Digging back to an early interview, this one was probably the most puzzling. It was an interview for a DUI defense mill. I will pass along the only good advice I got from this interview though; if a law firm is looking to expand into another geographical area, you don’t do it all at once. You enter the region with one specialty and then begin adding more areas of practice. In this case, the firm did a significant amount of criminal defense and ‘general catch all law’. But if they were expanding into a new geographical region, they entered with DUI. They said it was the easiest demographic to target with a mix of TV, billboards, and heavy web advertizing (which they didn’t really handle very well.. no idea what was and was not on their websites and no clue as to most of the domains they owned).
Anyway, to give you the mind’s eye view, the interview was in a hotel conference room. And by conference room I mean big empty room with one small empty table and 3 chairs. And considering that the hotel seemed nice, I was surprised by how shitty the conference room was. (weird salmon color, very dirty, choking smell of mold). Anyway, I was talking with 2 partners about the position, mostly the conversation revolved around my internship experiences. But the whole while that they were talking to me, they both had the strangest smiles. It was like they had some inside joke going on and I had walked in on it. So for the whole interview I was trying to figure out what was so damned funny. The only thing I can think is that they found it hilarious that I actually showed up to interview with them.
I was pretty certain I didn’t have the job at the end of the interview. I still regret not asking one question of the interviewers. One of them had previously been a police officer; and was now a DUI defense attorney. Which means they were either doing it 110% for the money, or there was a much more interesting story about them leaving the force. Although prosecutors and defense attorneys usually play nice with each other, I didn’t know many police who would bother spitting on a criminal defense attorney if they were on fire.