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.
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