Being an attorney is very difficult. The legal world is full of people who continuously question you, tell you that you are not good enough, undermine you, and exclude you. Most attorneys feel very much alone—regardless of who they are. Very few attorneys get into the law school they want to, get interviews with all the law firms they want to, have clients that are pleased with them all the time, are not undermined by peers, are never laid off or fired, or are not humiliated in front of their colleagues. Every attorney has countless insecurities.
It is hard to imagine just how alone and unprotected many attorneys feel. Success is no insulator against feeling alone. The more successful an attorney is, the more likely they are to feel attacked—their primacy challenged both internally by peers and externally by their opponents. Lawyers want more than anything to have other lawyers around them who have their back, but they rarely find this. They want and value this above all else.
If you understand interviewing and practicing law, you will rarely lose a job, not get a job, or have issues getting clients and advancing—if people believe you have their back. People need to believe this earnestly, and you need to deliver.
The employer wants to hire you by the time you are asked to come in for an interview. They hope you will work out and be a good fit. It costs a lot of money and time to interview. However, most employers are not stupid and do not want to make mistakes. The quality of a law firm is measured by the quality of its people. A law firm cannot survive if it hires improperly. The only product a law firm has is its people, and these people will, ultimately, determine what happens with the law firm.
Each interview you get is a significant opportunity. You should never take any interview for granted, and there are a few essential rules you need to understand in order to thrive in interviews. Most attorneys do not get these rules right. Following these rules is the key to success—not only when interviewing but also in the practice of law.
There are many attorneys, law students, and others who get just about every job they interview for, and there are those who rarely get jobs. The number one characteristic of the people who get the most jobs is that they seem like they will support the interviewer. People who do not get jobs come across as people who will not help their interviewers.