Good Questions to Ask a Lawyer as a Student
Questions for a student talking with a practising lawyer: what the work involves day to day, how billing shapes the week, how people end up in a practice area, and what they would do differently in law school.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What made you decide to go to law school?
Why ask it
Answers split roughly two ways: a specific problem they wanted to work on, or the default path for a strong humanities student who liked arguing. Which one you hear should change how much weight you put on the rest of their advice.
What did you actually do in your first week as a new lawyer?
Why ask it
Concrete enough that they cannot answer in generalities. First weeks are usually document review, a research memo, or sitting silently on calls, and hearing which sets your expectations for year one.
How much of your week is spent on legal analysis, and how much on everything else?
Why ask it
For most practising lawyers the analysis is a minority of the time. If someone tells you most of their week is doctrine, ask what they did yesterday and see whether it matches.
Which law school class do you still use, and which have you never touched again?
Why ask it
Turns course-selection advice into something checkable. Civil procedure and evidence come up often, but answers vary enough by practice area that it is worth asking several lawyers and comparing.
What does a bad week look like in your job?
Why ask it
Easier to answer honestly than a question about challenges. Listen for whether the bad weeks come from volume, from clients, or from the people setting their deadlines, because those are three different problems.
How did you end up in your practice area, and did you choose it?
Why ask it
Plenty of lawyers landed in a specialty because of a staffing decision in their second year. Worth knowing before you build a plan around picking one in advance.
What kind of writing do you do most, and what makes a junior's draft usable?
Why ask it
Replaces a vague question about skills with something they can answer specifically. Expect notes about structure and about answering the question that was asked, rather than about elegant prose.
How did you learn to talk to clients, and what did you get wrong at first?
Why ask it
The mistakes teach more than the technique. Common ones: promising an outcome, hedging so heavily the client cannot act, and explaining the law when the client wanted a recommendation.
What do summer associates and interns do that gets them noticed, in either direction?
Why ask it
The specifics are unglamorous and useful: turning work in before the deadline, flagging a problem early, asking a question once instead of three times.
How does billing work in your job, and how does it change what you do?
Why ask it
If they bill by the hour, the target shapes their day more than any area of law does. A lawyer who steers away from this question is worth a gentle follow-up.
How do you decide whether to take on a matter you are not sure about?
Why ask it
Gets at judgment and capacity in one answer. Listen for whether they mention checking with someone more senior, which tells you how supervision really works there.
What is an ethical situation you have had to think hardest about?
Why ask it
Asking about ethics in the abstract produces a recital of the rules. Asking for a situation usually surfaces a conflict of interest, a client instruction they did not want to follow, or a deadline that tempted a shortcut.
How much control do you have over your own hours?
Why ask it
Lets them describe the trade rather than defend it. Answers differ sharply between litigation, in-house work and government practice, and the difference is more informative than any general claim about balance.
What did the bar exam and your first year of practice actually demand of you?
Why ask it
Useful for planning, and it separates the exam grind from the job itself. Lawyers a few years out give far more accurate answers here than partners do.
What has technology changed about the tasks you personally do?
Why ask it
Asking about tasks rather than trends keeps the answer honest. Research, document review and first drafts have all changed at very different rates.
Who helped you early on, and how did that relationship start?
Why ask it
Advice about mentorship is generic; the origin story is not. Most say it began with a specific piece of work done well, not with a networking request.
What do people with your degree do who are not practising law?
Why ask it
Opens up compliance, policy, in-house roles, teaching and leaving law altogether. A lawyer who cannot name a single example may not have looked, which is itself worth knowing.
What would you do differently if you went back to law school?
Why ask it
Answers cluster around clinics, first-year grades, and taking on less. Where a particular lawyer lands tells you what they think actually mattered to how their career went.
What do you know now that might have changed your decision to go to law school?
Why ask it
The harder version of the previous question, and the one worth waiting out the pause for. Some people say nothing at all. Others say a great deal, and that answer is the one you came for.
Is there something you wish students asked you and never do?
Why ask it
A good closer that hands them the floor. Answers often involve debt, money, or what the hours cost at home, subjects students tend to avoid raising directly.
Getting something useful out of a lawyer's time
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before You Ask
Check What They Actually Do
Practice area, seniority and setting (private firm, in-house, government, public interest) change every answer you will get. Five minutes on their firm biography prevents questions that do not apply to them.
Treat Recent Graduates and Partners as Different Sources
A lawyer three years out remembers the bar exam and the first year accurately. A partner remembers the shape of a whole career. Neither can reliably cover the other's ground.
Bring Two Questions, Not Twenty
Most of these conversations run fifteen minutes. Pick the two you cannot answer from a website and let the others go rather than rushing all of them.
What to Listen For
- Whether they describe their work in tasks or in adjectives. Tasks are the honest version.
- Whether the hard parts they name come from the work itself or from the people setting the hours.
- Whether their path was chosen or handed to them by a staffing decision.
- Whether debt comes up at all when they give advice about which school to attend.
- Whether they name anyone who helped them, and what that person actually did.
Common Pitfalls
Do Not Ask for Legal Advice
A lawyer talking about their career cannot advise you on a dispute of your own, and asking puts them in an awkward position. Keep the conversation on the profession.
Do Not Open With Salary
It is a fair thing to want to know, and published firm pay scales answer it better than a person will. Ask them instead what the money has cost them.
Do Not Argue About Their Practice Area
Criminal defence, plaintiff-side work and corporate work all attract judgment from students. Signal yours and the useful part of the conversation ends early.
Do Not Ask What Their Biography Answers
Where they studied and what they specialise in are online. Spending your fifteen minutes on that wastes the part they cannot be replaced for.
Afterwards
- Send a short thank-you naming one thing you are going to do differently because of what they said.
- If they offered an introduction, use it within a week or tell them plainly that you have decided not to.
- Write down who said what. Patterns across five lawyers are far more reliable than any single account.