Hey

Sorry, no one responded to you on this. I’ve interviewed many people over the years and noticed some trends of how they are conducted both from colleagues at my level and senior, so happy to give my two cents.

- I don’t know how other firms do it but in my firm (tier 1) usually the first round is with Partner(s) and second round with Senior Partner of the team. I guess firms that have HR take care of the second round
- it’s important to focus on the first round, as second round is mostly a formality and BS, both HR/senior Partners interview on soft skills only, and rely completely on initial interview feedback from their team partners/SAs whoever interviewed you
- while one can’t predict, but if someone is professional, they will ask you questions on your CV as technically that’s what you’re supposed to know, so be sure you know that and don’t try to inflate your experience. One usually gets caught on this, and it’s a hole difficult to drag yourself out from if the interviewer gets stuck on a point. In my view, it looks bad if someone doesn’t know their CV, or if you’re a fresher, you can’t talk about what all the million articles you’ve listed on your CV were about. So brush up on that
- if above happens to you - endless black hole that is, don’t worry, it’s important to just keep calm under pressure. I’ve noticed most people get so nervous knowing that they are going in the wrong direction and frankly interviewers sometimes are rude / love to ask questions they themselves don’t know answers to (topic for another day) which adds to the pressure, they they kind of collapse and the interview is ruined from there. This happened to me many years back when I was interviewing and I’m killing it now, so don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s better to answer what you know, try to develop your train of thought that while I haven’t dealt with those aspects, if you’d like I can walk you through how I’d approach it .. etc etc. if you don’t know something at all, just say you don’t know
- it’s always cool to know what’s latest in your practice area / if you’re a fresher updates in respect of the topics you dealt with while interning / stuff you wrote. People like it and you can just drop it off in the end to close your point
- A common mistake is people naming clients, details of transactions, people don’t like that as it shows immaturity especially if you’re interviewing for a senior position. Use pseudonyms or say I can talk about details that are publicly available if it was a deal, and what my role was etc
- if someone is constantly asking questions outside your CV, you can’t do much, politely say it’s not part of my experience so far, try to answer what you can. You shouldn’t want to work with an idiot like that anyway
- don’t bitch about your previous firm / boss. Honestly you need to know, all Indian law firms are cliques. They love to hear bad things about other firms, but they also know they do that same shit themselves, so they’d imagine you doing the same with them and negate you as not being a ‘team player’ or similar nonsense. Political views, etc best avoided. I don’t want to get into a debate of whether this is right or not, it’s just the truth of how to game this system. Don’t expect nuance and understanding etc.
- So first round likely to be quite technical, second one will be whatever goes
- if work life balance is important to you, by all means ask those questions to be more aware about the team, and I assure you if you ask too many questions in that area, you’re unlikely to get a call back. No one works in Indian law firms to have a balanced life

Best of luck!

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