Andrei Radu

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This is a guide for the purposes of preparing for competency interviews, be they in a VI, another intermediary step or an AC/final stage interview. The advice here is based on my personal approach, as I received VS offers from top US/MC firms 4/4 times I implemented it. This will include:
  • A general step-by-step preparation guide
  • Specific advice on preparing for VIs
  • Specific advice on preparing for final stage competency interviews

A. The Step-by-step preparation guide

The essential method and process is the same, though you may want to vary the amount of time you invest in preparation at each step depending on the whether this is a VI, an intermediary or a final stage interview.

Step 1 - Preparing ideas for answers

The first and most difficult step in preparing for interviews is learning how to respond to a wide variety of questions. Of course, you cannot prepare beforehand for all potential variations of all potential interview questions. Furthermore, you do not want to learn answers by heart and then just repeat them in front of the interviewers - they are likely to sound robotic. However, by investing a substantial amount of time thinking about how you would go about answering to as many different questions as possible, you start learning how to describe your motivations and experiences in a flexible manner. This decreases the chances that you will be caught off-guard by any given question. It also increases the chances that, even if you have not prepared for a question you are being asked, you will find a somewhat sensible answer to it.

The first thing I would do when invited to an AC/interview (and for a video interview, but not in the same level of detail) would be to try to build a question bank to practice on. I would create a Word doc with a few big headings (like 'CV based questions’, ‘competency questions'; 'motivations/firm-specific questions', 'commercial awareness questions', situational judgement questions' etc) and firstly write down all the questions I could think of under each relevant heading. I would then look at my CV and find try to think of how I could leverage my experience to answer those questions. Finally, I would write 2-3 short bullet points answers under each question - I have found this helps with memorizing the ideas for your answers. This enabled me to (i) have the ideas ready to go in my mind for a high number of questions and (ii) to still sound natural as I had to go through the though process of formulating an answer in the actual interview (as I would not memorize a particular way to articular the ideas I noted down). It is also worth mentioning that at this step I would prepare particularly well for the questions I thought were very likely to come up (such as Why commercial law, Why the firm, Why me etc).

The second part of my preparation at this step involved searching for interview question banks on the internet - such as the one offered by TCLA here. While reading them, I would spend around 30 seconds on each question thinking of potential ways of answering them. I would then copy the questions I was having particular difficulty with and add them under the relevant heading in my word document. After finalizing this process, I would once again look at my CV and spend a longer amount of time thinking how to best answer each of them. Then, I would note down my ideas in short bullet points.

The final part was similar to the second, with the only difference being that I would search directly for examples of past questions asked by the firm I was interviewing at - resources that were useful were this TCLA forum and Glassdoor.


Step 2 - Practicing articulating your answers

Once I had found the right ideas as to how to answer most interview questions, the second step of preparation involved improving my ability to articulate them. Despite the initial awkwardness of this method, I have found it incredibly useful to simply turn my laptop's camera on, pick one question at random, give myself a few seconds to think, and then record my answer. Subsequently, I would watch the recording with as critical an attitude as possible to see the parts I was struggling with the most. Then I would repeat this process again and again until I was happy with the way I was answering a given question.

A point worth noting is that as I was deciding at random which question to respond to, I would try to tweak the specific phrasing of the question in my mind. Thus, instead of just learning how to answer 'Why do you want to pursue a career in commercial law?', I would learn to answer many variations of the same type of question, such as 'How did your interest in commercial law originate?', 'Why commercial law rather than another area of the law?', 'Why do you want to be a commercial solicitor rather than a commercial barrister?' and so on. Once again, by following this approach, I would learn how to be flexible in formulating my ideas to best suit the exact question the interviewer would be asking me.


Step 3 - Mock interviews

Especially for any AC/final stage interviews, mock interviews are an incredibly useful preparation tool. After you have improved your interview skills as much as you could by firstly preparing your best ideas for answers, and then preparing the best way to articulate them, you should now seek to further improve both your ideas and your capacity to communicate them by getting feedback from others. Hence, if you can find someone with VS/TC interview experience (or even just experience with commercial law/interviews in general), it would be helpful to get them to do a mock interview for you.

Moreover, getting more familiar with the 'interview experience' beforehand contributes a lot to your ability to calm your nerves and do your best on the big day. As such, I would advise you to reach out to people who could help you with this, even if they are not part of your immediate circle. You will be surprised how many people will be willing to help you out!


Step 4 - Getting into the right mindset

Finally, although this may sound a bit cliche, try to go into the interview with a positive attitude. Remind yourself that just by reaching this stage, you have demonstrated to be an exceptionally competitive candidate. Acknowledge the fact that since the firm chose to meet you out of so many other applicants, it means you have everything you need to succeed - whether that means success with this firm or another.

Finally, although I appreciate how hard it may be, try to not put an excessive amount of pressure on yourself. Meditate on your journey and how far you've come and accept that as long as you do your best, you will have nothing to blame yourself for. Going through these thought processes the night and morning before the interviews helped me a lot with reducing my anxiety and my improved my ability to show a composed yet enthusiastic attitude.


B. Additional advice for VIs


Although they do differ on a firm-by-firm basis, VI questions tend on the most part to be more formulaic and predictable than at final stage interviews. This is a factor that is worth taking into consideration when considering how to prepare. The questions that come up in VIs tend to be in one of the following categories:
  • The classics: Why you, Why the firm, Why commercial law - these almost always feature in one form or another. Make sure to have a very well-prepared answer.
  • Further motivational questions: Why did you initially decide to study law, What other careers did you consider, What do you like and dislike about different types of work, what practice areas/sectors are you interested in etc.
  • Competency questions: Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork skills/time-management/innovation/creative thinking/integrity etc.
  • Situational judgement questions: What would you do in X scenario (eg. you have multiple competing deadlines and you feel your work product will suffer as a result).
  • General commercial awareness question: tell us about a news story you have been following and what are its impacts on the economy/the legal market/the firm/the firm's clients, what is a business you admire, who are the firm's competitors? why do the firm's clients keep coming back to the firm?
  • Curveballs: Besides variations of these types of questions, the only other type of question you should prepare for is potential curveballs. However, you can't really predict a curveball, so the only thing you can do it to try to train yourself to think quickly and be flexible in how you leverage your experience. To prepare, search for curveball interview question banks, pick questions at random and do your best to try to come up with sensible answers.
My general advice would be to invest the most of your preparation time in practicing until you have really well-rehearsed answers for the most common questions in each category. Besides that, I have listed here two pointers which were significantly helpful in elevating my VI performances:
  • One of the biggest issues most candidates face is being flexible with their pre-prepared answers around the specific time limit of each VI. Try to get to a point where you can, on the spot, answer both the independent questions and the broader combinations of questions in 1 minute, 1.5 minute, and 2-minute timeframes. Then record yourself and assess your performance. The more you do this, the more will you improve your ability to answer different variations of questions in varying timeframes.
  • Do not overcommit when you first start answering a question. This was by far the biggest issue for me last year. I would try to be structured and signpost, so I would start my answer by saying 'I will give you three/four reasons why ...'. However, midway through articulating my answer I would realise I did not have enough time to comprehensively state what I indented to. Thus, I would have to either sacrifice on the quality of my explanations, or just not talk through everything I said I would, neither of which is a good look. As such, when in doubt, go for less rather than more. Your purpose should not be to blow away the recruiters, but to simply communicate good substantive points in a clear, concise, and composed manner.

C) Additional advice for final stage interviews:

The first pointer for more specific final stage interview preparation is about further researching the firm. At a final stage interview, you should expect a lot of scrutiny and sometimes pushback on your motivations for why the firm and your understanding of its operations. As such, you should invest time into refreshing and then researching the firm a lot more than you did for the purpose of the written application.

In terms of areas that you should focus on with the further research, I would include the following:
  • The basic facts: these include some important pieces of information that you should simply know about the firm, as they can easily come up at one point or another in a final interview. This includes the firm’s London practice areas, spread of international offices, global practice area/sector reputation, core clients, financial results, history in the City and international expansion, any announced strategy changes etc.
  • Facts around your motivations for why the firm: research to find out if the unique selling points (USPs) you have identified in your written application are actually truly unique, or it they apply (at least to a certain extent) to other firms as well. If they do, look for ways to further individualize the firm in that regard. You should also just look for any recent news or developments related to those USPs. Moreover, consider whether the personal substantive interests you have linked with the firm’s USPs can withstand scrutiny, and the degree to which any of your experiences support this. Anticipate follow-up questions and pushback and prepare for this.
  • General firm-related news: essentially, you want to be informed around any important events that may be of relevance to your understanding of the firm. These include any big new deal/cases that the firm has recently advised, any big clients it has won, top partners poached from rival firms (whether here or in other important jurisdictions), partners the firm lost to its rivals, legal press awards/rankings, financial performance of different practice areas.
Unexpected but commonly encountered questions: I will list here some ‘categories’ of questions that I was personally surprised to see take such a significant part of my final stage competency interviews. In retrospect, I know these are some of the questions I would advise my past self to better prepare for:
  • CV-based questions: the general advice here is to be prepared to explain and answer follow-ups about any experience or achievement you have written on your CV, even if you have not referred to it in your application or interview. This applies to experiences in the more distant past as well – around half of one of my VS interviews was based around two non-law related competitions I participated in when still in high school.
  • Academic-focused questions: your interviewer will expect you to know your academic pathway well and to be highly reflective about it. Be prepared to talk about your GCSE performance, reasons behind your A-levels subject choices and performance, reasons for your university degree choice and module choices, and an explanation of your performance and general experience in individual modules and in the degree in general.
  • Applications strategy: you should be able to explain to the interviewer what other firms you have applied for and lay out a cogent application strategy. The reasons behind your application to other firms should (to the greatest possible extent) also apply to the specific firm you are interviewing with. To the extent they do not apply to the chosen firm, you should be able to explain why your ‘why this firm’ reasons trump the ‘why the other firms’ reasons.
  • Practice areas understanding: your interviewer will expect you to understand the operations and basic features of the firm’s most important practice areas. You should understand what exactly the legal service is that a particular practice provides, how it differs from services provided by the other practices, why do the clients need it, who the main clients in the space are, and what the usual tasks are at each level of seniority (trainee, junior associate, senior associate, partner).
  • Legal market knowledge: while very detailed knowledge of the legal market is not necessarily expected, it is definitely desirable, and you will get bonus points if you are able to show it off. Regardless, you should still be able to place the firm in the context of the competition in three main ways: (i) know which are the most similar firms to the one you are interviewing with in terms of general features – what ‘type’ of firm it is, and how does it differ from the other ‘types’?; (ii) know who the firms toughest competitors are in each of its main practice areas – who else is a market leader?; (iii) are there any significant shifts happening in the market? Even if not directly related to the firm, moves like Pau, Weiss’ unprecedented London expansion, Allen & Overy’s merger with Shearman Sterling, Latham & Watkins’ string of exists, Slaughter and May’s problems with the ‘best friends’ model, and Freshfields’ US expansion and recent rebrand are all big changes which change the dynamics of the legal market and that you should therefore be aware of.
 

MC123

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Nov 24, 2020
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Hi @Andrei Radu - thanks for this useful guide! I wondered what I’d be expected to talk about when firms are asking about displaying integrity in competency based questions? If I’ve never found myself in a situation such as catching a colleague stealing and reporting them, in what other ways could I demonstrate it?
 

sapphireoreos

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Feb 20, 2023
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Thank you for this guide, it’s really helpful! I have two questions:
1. What competency questions are most likely to come up in a video interview?
2. What are your tips on nerves with video interviews? I get really flustered when I trip up, and I’m not confident in my VI skills. I have a VI to do by Friday, so I’d appreciate any and all tips on this! Thank you!
 

Andrei Radu

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Thank you for this guide, it’s really helpful! I have two questions:
1. What competency questions are most likely to come up in a video interview?
2. What are your tips on nerves with video interviews? I get really flustered when I trip up, and I’m not confident in my VI skills. I have a VI to do by Friday, so I’d appreciate any and all tips on this! Thank you!
1. Besides the classics (why you, why commercial law), some of the ones I encountered most often/heard about others encountering are:
  • Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork
  • Tell me about a time you demonstrated resilience/worked under pressure/solved a problem
  • What are the key qualities a trainee at our firm needs?
  • What is your biggest weakness?
  • Tell me about a time you made a mistake
  • Tell me about a time you worked with tight deadlines
2. The most important thing for me was just practice. I also had an issue dealing with nerves at first, but believe me, if you put yourself in VI conditions and just practice continuously for several hours, you will get a lot more accustomed to it. My advice would be to just take around 3-4 hours in which you do nothing but choose random questions, give yourself 1 minute to prepare and then record yourself for 1-2 minutes. You will see you will get better over time.

Besides this, my top two tips would be to:
  1. Speak more slowly - this gives you more time to think and articulate your ideas and makes it less likely to to find yourself having to continuously rephrase midsentence; I also find speaking in this way makes me feel more in control and calms my nerves; and
  2. Realize that your performance does not have to be perfect, but merely good enough. I think a lot of candidates end up overthinking and panicking when making the smallest mistake, which ends up derailing their entire speech. Being too perfectionistic in this way often works to your detriment. Thus, you should internalize the idea that it is fine if your response is not absolutely perfect - many candidates (myself included) have progressed by merely making sure we communicated decent substantive points in a reasonably clear and structured manner. You do not have to blow anyone away. If you start thinking in this way, it is more likely that when a small error inevitably occurs, you are able to overlook it and still have an overall good response.
 
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sapphireoreos

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Feb 20, 2023
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1. Besides the classics (why you, why commercial law), some of the ones I encountered most often/heard about others encountering are:
  • Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork
  • Tell me about a time you demonstrated resilience/worked under pressure/solved a problem
  • What are the key qualities a trainee at our firm needs?
  • What is your biggest weakness?
  • Tell me about a time you made a mistake
  • Tell me about a time you worked with tight deadlines
2. The most important thing for me was just practice. I also had an issue dealing with nerves at first, but believe me, if you put yourself in VI conditions and just practice continuously for several hours, you will get a lot more accustomed to it. My advice would be to just take around 3-4 hours in which you do nothing but choose random questions, give yourself 1 minute to prepare and then record yourself for 1-2 minutes. You will see you will get better over time.

Besides this, my top two tips would be to:
  1. Speak more slowly - this gives you more time to think and articulate your ideas and makes it less likely to to find yourself having to continuously rephrase midsentence; I also find speaking in this way makes me feel more in control and calms my nerves; and
  2. Realize that your performance does not have to be perfect, but merely good enough. I think a lot of candidates end up overthinking and panicking when making the smallest mistake, which ends up derailing their entire speech. Being too perfectionistic in this way often works to your detriment. Thus, you should internalize the idea that it is fine if your response is not absolutely perfect - many candidates (myself included) have progressed by merely making sure we communicated decent substantive points in a reasonably clear and structured manner. You do not have to blow anyone away. If you start thinking in this way, it is more likely that when a small error inevitably occurs, you are able to overlook it and still have an overall good response.
Thank you so much!! These tips are so useful and I really appreciate you taking the time to write all of this out. As a final year international student, I’m particularly worried about these applications as I’m worried about visas, so nailing VIs is really important.

I have two follow up questions to ask if you don’t mind:
1. How much should I prep for commercial awareness in the interviews? I’ve really slacked in this area, so this would be good to know and prepare for.
2. What is the maximum amount of points you should make during these answers?

Thanks for all your work again—it’s very much appreciated!
 

Andrei Radu

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Hi @Andrei Radu this is fantastic. do you have similar guides for other topics on the forum by any chance? i tried looking it up but couldnt find anything.
Sorry for the very late response - I have been away on leave for a while. The only other guide I have written is on constructing an application strategy (which you can find here) but I am very happy to consider any suggestions on topics of interest :)!
 

weupin2025

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Feb 3, 2025
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Sorry for the very late response - I have been away on leave for a while. The only other guide I have written is on constructing an application strategy (which you can find here) but I am very happy to consider any suggestions on topics of interest :)!
Hi Andrei, I am a non law student and this is my first application round. I have loved how insightful and helpful all your posts are! I have an upcoming 50 minute final stage interview with Withers for the summer vs, with HR and a partner. I was wondering whether you could maybe give me some advice? Thanks again
 

Andrei Radu

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Hi Andrei, I am a non law student and this is my first application round. I have loved how insightful and helpful all your posts are! I have an upcoming 50 minute final stage interview with Withers for the summer vs, with HR and a partner. I was wondering whether you could maybe give me some advice? Thanks again
Hey @weupin2025 I'm very happy to hear you found my posts helpful, and huge congratulations for getting to the final stage :)! As for advice, take a look here for a detailed post of two candidates' experiences in the Withers interview, it should give you an idea of what to expect. Using my Guide above together with this should allow you to tailor a perfect preparation plan. Besides this, I quoted bellow a recent post on my best tips on managing nerves and performing at your best on the day, take a look:
My top tip would be to focus on doing well and not on being perfect. Many people go to ACs thinking they need to blow away the partners and the recruiters to succeed, but I think this is the wrong attitude to have. First of all, while your achievements and skills might be impressive for this stage, it is quite unlikely you will manage to overly impress anyone no matter how hard you try - you will know a lot less about any given commercial law subject than lawyer in the firm. Secondly, this attitude will make you feel even more stressed than you would normally be and will therefore likely impact your performance. If you will be assessed for a total time of a few hours, it is impossible to be perfect in every moment. When you notice an imperfection in an answer, the right reaction is to acknowledge it but then to move past it and make the best of the rest. Instead, the overly perfectionistic candidates tend to stress about it a lot more than they should, and in attempting to fix the initial mistake they do a lot more harm to their progression chances. People with this mindset thus often end up creating negative feedback loops for themselves: they make a small error, then they begin overthinking it, which decreases their self-confidence, which impacts their next answer, which in turn further intensifies their anxiety; a series of events which can end up completely derailing one's performance.

To avoid this, instead of aiming to excel everywhere, I would simply aim to perform well - to do a good job on every task and score well on every relevant assessment criterion. This boils down to using your preparation to make decent substantive points and communicate them in a clear and confident manner. If you manage to do this you will have performed better than the majority of candidates and in most cases should be enough to get you progressed - it did for me 4/4 times. If you reframe your task in this way, I think you should feel a lot less anxious about it: while perhaps it is difficult to convince yourself that you will pull of an extraordinary performance, you should feel a lot more confident in being able to respond sensibly to tasks and to cover all your bases well.

A final piece of advice I have for calming down on the day and to avoid blanking out is to take your time:
  1. Firstly, taking your time before starting your answer. Instead of just jumping into a response the instance the interviewer stops speaking (which is a very natural temptation) take 3-4 seconds to think about and structure your answer. This will significantly decrease the number of times you find yourself blanking out mid-answer or having difficulty finding the right way to end a sentence.
  2. Secondly, if you have difficulty with finding sensible points for a question, it is perfectly acceptable to request some thinking time - just say 'May I please take a minute to consider my answer?'. In the unlikely case you do not find anything after that, explain that you are unsure what to say; but also walk the interviewer through your thought process of your best guess.
  3. Thirdly, aim to speak more slowly. When you are anxious, your hear rate goes up and you naturally start speaking at a higher pace, which is problematic in that this simply means taking less time to think as you answer. This naturally reduces how articulate and confident you seem, especially since speaking quickly more often leads you to losing your chain of thought or expressing yourself in unclear language. As such, try to slow down. Also, use strategic 2-3 second pauses in your speech to add emphasis to points and to get valuable thinking time as you are moving between the different parts of your answer.
Finally, know that just by getting to the AC you have proven yourself to be one of the very best candidates out of a huge pool, which means you have all it takes to succeed! Best of luck :)!
 

Andrei Radu

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Also @Andrei Radu, sorry to ask another question but I'm particularly struggling with questions pertaining on how to stay up to date with the industry etc if that makes sense?
I am not sure which specific industry you are referring to, but assuming this means the legal industry I think the best way is by using the legal press. In no particular order, I found the following publications to be very useful: The Lawyer, Law.com, Bloomberg Law, Business Law, The Global Legal Post, The Financial Times (from time to time). Some of these are behind pay walls, but you may be able to access them using your university email. Some also have free podcasts available which are useful for this purpose. Besides these, Law, disrupted is a lesser known but extremely insightful podcast.

Another option which is slightly more time consuming is to use resources provided by law firms. Some regularly post updates on the outlook for their practice areas and sectors (might be worth taking a look at their LinkedIn pages). Some also have good podcasts - I have previously found interesting content on Latham's and HSF'.
 

weupin2025

Standard Member
Feb 3, 2025
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I am not sure which specific industry you are referring to, but assuming this means the legal industry I think the best way is by using the legal press. In no particular order, I found the following publications to be very useful: The Lawyer, Law.com, Bloomberg Law, Business Law, The Global Legal Post, The Financial Times (from time to time). Some of these are behind pay walls, but you may be able to access them using your university email. Some also have free podcasts available which are useful for this purpose. Besides these, Law, disrupted is a lesser known but extremely insightful podcast.

Another option which is slightly more time consuming is to use resources provided by law firms. Some regularly post updates on the outlook for their practice areas and sectors (might be worth taking a look at their LinkedIn pages). Some also have good podcasts - I have previously found interesting content on Latham's and HSF'.
Andrei you are truly a legend . From one UCL student to another thanks from the bottom of my heart man !
 
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badmintonflyinginsect

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This is a guide for the purposes of preparing for competency interviews, be they in a VI, another intermediary step or an AC/final stage interview. The advice here is based on my personal approach, as I received VS offers from top US/MC firms 4/4 times I implemented it. This will include:
  • A general step-by-step preparation guide
  • Specific advice on preparing for VIs
  • Specific advice on preparing for final stage competency interviews

A. The Step-by-step preparation guide

The essential method and process is the same, though you may want to vary the amount of time you invest in preparation at each step depending on the whether this is a VI, an intermediary or a final stage interview.

Step 1 - Preparing ideas for answers

The first and most difficult step in preparing for interviews is learning how to respond to a wide variety of questions. Of course, you cannot prepare beforehand for all potential variations of all potential interview questions. Furthermore, you do not want to learn answers by heart and then just repeat them in front of the interviewers - they are likely to sound robotic. However, by investing a substantial amount of time thinking about how you would go about answering to as many different questions as possible, you start learning how to describe your motivations and experiences in a flexible manner. This decreases the chances that you will be caught off-guard by any given question. It also increases the chances that, even if you have not prepared for a question you are being asked, you will find a somewhat sensible answer to it.

The first thing I would do when invited to an AC/interview (and for a video interview, but not in the same level of detail) would be to try to build a question bank to practice on. I would create a Word doc with a few big headings (like 'CV based questions’, ‘competency questions'; 'motivations/firm-specific questions', 'commercial awareness questions', situational judgement questions' etc) and firstly write down all the questions I could think of under each relevant heading. I would then look at my CV and find try to think of how I could leverage my experience to answer those questions. Finally, I would write 2-3 short bullet points answers under each question - I have found this helps with memorizing the ideas for your answers. This enabled me to (i) have the ideas ready to go in my mind for a high number of questions and (ii) to still sound natural as I had to go through the though process of formulating an answer in the actual interview (as I would not memorize a particular way to articular the ideas I noted down). It is also worth mentioning that at this step I would prepare particularly well for the questions I thought were very likely to come up (such as Why commercial law, Why the firm, Why me etc).

The second part of my preparation at this step involved searching for interview question banks on the internet - such as the one offered by TCLA here. While reading them, I would spend around 30 seconds on each question thinking of potential ways of answering them. I would then copy the questions I was having particular difficulty with and add them under the relevant heading in my word document. After finalizing this process, I would once again look at my CV and spend a longer amount of time thinking how to best answer each of them. Then, I would note down my ideas in short bullet points.

The final part was similar to the second, with the only difference being that I would search directly for examples of past questions asked by the firm I was interviewing at - resources that were useful were this TCLA forum and Glassdoor.


Step 2 - Practicing articulating your answers

Once I had found the right ideas as to how to answer most interview questions, the second step of preparation involved improving my ability to articulate them. Despite the initial awkwardness of this method, I have found it incredibly useful to simply turn my laptop's camera on, pick one question at random, give myself a few seconds to think, and then record my answer. Subsequently, I would watch the recording with as critical an attitude as possible to see the parts I was struggling with the most. Then I would repeat this process again and again until I was happy with the way I was answering a given question.

A point worth noting is that as I was deciding at random which question to respond to, I would try to tweak the specific phrasing of the question in my mind. Thus, instead of just learning how to answer 'Why do you want to pursue a career in commercial law?', I would learn to answer many variations of the same type of question, such as 'How did your interest in commercial law originate?', 'Why commercial law rather than another area of the law?', 'Why do you want to be a commercial solicitor rather than a commercial barrister?' and so on. Once again, by following this approach, I would learn how to be flexible in formulating my ideas to best suit the exact question the interviewer would be asking me.


Step 3 - Mock interviews

Especially for any AC/final stage interviews, mock interviews are an incredibly useful preparation tool. After you have improved your interview skills as much as you could by firstly preparing your best ideas for answers, and then preparing the best way to articulate them, you should now seek to further improve both your ideas and your capacity to communicate them by getting feedback from others. Hence, if you can find someone with VS/TC interview experience (or even just experience with commercial law/interviews in general), it would be helpful to get them to do a mock interview for you.

Moreover, getting more familiar with the 'interview experience' beforehand contributes a lot to your ability to calm your nerves and do your best on the big day. As such, I would advise you to reach out to people who could help you with this, even if they are not part of your immediate circle. You will be surprised how many people will be willing to help you out!


Step 4 - Getting into the right mindset

Finally, although this may sound a bit cliche, try to go into the interview with a positive attitude. Remind yourself that just by reaching this stage, you have demonstrated to be an exceptionally competitive candidate. Acknowledge the fact that since the firm chose to meet you out of so many other applicants, it means you have everything you need to succeed - whether that means success with this firm or another.

Finally, although I appreciate how hard it may be, try to not put an excessive amount of pressure on yourself. Meditate on your journey and how far you've come and accept that as long as you do your best, you will have nothing to blame yourself for. Going through these thought processes the night and morning before the interviews helped me a lot with reducing my anxiety and my improved my ability to show a composed yet enthusiastic attitude.


B. Additional advice for VIs

Although they do differ on a firm-by-firm basis, VI questions tend on the most part to be more formulaic and predictable than at final stage interviews. This is a factor that is worth taking into consideration when considering how to prepare. The questions that come up in VIs tend to be in one of the following categories:
  • The classics: Why you, Why the firm, Why commercial law - these almost always feature in one form or another. Make sure to have a very well-prepared answer.
  • Further motivational questions: Why did you initially decide to study law, What other careers did you consider, What do you like and dislike about different types of work, what practice areas/sectors are you interested in etc.
  • Competency questions: Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork skills/time-management/innovation/creative thinking/integrity etc.
  • Situational judgement questions: What would you do in X scenario (eg. you have multiple competing deadlines and you feel your work product will suffer as a result).
  • General commercial awareness question: tell us about a news story you have been following and what are its impacts on the economy/the legal market/the firm/the firm's clients, what is a business you admire, who are the firm's competitors? why do the firm's clients keep coming back to the firm?
  • Curveballs: Besides variations of these types of questions, the only other type of question you should prepare for is potential curveballs. However, you can't really predict a curveball, so the only thing you can do it to try to train yourself to think quickly and be flexible in how you leverage your experience. To prepare, search for curveball interview question banks, pick questions at random and do your best to try to come up with sensible answers.
My general advice would be to invest the most of your preparation time in practicing until you have really well-rehearsed answers for the most common questions in each category. Besides that, I have listed here two pointers which were significantly helpful in elevating my VI performances:
  • One of the biggest issues most candidates face is being flexible with their pre-prepared answers around the specific time limit of each VI. Try to get to a point where you can, on the spot, answer both the independent questions and the broader combinations of questions in 1 minute, 1.5 minute, and 2-minute timeframes. Then record yourself and assess your performance. The more you do this, the more will you improve your ability to answer different variations of questions in varying timeframes.
  • Do not overcommit when you first start answering a question. This was by far the biggest issue for me last year. I would try to be structured and signpost, so I would start my answer by saying 'I will give you three/four reasons why ...'. However, midway through articulating my answer I would realise I did not have enough time to comprehensively state what I indented to. Thus, I would have to either sacrifice on the quality of my explanations, or just not talk through everything I said I would, neither of which is a good look. As such, when in doubt, go for less rather than more. Your purpose should not be to blow away the recruiters, but to simply communicate good substantive points in a clear, concise, and composed manner.

C) Additional advice for final stage interviews:

The first pointer for more specific final stage interview preparation is about further researching the firm. At a final stage interview, you should expect a lot of scrutiny and sometimes pushback on your motivations for why the firm and your understanding of its operations. As such, you should invest time into refreshing and then researching the firm a lot more than you did for the purpose of the written application.

In terms of areas that you should focus on with the further research, I would include the following:
  • The basic facts: these include some important pieces of information that you should simply know about the firm, as they can easily come up at one point or another in a final interview. This includes the firm’s London practice areas, spread of international offices, global practice area/sector reputation, core clients, financial results, history in the City and international expansion, any announced strategy changes etc.
  • Facts around your motivations for why the firm: research to find out if the unique selling points (USPs) you have identified in your written application are actually truly unique, or it they apply (at least to a certain extent) to other firms as well. If they do, look for ways to further individualize the firm in that regard. You should also just look for any recent news or developments related to those USPs. Moreover, consider whether the personal substantive interests you have linked with the firm’s USPs can withstand scrutiny, and the degree to which any of your experiences support this. Anticipate follow-up questions and pushback and prepare for this.
  • General firm-related news: essentially, you want to be informed around any important events that may be of relevance to your understanding of the firm. These include any big new deal/cases that the firm has recently advised, any big clients it has won, top partners poached from rival firms (whether here or in other important jurisdictions), partners the firm lost to its rivals, legal press awards/rankings, financial performance of different practice areas.
Unexpected but commonly encountered questions: I will list here some ‘categories’ of questions that I was personally surprised to see take such a significant part of my final stage competency interviews. In retrospect, I know these are some of the questions I would advise my past self to better prepare for:
  • CV-based questions: the general advice here is to be prepared to explain and answer follow-ups about any experience or achievement you have written on your CV, even if you have not referred to it in your application or interview. This applies to experiences in the more distant past as well – around half of one of my VS interviews was based around two non-law related competitions I participated in when still in high school.
  • Academic-focused questions: your interviewer will expect you to know your academic pathway well and to be highly reflective about it. Be prepared to talk about your GCSE performance, reasons behind your A-levels subject choices and performance, reasons for your university degree choice and module choices, and an explanation of your performance and general experience in individual modules and in the degree in general.
  • Applications strategy: you should be able to explain to the interviewer what other firms you have applied for and lay out a cogent application strategy. The reasons behind your application to other firms should (to the greatest possible extent) also apply to the specific firm you are interviewing with. To the extent they do not apply to the chosen firm, you should be able to explain why your ‘why this firm’ reasons trump the ‘why the other firms’ reasons.
  • Practice areas understanding: your interviewer will expect you to understand the operations and basic features of the firm’s most important practice areas. You should understand what exactly the legal service is that a particular practice provides, how it differs from services provided by the other practices, why do the clients need it, who the main clients in the space are, and what the usual tasks are at each level of seniority (trainee, junior associate, senior associate, partner).
  • Legal market knowledge: while very detailed knowledge of the legal market is not necessarily expected, it is definitely desirable, and you will get bonus points if you are able to show it off. Regardless, you should still be able to place the firm in the context of the competition in three main ways: (i) know which are the most similar firms to the one you are interviewing with in terms of general features – what ‘type’ of firm it is, and how does it differ from the other ‘types’?; (ii) know who the firms toughest competitors are in each of its main practice areas – who else is a market leader?; (iii) are there any significant shifts happening in the market? Even if not directly related to the firm, moves like Pau, Weiss’ unprecedented London expansion, Allen & Overy’s merger with Shearman Sterling, Latham & Watkins’ string of exists, Slaughter and May’s problems with the ‘best friends’ model, and Freshfields’ US expansion and recent rebrand are all big changes which change the dynamics of the legal market and that you should therefore be aware of.
Hi Andrei, do you have similar guides for ACs/case studies?
 

Andrei Radu

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Hi Andrei, do you have similar guides for ACs/case studies?
Unfortunately not yet, but I can definitely consider writing one! I will quote bellow some of the most detailed posts I have made on written exercises and group exercises, you may find them useful. As for the guide, I could collate and organize the information from the posts there, but I am also curious what else you would want to see more advice and analysis on - so please give any inputs :)!
Hey @AS24 I definitely am, their scarcity here has really taught me their value 🥲. On this brighter note, I will split up my thoughts between how to organize your time and then your ideas.

Organizing Time
To ensure you are managing your time well, before you start working through the exercise I advise you to take a few minutes to make a plan. First, take a look at the number of tasks and read the prompts. Then, briefly skim the annexed briefs and readings - but only very briefly. You want to see how many pages of readings you will have per task and how dense those look. Based on this information, make an estimation as to how much time each task or part of the exercise will take compared to the others - ie you might see the first task as requiring about twice the workload of the second and that the third is roughly the same as the second. Then, you should spend around 1/2 of your time on the first, around 1/4 on the second and another 1/4 on the third. However, before dividing the time using the relevant fractions, subtract around 10 minutes from the initial total time: 5 to account for the planning part at the beginning and 5 for contingencies and reviewing spelling and grammar at the end. I think this should be your basic approach, but do keep in mind these further considerations:
  • You may want to make a further separation between the estimated necessary time to do the reading and the estimated necessary time to write your analysis for each part. One of the most significant issues I have had with written exercises has been giving in to the temptation to take more time than I should reading and taking notes; and simultaneously underestimating the time it would take me to write my analysis. In my experience, the materials in these exercises are not that difficult to work through and do not attempt to trip you up, so they do not require that much time. Thus, it might be a good idea to plan ahead how much you want to take on them: it should help you keep yourself in check during the exercise and not let your anxiety and overthinking make you waste precious time by reading the same passages again and again.
  • You may not be able to estimate such a simple fraction split as in my aforementioned example. That is fine, and you definitely should not spend time overthinking this element. Simply go with your gut in making some judgement about the relative workloads and move forward with that. The most important part of this planning is not maximum accuracy in representation of the time each should take, but in providing a rough framework which will enable you to keep yourself to account and thus improve efficiency.
  • If your tasks/parts of the exercise have different priority levels you should adjust your time allocation fractions. I would still aim to have a rough representation of what the workload of each involves but I would also allow adjustments to that to ensure a high quality work product for the most important ones.
Organizing Ideas
As for structuring your thoughts, it is unfortunately more difficult to give very concrete advice, as the right way to go about it will be highly dependent on the details of the exercise. My main advice is to find multiple distinctions between the different categories of information that you will be presenting ; and to organize them under multiple headings. The last thing you want is a huge block of text. It will almost always be more difficult to read and understand and will often also end up confusing your analysis as well. To give some examples of how you can go about this:
  • Split the descriptive part of your writing (where you are essentially summarizing uncontroversial facts) and the analytic one (where you are advancing your opinion based on the aforementioned facts);
  • If your argument is more complex, separate the analysis of the different inferential steps necessary to establish the conclusion;
  • Separate the pros considerations, the cons considerations, and the synthesis view;
  • Split your analysis of the different alternatives based on the facts;
  • Separate your analysis of the relevant considerations based on their class (financial, legal, social, reputational etc) and based on the relevant class of stakeholders (shareholders, clients, the government, the public etc).
Of course, no piece of writing in an AC will need or be capable of supporting categorizations based on all the above. I have only listed some ideas to keep in the back of your mind; once you go through the actual exercise, you should be able to intuitively decide which is the most appropriate and easy for you to use.

Hi @member3804 I think to have a great AC group exercise performance, you need (1) to ensure you show the desired interpersonal traits like collaboration and leadership; and (2) you want to ensure you showcase the desired substantial commercial/legal analysis and negotiation skills, which necessitates taking up a sufficient portion of the airtime. Since everyone will want to speak enough to impress, there is a natural tension between the friendly and group-outcome oriented attitude required to excel at (1) and the individual performance focus in a competitive environment required to excel at (2). You will therefore need to walk a fine line to have an overall great performance.

While the way you should go about it will heavily depend on the format of the assessment, details of the exercise, and the strategies of the other participants, I have a few tips based on my own experience:
  • Offer to keep the time: this shows a proactive attitude while not being very demanding as to your mental focus. It also enables you to (i) avoid taking the responsibility of any required writing, which is more demanding; and (ii) naturally intervene at certain points in the discussion to mention time considerations, which is also an opportunity for you to add substantive points.
  • Try to introduce structure and organization: instead of simply throwing yourself in discussing substantive points, try to introduce a framework: what points will you discuss, in what order, how much time will you spend on each, and what relevant assessment criteria should you keep in mind when analyzing the points?
  • Focus on finding more niche/less-obvious analysis points: as you are given a brief for the group exercise task, you will normally have a bit of preparation time during which you can think what points to bring up. You will find some points that are really intuitive which you will know the others likely also thought of. Instead of focusing on those and fighting with everyone to get to express those obvious points, I would use that time (and the extra thinking time in the initial discussion phase when everyone is fighting to say the obvious points) to find relevant ideas that others may have missed. The, as the discussion is winding down on that subpart of the task, I would mention these more niche points. This will avoid making you seem competitive and also showcase ability for more nuanced analysis.
  • Focus on synthesis and weighing: another similar strategy for impressive contribution which may not require too much fighting over airtime is to once again seek to contribute as the discussion on the substantive points is winding down. What you can do here is intervene to summarize what everyone has contributed, weigh their points, and then make an informed argument as to what the decision should be.

While I think different strategies apply for different formats, there are a couple of pointers which I would say are generally applicable for all or almost all types of written exercises:
  1. Time-management: You might have heard this so many times already, but I have to stress that most written exercises are incredibly time-pressured. I remember I was always told this, but it is very easy to forget during the actual assessment. In the first 20-30 minutes I have always to an extent or another allowed myself to be tempted by thoughts such as 'Oh it won't take me that long to read/write that part, I will just speed up a bit later' and I would thus justify being less efficient than I could have been in the first half of the exercise. As I would be entering the second half and nearing the end, I would invariably then find that it was very difficult to increase my working pace to make up for lost ground and my work product would suffer as a result. Thus, my advice is to be on your guard against that and to try to spread out your efforts evenly across the allocated time. Take one or two minutes in the beginning to make a plan and divide your workload, allocate portions of your time to completing the different parts, and try to make yourself to stick to those time limits.
  2. Efficient reading: In a substantial number of written exercises you will be given a large number of documents containing overlapping information and also big sections of text containing technical details which are not of great importance to your task. Once again, there is a temptation to ignore the time constraints and to try to read everything closely to ensure you are not missing anything. However, in my experience the main task of the assessment very rarely or never hinges on easy to miss details. As such, my advice for you is to try to quickly read and skim through the documents, and only once you have a big picture go back and look at the relevant sections in more detail.
  3. Analysis: Almost all written assessments have an analysis part, in which you are asked to weigh different considerations and make a judgement. I would advise you not to focus too much on trying to "blow away" the reader with the depth of your analysis or creativity of your arguments. Given the time constraints and nature of the tasks, there is rarely scope for that and if you focus to much on this kind of goal you might miss explaining much simpler points that should have been included in your analysis. As such, concentrate on considering the position of all relevant stakeholders (if you have issues doing this, drawing out diagrams can be very useful), having all the main pros and cons properly laid out, and weighing which set of considerations should you give priority to. If you can further support your opinion by making any links to current news stories or commercial trends, try to do so.
  4. Clarity and structure: Finally, ensuring your answer is very easy to follow is a point whose importance I cannot overstate. A essential skill for a prospective trainee is an ability for clear communication, both verbally and in writing, and this type of assessment is how they test the later. As such, you should focus on having a simple writing style and structure as much as you focus on the substantive points you are trying to communicate.
 
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