own voice, from your own perspective, how you would handle some very true, rigorous challenges that might come up in law school.
Sam: One of my favorite exercises to do with applicants when I’m preparing them for interviews is to have them read through their whole application and think to themselves, if you were interviewing this applicant yourself, what would you be most curious about?
Paula: Yes.
Sam: Would you be curious why you didn’t retake the LSAT? Would you be curious why there’s a gap on your resume? Would you be curious about this gap on your transcript? If that’s something that you’d be curious about with another person if you were reviewing their application, a law school is going to be curious about that, too, and they’re probably going to ask you about it, so you need to be prepared to answer that. Right?
So Paula named a lot of the common ones I used to ask. When I was reviewing applications, I would often ask about these gaps or questions that came up as I was reviewing. So, kind of try to take an objective look at your application and think, “What are they going to be most curious about? What would I want to know to make me feel confident and assured in admitting this person that they’re going to thrive on my campus, that they’re going to be a good fit, and they’re going to be a good community presence?”
Paula: And I actually do that with my clients. So when we go through and do interview prep, I have a whole way that I, you know, step by step as to how I recommend that they prepare efficiently, which, if we have time today, I’d love to go over a little bit with everyone here on the podcast as well. But I will actually go through their application, and I will anticipate questions that they might have, and we will mock up questions for that or mock up answers for that, just so they feel confident and prepared going in for any of those tough questions that might come up. So that interview prep, I think, sometimes is invaluable, especially if there are questions in your application or gaps or things that need to be explained.
[46:07] Anna: Yeah, Paula, let’s get into that, and we’ll try to be concise, but I think it could be incredibly valuable for applicants to hear, through your sort of years of experience in this, what is your process and how could someone who is just doing this themselves at home, how could someone replicate that preparation process that you’ve found to be most effective?
Paula: Absolutely. And again, this is coming from years of preparing for my own applications and finding myself sometimes in interviews where I’ve completely over-prepared in all the wrong ways and couldn’t answer the simplest questions. And then other times, thinking, like, I wasn’t prepared enough, and just my organic responses ended up being perfectly fine and okay, because they came from the heart and they came from the mind. And also from just being a very busy advisor and knowing that the law students and the students and candidates and applicants that I was working with are very busy themselves, and how can they prepare efficiently and feel really prepared? Because preparation means confidence during an interview. How can they be efficiently prepared to show up for an interview and be able to feel like they can rock it?
So my way of doing this is you get one piece of paper or one document, you create two columns, and that is going to be essentially your one page review sheet or cheat sheet that you are going to use to consolidate all the research that you’ve done about the school and all the knowledge about yourself that you want to make sure come out during that interview. That doesn’t mean you don’t prepare a lot; it just means that at the end of the day, what you research is codified in this one piece of paper.
The idea from that came from, if you are going to go into a firm or into a law school admissions office and sit in a reception seat waiting for your interview to start, and you are kind of freaking out and you don’t really know what to do and you’re nervous, you can just quietly pull out that one sheet of paper, review what’s on it, and feel confident that all that information is recently in your head, and you can show up, calm, cool, collected, and ready to go for your interview. Same thing can be said if you’re before a Zoom interview or a Kira interview. There’s not too much information on that one sheet of paper. You can totally get it into your mind, and then the primacy and recency is in there, and you can execute during the interview when you’re there.
At the right part of it, I want you to put a header that says, “About Me.” On the left side of the column, put “About Them.” So again, that’s going to be the law school that you’re interviewing for, maybe the firm or the organization later in law school that you’re going to be interviewing for. And at the bottom, leave a few lines that says, “My Questions.”
So at the end of the day, you’re going to have a section about you—all the things that, when you leave that interview, think ahead and strategize—what do you want that interviewer to remember about you? If they have to take notes for their dean of admissions and say, “Okay, this candidate, they were interested in X, Y, and Z. They had this really interesting thing about their history and their timeline. I want them to come to the school because X, Y, and Z.” Right? What are going to be those personal attributes, those key things about your life or your experience, your reason for wanting to go to law school, the key things that would come out about you? Five to eight bullet points, max. And I say bullet points because I don’t want you to write out full responses. You will then feel like those are sort of a crutch, and you will want to either memorize them or somehow create a monologue in your mind, and it won’t come out organic or genuine. So just bullet points, that then you will later practice saying in sentences, in your own vernacular, in your own voice, so it will come out very organic and natural.
On the left, where it says About Them or about that school, as you’re researching the website, as you’re going through maybe the notes that you took when you were writing your why statement for that school during the application process, think about the key things about that school that really, really interest you and genuinely interest you. Because if they were already on the onset a genuine interest for you, it will come out organically more excited and more enthusiastic in the way that you talk about it.
So if a school is saying, “Why us?” they don’t need you to tell them about every professor that’s there or every concentration. It’s not a test or a memory game on if you know everything about the school. It’s about what interests you and how it aligns with your interests and what you want to do with your law degree.
Some categories to think about are academic programs and offerings. Is there a focus a concentration or a certificate that they offer that aligns with your areas of interest? Is there a key professor that you would love to potentially do research under because they have research and scholarship on an area of law that combines your two interests, or something that really excites you or matches your career goals? Is there a center or an institute or a research symposium that they hold every year that you would want to engage in and take part in? So, all the academic intellectual stuff. Think about something that interests you and matches your alignment there.
You can also write about experiential learning. So these are clinics, pro bono projects, competition teams, or a journal, or maybe something that the school does on an every year basis that gives you experience and training that you wouldn’t necessarily get in the classroom.
You can talk about community, student organizations, just the general atmosphere of the school that you might be familiar with or that really aligns to you and matches what you’re looking for for your own sort of personal and psychosocial emotional growth that the school offers.
And then lastly, if you have any personal reasons or affinity to the school. Maybe the location is where you grew up, or maybe you had a family member that went to that school, or you had some life-changing moment on that campus randomly and you’ve always thought of that school as, like, your beacon of your professional growth. Add something like that in at the end to sort of personalize why that school for you.
And then, as you’re doing all of that research, think of genuine questions that come up about the school, about something that the admissions office would know. So maybe not some key follow-up, you know, tidbit that you need to know about a specific program, because they don’t run that program, they just know generally a lot about that school. But you can ask follow-up questions or where you might be able to get more information about a specific program or something that you’ve read about. And then we’ll talk a little bit later about other good questions to ask that will be kind of important to think about at the end of an interview when they ask you, “Do you have any questions for us?”
My last thing that I’ll say about the Why Me section. Your application, assume that it has been read before you get into the interview. So you want to be reinforcing what is already in your application and not necessarily offering something completely brand new and out of left field that will confuse your interviewer about why you’re talking about it. So it’s okay to sort of reinforce what’s already in your statements. It’s okay to reinforce things that they might have seen in your resume. The difference, though, in the interview is now you’re doing it with your voice and you’re adding more reflection and more perspective to it. And that again highlights your emotional maturity; it shows your self-actualization and your determination for what it is that you want to do.
Review your resume, literally line by line, entry by entry, and ask yourself, “If they were to ask me, what did I do in this leadership role at this job, in this internship, on this paper I wrote, could I, in one sentence, kind of tell them in summary what I did?” And here’s the kicker, what would I answer to the question of, “What did you learn from that experience?” So again, can you reflect on how that piece of your background and experience fits as a puzzle piece to making you that complete puzzle for fit and qualifications for that school?
At the end of the day, if you can talk about yourself in a way that feels conversational and natural, that personality, that energy, and that self-impression that you’re making is almost going to be as important as the qualifications and the actual content that you say. There’s a great quote by Maya Angelou. I think everybody knows it. People might not remember what you say, they might not remember what you do, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. So really make sure that, if you’re prepared, you’re going to be more confident, and if you’re more confident, you’ll be naturally your warm, engaged, present self, and that will speak in spades to everything else that you’re going to strategically tell them about yourself, about your fit and qualifications.
That was a very quick and messy way that I spend over an hour with my actual clients preparing them for their interviews, but hopefully, at least having that one cheat sheet will give you a good idea of how to consolidate and strategize your information and to think about your overall messaging for your applications and your interviews.
Anna: That’s great advice. Thank you, Paula. I think it’s such a good notion to limit yourself to, like, this one page and bullet points. Don’t be the person who writes in like teeny tiny little letters in order to get a ton of information on the page. But limiting yourself in that way, I think, is such good advice and so valuable, because I do think law school applicants, who often tend to be type A sorts of people, can have the tendency to really over-prepare for interviews in a way that ends up harming them rather than helping them. So I think this is really, really valuable and a great starting point for someone to go off of when they’re preparing for their interviews.
One thing I wanted to flag, as you were talking about researching reasons that you’re interested in a specific law school, is that we actually do have a whole episode all about Why X essays, about, you know, the essays in your application, talking about why you’re interested in a specific law school. If you are having trouble with that, if you want more advice on that sort of interview question, a ton of the advice that we gave in that podcast episode is, you know, directly applicable to these types of questions in interviews as well. So, we will link that one.
Paula: Absolutely.
Anna: Highly recommend checking that out if that’s something you’re interested in.
Sam, I know you’re only one cycle in, half a cycle in, but do you have anything else to add in terms of preparation advice?
[55:42] Sam: Well, if it’s helpful, I can talk about some common mistakes I’ve seen applicants make both in the preparation process and during their interviews, which I think is helpful. Things to avoid. It’s always a fun thing to think about.
Anna: Absolutely, perfect.
Sam: One mistake I often see people make is that they don’t actually practice saying their responses out loud. They might be thinking about their responses, they might write them down—although again, we don’t want you to write out a script and memorize it or pull up a script during an interview; I have had people do that, and that’s a huge no-no. You know, it’s one thing to think about or write down a response. It’s a whole entirely different thing to actually say it out loud to a real human. So my best advice when you’re practicing is, do mock interviews with people you trust who are going to give you candid feedback. Every time I’ve interviewed for a job, I make my husband grill me with all the questions I could possibly anticipate getting, and we just go over it again and again until I feel good about my impromptu answers that I’ve given him out loud in person in real time.
Another mistake that I see people make when they’re preparing for interviews is they prepare responses that are too vague or surface-level, or they try to go too big-picture instead of preparing answers that are more detailed, that provide concrete examples, or that go into more depth, which is what an admissions officer’s looking for. They want to add these interview notes to your application to get more information about you and learn more than what’s already been submitted.
So, for example, I would often ask questions like, “Why is now the best time to go to law school?” And some people would give me these one-line responses like, “I’m already in undergrad, I’m already in school mode, so I thought it’d be a good idea to just kind of continue on.” Not a very detailed or in-depth answer. Right? Give me more to make me feel confident about your decision to go straight through if that’s what you’re doing. Right? So a better response would be something like, “In my entire time in undergrad, I feel like I’ve adequately explored this field of law, and I feel very confident and ready to take this next step. I have taken rigorous coursework in subjects that are relevant or related to legal courses. Right? I’ve actually taken a law school course and been taught using the Socratic method, where I was cold-called and had to take an exam that was analogous to when you would get in law school. I have done several legal internships or I have explored the legal field in these ways. And so at this point, I know this is what I want to do. I feel absolutely confident, and to me, there’s no reason to put off pursuing this degree, so I can start moving towards the goals that I’ve articulated throughout this interview or in my application.” Right? Be more specific, give more detail.
[58:08] One thing to keep in mind, when you’re preparing for interviews, there’s a couple things people are sometimes thrown off by that makes them even more nervous about interviews when they’re going in. One is that interviewers, it’s not necessarily going to be a conversation. Usually, admissions officers who are interviewing have a very limited time to get through six or seven questions. Maybe they have 15 minutes, and they have to get through five to seven questions. So they’re going to ask one question right after another. They’re not going to respond to your answer. They’re not going to give you feedback. Some of them might have a poker face, some of them might smile, but it’s going to be really hard to read your interviewer in most instances. So I think that’s important to keep in mind so you’re not thrown off by the lack of response and the lack of dialogue.
Another thing to keep in mind is that people who are interviewing have been tasked as part of their job to get a certain amount of information out of you in the time that they have. So they might have to ask five to seven questions. That might be something that they have been told they have to do as part of their job. So if you are spending seven minutes answering one question, you are actually derailing that task that they’ve been assigned, right? So it’s important to limit yourself and your responses to make sure you can get through the full interview that your interviewer has planned. I think it’s best to kind of aim for your responses to be between one and two minutes. That’s usually perfect. A lot of the Kira interviews will actually give you 90 seconds, which is a great, perfect length for responses. If you find yourself talking longer than that, you’ve gone on some tangents, you’re now answering a totally different question, stop yourself. It’s okay to end and just move forward with the next question.
Conversely, some applicants actually don’t speak enough in their interview. I’ve interviewed some people where I’ll ask a question, they give a one-sentence response, and I’m always like, “Oh, I was hoping you would give me more information than that,” and I either have to ask a follow-up question or we move on to another question, and then the interview ends in 7 minutes when I have 15. And it’s just a huge missed opportunity that you didn’t present more information about yourself. You didn’t give me a lot to advocate for you in committee to get you the decision you’re looking for. So make sure, again, your answers have depth.
Big mistake I’ve had people do is, you do not want to talk about any other law school in your interview. Right? At HLS, I have had applicants talk about Stanford. I’ve had them talk about Yale or Chicago, and ask how we could possibly compare or how we’re different. Don’t talk about any other school in your interview. Focus on that school in particular and how excited you are to go there.
A big faux pas is showing up late or missing your interview entirely and not communicating with the admissions office. That’s usually a really bad sign that they’re not going to be responsible or take accountability as a future law student.
Not dressing appropriately or being too casual. I have interviewed people who show up in a t-shirt or their dog is in the interview, or they’re kind of sitting back, like lounging. And it just comes across as they’re not taking the interview seriously, and they’re not invested in actually making a good impression. So make sure you’re dressing to impress and you’re putting your best foot forward.
Another big mistake I see is being negative. A question I used to ask at the beginning of interviews was, tell me about your experience at this college that you attended, right? Or tell me about this thing on your resume. And if an applicant was overly critical or negative right off the bat about their undergraduate institution or an experience they had, usually that signaled to me they were going to be equally critical or unhappy at Harvard Law School. So that was never a good tone to start off with, and usually it continued that way.
And then I would say the last mistake people make is not giving concrete examples or evidence to back up their statements. So if you’re asked about a strength of yours and you say, “I’m very empathetic,” but you don’t actually provide an example that showcases that strength, you’re not providing proof for the admissions officer to actually verify that that is a skill you possess and have. So make sure you’re providing those concrete examples, again, providing more depth and information in your responses to give an admissions officer something that they can latch onto and talk about with their team in order to give you the decision that you want.
Anna: Thank you. I think all of those mistakes can be so instructive.
I will say, this entire episode, I’ve been having to stop myself from just repeating back everything you’re saying, being like, “Yeah, that’s great. Emphasize that.” So, if you’re listening to this, maybe listen to it twice, because I feel like every nugget here has been so, so valuable.
Paula: We’re all on video emphatically nodding at each other as we talk, so.
Sam: Like, “Yes. That’s a good point. Yes, Paula.”
[1:02:20] Anna: So, before we end—and you know, we do have a few more questions, but we’re running low on time—I want to make sure to touch on, very briefly, the logistics, and setup, and aesthetic, for lack of a better word, of interviews. I’m talking Zoom backgrounds, attire, lighting. I will say this is probably more of a factor when you’re doing a remote interview than if you’re going somewhere in person. But for all of those, sort of, things around the substantive elements of what you’re talking about, what advice do we have for that?
Paula: So first and foremost, dress and first impressions are important. So if you are going to be on camera, make sure that you are dressed in at least business casual attire. That doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy a suit or, you know, get super, super dressed up like you’re going to the theater or to prom. But you do want to make sure that you look elevated and are not looking too casual as if you’re just going to class or to coffee with a friend. If you are wondering what business casual is or what professional attire is, just Google it. There are so many different examples, and make sure that it fits you, but I would err on the side of more traditional, less loud, a little bit more conservative. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t be yourself in some way.
Sam: I’ll just say, that’s a really important note. You don’t want to wear something that’s going to distract the interviewer from your responses.
Paula: Yes.
Sam: So make sure you’re not wearing this, like, super loud outfit that—I don’t know, something crazy that the interviewer is like, I am focusing on what they’re wearing right now.
Paula: Yes. Statement pieces are not the best time for you to wear those for interviews.
Same thing with your Zoom background. You want to make sure that it’s clean and tidy. You want to make sure that it’s professional-looking. That doesn’t mean you need a completely white wall behind you, but make sure that they’re not focusing on figuring out what’s on your bookshelf or what that weird poster is about instead of listening to your responses. If you need to use a picture background because you’re in a place where there’s just absolutely no way that what you have behind you is going to be appropriate, we’ve had some applicants who are in various remote locations or have to do their interviews at work, that’s not the first choice, right, to be able to have something kind of fake or behind you that isn’t real. But if you have to, just use your discretion and your judgment to make that tasteful and not distracting.
Sam: I’ll also just jump in and say, I’ve had clients who are like, “I can’t interview in my dorm room, I don’t have a place I can go,” so they’ll reserve, you know, a private room at their local library, a public library, or their school’s library, or they’ll find some spot to go so it doesn’t have to be where they might be interrupted or where the background’s going to be messy or unprofessional.
Anna: Good note.
Paula: Yeah, that’s definitely the first choice. If you can make that effort, a hundred percent, I would do that.
Okay, lighting. You want to make sure that you’re not in a super dark place or where there’s a lot of backlighting and you show up as the dark figure in a screen. That again, can be very, very distracting. So make sure that your lighting is okay.
And then also make sure that, as you are thinking about looking into the camera, make sure that your little popup where your picture is—because our eyes naturally gravitate to ourselves—put that as close as possible to where your camera lens is on your device. Or put a post-it note where your lens is on your device saying, look here and look at me, because that’s as close as possible that you can get to making eye contact with your interviewer, and it’s really important to do that.
I think it’s one of the most annoying things ever is when you are trying to interview somebody and they’re looking at a different screen, and you get this, like, weird 45-degree angle of their face, and they’re not looking at you. So it’s a disconnection that you don’t have to have if you can avoid it.
Sam: I’ve interviewed a few applicants in the past who they’re, like, in a dark room, and it really gives a spooky vibe to the whole interview, and kind of just—you’re like, “I’m really suss at this applicant, man. Why are they doing this in a dark room?” Just make sure the lighting is good. It is a little spooky.
Paula: Very good point.
Anna: I will say you can buy, like, a desktop ring light for like $15, and that will just make you, like, well lit, everyone will be able to see you. This is not something where you need to be spending too much time thinking about it, but you don’t want to be in the dark, and you don’t want to be a silhouette because you’re backlit.
[1:06:16] Okay, so we touched on this briefly earlier—and thank you for flying through that, Paula and Sam. When you do a real-time one-on-one interview with an admissions officer or an alum, most of the time, they will give you an opportunity at the end to ask them one or two questions. What advice do you have for the types of questions you should and shouldn’t ask for this part of the interview?
Sam: You all have heard my opinion on some of this in the last podcast episode I did, but I thought of a few more that I thought would be helpful. First thing to know is, you should have one to two questions prepared to ask your interviewer ahead of time. Do not say, “I have no questions,” because that suggests that you aren’t interested in them enough to be curious in learning more about their school. And please, please, please don’t wing it. I have had some people do that in the past, and sometimes they ask something off-putting or something that we wouldn’t recommend. So that’s not a good strategy either.
In our last podcast, I talked about asking questions that are too niche. Right? You don’t want to ask an admissions officer something that they actually don’t have expertise on, like a specific clinical project or faculty scholarship, or something that they aren’t immersed in every single day. They are immersed in admissions. That’s what they know. So make sure you’re asking them a question that they can actually answer, like, “What is your favorite aspect of the law school community here?” or, you know, “When you talk to alumni, what did they say was the most valuable part of their experience?”
Or, “What are your favorite traditions at this school?” Or, “What’s something, you know, students should take advantage of more often here that you don’t think they take advantage of enough?” Or, you know, “What’s the best-kept secret about this law school?” Those are great questions. Any admissions officer can answer those. They’re very positive. They’re fun. They like answering them.
Do not ask how their law school compares to another law school. Big no-no. Again, keep it focused on that school. Do not bring in other law school names.
Don’t ask how your interview went. I’ve had a few people do this at the end where they’re like, “How did that go? My grandma wanted me to ask you how I did.” It’s a weird question, right?
Paula: Awkward.
Sam: You’re asking me real-time to give you an evaluation? Super awkward. An interviewer’s not going to do that. I honestly don’t even remember how I responded to that. I was like, “Why don’t you ask a different question?”
And then make sure you’re not asking any questions that imply that you think for sure you’re going to be admitted. So you should not be asking about housing on campus. You should not be asking about admitted students days or admitted students programming. You should not be asking about the dates for orientation. Make sure you’re not implying that you think you’re going to be admitted. You have not been admitted yet. This is just the interview. It might be a good step or it might be a good sign that they’re considering you, but you still might not get admitted. So make sure you’re not suggesting that.
[1:08:44] Paula: And you’ll have plenty of time to ask those questions once you are admitted at the school that you’re going to be going to. So it’s not the time or place to ask it there. Yeah.
Other things I’d like to think are good questions are ones where you can involve the admissions person speaking from their own area of expertise and their own perspective, because psychologically, if we are talking, we are going to agree with what’s being said. And so if you can leave an interview with the admissions person talking about their perspective of what they’re looking for specifically in this incoming class compared to other incoming classes, or what they have seen as a common denominator of a “tell” in the application process of a successful student or a student that thrives at that school, and they can really kind of dig in their own memory about thinking in aggregate in their experiences a response to that, you’re going to leave them feeling good about the end of that interview. So why not take the opportunity to gain information that could be useful for you but also utilize their own expertise and their own goodwill to get that answer?
Other things to not ask about are things that are completely having nothing to do with the law school or their area of expertise. I have been asked some really random questions because people have gone in a rabbit hole of research about me in preparation for the interview that have created some, like, very awkward moments where I sort of left that interview thinking, that was probably not the best judgment used by that applicant. And sometimes it was a great interview up until that point. So use your discretion to be very much in the scope of law school when you’re asking questions.
[1:10:15] Sam: I feel like this perfectly leads into the last thing we wanted to cover, which was, what’s one of the most detrimental things you’ve seen an applicant do in an interview?
Anna: I would love to do that one. And part of my goal for this one is that, if you’ve already done an interview—it’s January, a lot of people have done interviews—and you think you bombed it, I’m hoping you’ll be able to listen to us talk about this and think, “Well, at least I didn’t do that.”
So, Sam, you’ve been doing these very recently, and many of these, what’s the, like, wildest, most detrimental thing you’ve seen an applicant do in an interview?
Sam: I’ll preface with, the vast majority of people do very well in their interviews. They do a great job, so you should go in feeling confident.
The funniest thing I’ve ever seen someone do in an interview is, back in the day, we used to ask a question like, “Can you name one role model in the legal profession that you really look up to, and why?” This is many, many years ago, so it’s no one in recent history, but they responded, very genuinely and seriously, “I know the correct answer is Atticus Finch, but I’m going to have to go with Elle Woods for these reasons.” And the reason this was so funny is because these are two fictional characters, and we were like, “Wait, what? You can’t name one actual real-life person working in any sort of legal environment or legal field?”
Paula: Trick question, Sam. Trick question.
Sam: It was so funny. The other one I’ll name is, I used to ask this a lot. I used to ask like, “What’s your dream job 5 or 10 years out of law school?” And I had one applicant who very seriously and genuinely was like, “Oh, I want to be Beyonce.” And I was like, oh, she must be joking. So I, like, asked a follow-up. I was like, “Okay, yeah, but, you know, that’s probably not going to happen. So, like, what do you want to do after law school?” And she was like, “I’d really like to, like, host my own talk show if I can’t be Beyonce.” This talk show was not about the law. It was just, like, she wanted to be like the next Oprah. And I was, like, so thrown off by this answer. I was like, “Oh man, this applicant does not know why she wants to go to law school. She cannot answer a question professionally.” And I really had to hold back my reaction and just do my poker face and move forward.
Needless to say, neither of these people got into law school. At least not at Harvard Law School.
Anna: Oh goodness. Probably they got into other places where they did not give those answers.
Sam: Yes. Yes.
Anna: Funny. Paula, do you have one you want to mention here?
Paula: Yeah, it was the one about being asked about whether I liked panda bears or not, because they found my wedding website on theknot.com—which, I checked before this podcast, is no longer up and running in case there are some randos who would like to go on and research these photos that I’m referencing—but I was asked about how I got engaged in a panda hot air balloon and whether I liked pandas or not.
Anna: Oh no.
Paula: And it wasn’t like, “I love pandas, like, we have something in co[mmon].” It was just like, “Tell me about your obsession with pandas.” It was very weird.
Sam: Oh wow. I’ve had people cold email me as an admissions officer to say, like, “I read your bio, and I just want you to know I also really like vegetarian cooking.” And that’s, like, it. And I’m like, okay. Random. “Thank you so much.” Little creepy.
Paula: But in all seriousness, if we could end on notes of encouragement, because this is a part of the application process, and by nature, it can be really nerve wracking. And whether you feel like you’re an expert interviewer or whether you feel like you don’t make great impressions in your interview process, everybody can do well, because at the end of the day, you’re being asked to talk about yourself, and that’s information that you already know. So at the end of the day, if you can be organized and really strategic about the way that you’re thinking about yourself and how you want to convey your interest and qualifications for law school, you will be okay.
One of the things that, if it really kind of scares you to enter an interview and you really think, like, you’re going into their house and it’s your interview to lose because they’re there to evaluate you, I offer this little bit of a psychological change to the way that you think about these. Imagine that they’re actually coming to your house, and that this school gets to take time out of your day to learn about you and to see how you would be a great fit for their school, and what a privilege they have in being able to learn more about you in this real-time way. That doesn’t mean you get cocky or arrogant about it, but it allows you to sort of imagine that you’re hosting brunch or coffee or drinks or dinner at your home. And imagine yourself opening that door to the front of your home, that you’re welcoming somebody into your place, and now you’re hosting them, making them feel comfortable, engaging them in conversation, responding to the things that they’re saying, and making them feel hospitable in your space. And so you’re not going into their house, they’re not there to interrogate you. Enter that interview confident and warm and engaging like you’re hosting them in your home. And that impression, that energy that you give will be just where it needs to be so that the information that you say and the things that you talk about yourself will shine at the end of that interview.
Sam: That’s such good advice. I’m going to steal that and use that with my clients.
[1:15:05] One piece of advice I would like to leave that’s positive is, please remember, in the vast majority of cases, if you’re being invited to interview with a law school, it’s because they’re already predisposed to like you. They enjoyed your application, and they’re excited to learn more. They’re seriously considering you for admission already, and they’re just trying to kind of confirm that through the interview process.
So they already like you, they’re already biased toward you. So really, you’re just kind of confirming what they already like about you. So keep that in mind.
The other thing I like to tell my clients is, just remember that the people interviewing you, yes, they’re evaluating you in some capacity, but they’re regular, normal people. They have families and dogs. They make mistakes. They have quirky habits just like you do. I often tell my clients, like, “Picture me interviewing you. It’s like me. You’ve gotten to know me super well, you know all my weird quirks and stuff.” Think of it as, like, just a friend or a stranger you haven’t been able to connect with yet. Admissions officers are really kind, welcoming, warm people. It’s why they’ve chosen to pursue this work. It’s why they work in higher ed. They love students. They love meeting new people, so just treat it as kind of a conversation to make a new friend.
Anna: I love it. Wonderful advice to end on. And I am just going to reiterate very briefly what Sam said earlier, which is that the majority of interviews go really well. You are not walking into a situation where you’re set up to fail. So go in confident, go in excited, listen to this podcast a couple more times maybe. I’m obsessed with so much of the advice you guys have given. It’s been so, so helpful.
So thank you both, again, so much for your time. Thank you as always to our listeners. Good luck with any interviews you have coming up, and feel free to come back to our podcast and to our blog for more advice and strategy throughout the cycle. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
Paula: Bye, everyone.
Sam: Thanks. Bye!
.png)
