Questions to Ask Lawyers as a Student
49 questions for a student sitting down with a practicing lawyer, at an informational interview, over coffee or on a day of job shadowing. They cover what to ask a lawyer if you want to be a lawyer yourself: what law school did and did not teach them, how they landed in a practice area, and what the daily work is really like before you commit three years to it.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
The work
What kind of matters land on your desk in a typical month?
Why ask it
Lawyers describe their field in abstractions until you ask for the actual docket. The concrete list tells you whether the work is contract drafting, document review, hearings, or client hand-holding, and those four days feel nothing alike.
What does a normal Tuesday look like for you, start to finish?
Why ask it
Career talks skip the clock. An hour-by-hour account shows how fragmented the day is: when the interruptions come, how late the concentrated work starts, and whether the calendar belongs to them or to other people.
How did you end up in this practice area instead of another one?
Why ask it
Most lawyers land in a specialty half by accident, through a summer placement or a partner who needed a body on a case. Hearing the accident is more useful than hearing a plan, because your own entry will probably be accidental too.
What part of the work still holds your attention after all these years?
Why ask it
Asked what they enjoy, most people say the intellectual challenge. Asked what still holds their attention, they have to name a specific kind of problem. If nothing comes to mind and they change the subject, that pause tells you something the brochure will not.
How much of your week is legal analysis, and how much is everything else?
Why ask it
Students picture the analysis and forget the scheduling, billing, chasing documents and managing anxious clients. The ratio is often far more lopsided than expected, and it varies enormously between litigation, in-house work and small practices.
What has changed most about practice since you started, and what has stayed the same?
Why ask it
The second clause stops the answer from becoming a list of technology. Lawyers who answer both halves usually identify which pressures are cyclical and which are permanent, which matters if you are entering the field in a few years.
Which parts of your work has software taken over, and which parts has it not touched?
Why ask it
Ask generally about technology and you get generalities. Asking what it has and has not absorbed produces a specific line: research and first drafts have shifted, judgment calls and difficult conversations have not, and that line is where your value would sit.
How much of your week do you actually spend arguing in a courtroom?
Why ask it
For most lawyers the answer is little or none, and hearing it directly does more to correct the television version than anything you could read. If they are in court often, ask what the days between hearings look like.
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.
Law school
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 law school prepare you for, and what did it not?
Why ask it
This splits the honest answer from the nostalgic one. Lawyers who have thought about it usually name a specific gap, negotiation, running a file, talking to a person in crisis, that they had to learn on someone else's dime.
Which courses turned out to matter most for what you do now?
Why ask it
Course guides rank by prestige; practitioners rank by use. Their list often includes something unglamorous like evidence, tax or civil procedure, and it lets you plan electives around the work rather than around reputation.
How much does where you went to school still matter?
Why ask it
The honest answer is usually that it mattered for the first job and faded afterward, and it varies by market and practice area. If you are choosing schools, this is worth asking of several lawyers rather than one.
How did you pay for law school, and how long did the debt take?
Why ask it
Ask it as a question about their route rather than their finances, and accept a vague answer. Debt shapes who can take a public interest job more than any preference does, and students rarely get to hear a real timeline.
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.
If I got a year into law school and decided it was not for me, what would you tell me to do?
Why ask it
Almost nobody offers this unprompted, and it is worth hearing before you enroll rather than after. Whether they treat leaving as a reasonable option or as unthinkable also tells you a great deal about how they see their own choices.
Becoming a lawyer
What does the path look like from where I am now to what you do?
Why ask it
Say where you are, whether that is high school, an undergraduate degree, or a first year of law school, so the answer is specific. You want the sequence and its decision points, including the ones that are hard to change later.
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.
How did you get your first legal job, and would that route still work today?
Why ask it
The second half is the important half. Plenty of paths that worked fifteen years ago, walking in a resume, a clerkship pipeline, a firm that hired generously, have narrowed since, and a lawyer who has hired recently will say so.
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.
What do interns and junior associates here actually spend their days doing?
Why ask it
This is the job you would hold first, and it is rarely the job described in recruiting material. The answer tells you how much real responsibility juniors get and how long the apprenticeship stretch lasts before that changes.
What makes a new associate someone people want on their matters?
Why ask it
The answer is almost never about brilliance. It is usually about turning work around when promised, flagging problems early, and writing something a supervisor can use without rewriting, all of which you can start practicing now.
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.
When you hire someone at the start of their career, what are you actually looking for?
Why ask it
Answers often name writing quality, reliability, and whether the person can be left alone with a task, ahead of grades. That is a description of what to practice now, which is more actionable than general advice.
Is there a decision in your career you would make differently now?
Why ask it
Regret is where people stop performing. The answers tend to be structural rather than dramatic, taking a job for prestige, staying two years too long, not asking about the group before joining it, and those are the same choices in front of you.
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.
Honestly, would you tell someone like me to do this?
Why ask it
The hesitation matters as much as the answer. A lawyer who asks what draws you to it before answering is giving you a better response than one who says yes immediately.
Clients and cases
How do you tell a client they cannot have what they want?
Why ask it
Much of practice is delivering unwelcome news to someone who is paying you. Listen for whether they describe managing expectations early or absorbing anger late, because that difference is most of what separates a bearable client relationship from a miserable one.
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.
How do you work for a client you do not like, or do not believe?
Why ask it
This gets at the professional distance the job requires, which is the part students most often underestimate about themselves. Answers range from finding it straightforward to it being the reason they changed practice areas.
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.
How does work reach you, do you find clients or do they find you?
Why ask it
Every lawyer eventually has to answer this, and the answer determines whether the job rewards technical depth or relationships. Someone who has never had to bring in work will say so, which itself tells you about their position.
When has a matter put you in a real ethical bind?
Why ask it
Ethics in the classroom is a rulebook; in practice it arrives as a client who wants a document backdated or a colleague cutting a corner. A concrete story shows you what pressure actually feels like and who they went to about it.
Has there been a case that stayed with you?
Why ask it
Almost every lawyer has one, and it is usually where their sense of the work comes from. Give them room and do not press if the details are confidential, since much of what matters to them cannot be repeated.
Hours and pay
How is your work measured here, billable hours, outcomes, something else?
Why ask it
Measurement shapes behavior more than culture statements do. An hours target explains why lawyers work late; an origination target explains why partners spend their evenings at events. Knowing which applies tells you what your life would be organized around.
What does the money look like starting out, and five years in?
Why ask it
Published starting salaries cluster at the top of the market and hide the rest of it. A candid answer, including debt service and the gap between firm, government and nonprofit work, changes which schools and which jobs make financial sense.
What happens during the stretches when the work does not let up?
Why ask it
This gets past the practiced line about balance. You want the specifics: how long the bad stretches run, how often they come, what gets canceled, and whether anyone at the firm treats that as a problem or as normal.
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 do the hours work, and what have they cost you?
Why ask it
The second half is the question students skip. You are trying to learn what the job takes from a life over years, and lawyers are usually franker about it with a student than with a colleague.
Job shadowing
Which meetings or calls today should I step out of, and what should I keep to myself afterward?
Why ask it
A shadow is a guest inside the confidentiality a lawyer owes clients. Asking at the start of the day shows you understand that, and it saves both of you an awkward moment at a conference room door.
Can you tell me what this hearing is for before we go in?
Why ask it
Court moves fast and in shorthand, so an observer with no background follows almost none of it. Two minutes on who wants what from the judge turns an hour on a bench at the back into something you can read.
What were you trying to find out from the client in that meeting?
Why ask it
From a chair in the corner, a client meeting looks like polite conversation. The lawyer went in needing certain facts and certain decisions, and hearing what they were shows you the structure under the small talk. Expect a general answer where the details are confidential.
Why did you word that letter the way you did?
Why ask it
Legal writing is full of choices that read as stiffness to an outsider. Ask about one sentence you watched them rewrite and you learn why a fact was left out or a demand softened, which is the craft itself.
What were you listening for while the other side was speaking?
Why ask it
At a hearing or a negotiation, a good share of the job is done in silence. Their answer shows what a trained ear picks out: a date, a concession, a single word that changes what an offer means.
What did you write down during that call, and why those things?
Why ask it
What a lawyer chooses to record, an exact phrase, a deadline, a promise, is a guess about what will matter months from now. It is one of the few parts of their judgment you can see from across the desk.
Is there something public, like a filed brief or a standard contract, that I could read while you are busy?
Why ask it
Shadow days have long stretches where the lawyer has to work and there is nothing to watch. A filed brief or a standard contract shows you the finished product of the job, and asking for something public means they do not have to worry about what you see.
Could I spend half an hour with a paralegal or a junior associate before I leave?
Why ask it
Paralegals and juniors do the parts of the work the person you are shadowing handed off years ago. A junior is also the nearest thing in the building to your own future, and will often say things a partner would not.
If I had come on a different day this month, what would I have seen instead?
Why ask it
One day is a small sample, and a student who happens to see a trial or a closing can go home with the wrong picture. This asks them to place today against the quiet weeks and the frantic ones.
What would you give me to do if I came back for a second day?
Why ask it
Their answer is a sketch of what a student can usefully do in that office, which is close to a description of an internship there. It also leaves the door open without asking for anything outright.
Making the most of a conversation with a lawyer
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting up the conversation
Ask for twenty minutes, not a mentorship
A short, bounded request is far easier to say yes to. Name the connection, say what you are deciding, and propose a specific length. Lawyers bill their time in six-minute increments and will notice that you respected it.
Do not open by asking for a job
If you want advice, ask for advice. Turning an informational interview into a job pitch halfway through makes the lawyer feel used and usually ends the relationship. Referrals come later, once they know something about you.
Read enough to skip the obvious
Check their firm bio, recent matters, and the practice group page. Ten minutes of reading lets you ask about the shift they made three years ago instead of asking what kind of law they practice.
Bring five questions, not twenty
Pick the ones that touch the decision you are actually making. If you are still deciding whether to apply, spend most of them on what to ask lawyers about law school: the cost, the debt, and whether they would go again. A conversation that follows one thread deeply is more useful than one that touches every subject on a list, and it leaves room for the tangents where the real information lives.
If you are job shadowing a lawyer
A shadow day runs on the lawyer's calendar, not yours. Hold your questions for the walk back from court or the gap between calls, ask about what you have just watched, and leave the room without being asked twice when a client's matter calls for it.
Reading what you hear
- One lawyer is one data point. A litigator at a large firm and a solo practitioner in the same city describe different jobs, so gather several accounts before drawing conclusions.
- Notice how they talk about hours. People who have made peace with the schedule sound different from people still arguing with it, and both are telling you something true about their corner of the field.
- Vague answers about culture usually mean the culture is not the selling point. Ask instead what happens when a junior makes a mistake.
- Take the advice about their own specialty with some salt. Most people believe their practice area is the interesting one.
- Ask yourself whether you would want their Tuesday, not their title. Prestige travels well in conversation and badly in daily life.
What goes wrong
Treating the conversation as an audition
Students who spend the time proving they are impressive learn nothing. You are there to collect information, and the questions you ask are the only impression that matters anyway.
Asking only about the good parts
Any career looks fine if you never ask what the bad weeks are like. Leave room for at least one question the lawyer might hesitate over, and let the pause happen rather than rescuing it.
Skipping the follow-up
A short thank-you note within a day, mentioning one specific thing you took from the conversation, is what turns a single meeting into someone who remembers you. Most students never send it.
Not writing it down
Details blur after three of these. Spend five minutes afterward recording what surprised you and what you still do not know, so the next conversation can start where this one stopped.