The ND Lawyer
Each week we talk to a different diverse thinker about their experience. Tune in to get tips, insights and ideas as we explore topics such as neurodiversity and mental health in work, university, and employment processes. Hosted by an Autistic/Dyspraxic magic circle trainee solicitor, join our community.
The ND Lawyer
Amelia on NQ Solicitor Interviews: A Reflection
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Introduction and overview - 0:00
Section 1, Why there is an information gap: 07:10
Section 2, Using legal recruiters: 10:30
Section 3, How to find roles: 14:28
Section 4, CVs: 19:54
Section 5, Competency and Technical Interviews: 24:34
Section 6, Reasonable adjustments: 38:45
Outro and summary: 43:27
Hi everyone and welcome back to the ND Lawyer podcast. I do apologize if the audio quality isn't fantastic. I'm at my boyfriend's house and I don't have my mic. So we're working with what we've got. The next door neighbour seems to be doing quite a lot of conveniently timed drilling, so I do apologize if that makes the cut. I'm just gonna reintroduce myself quickly because this podcast is now figuratively popping up every once in a blue moon. I'd love to say it was just because I was busy, but I was actually just going through one of those phases where the thought of hearing my own voice felt genuinely intolerable. And also my dad passed away, which is probably a better justification. Anyway. I'm Amelia, I'm an autistic and dyspraxic solicitor who runs the ND Lawyer project. I trained at a Magic Circle firm, and before that, I did a law degree at the University of Leeds and the accelerated LPC at the University of Law in Moorgate. I'm now due to start an NQ role soon. But more on that later. I'm really not sure why, but a couple of weeks ago I had this sudden compulsion to record another episode, and when I asked myself what to focus on, the answer was glaringly obvious. NQ interviews. They've dominated my life for the past few months, so it felt like really the only candid topic to tackle. Full transparency. This episode was actually partly inspired by a Reddit post I came across where someone shared their experience with specific NQ interviews in some detail. I'm not gonna get quite that granular there, but reading it kind of transported me back to when I was just starting out, feeling rather adrift and frustrated by how scarce practical, actionable guidance was. That post genuinely resonated with me because it was exactly the sort of insight I wish I'd had at the time. So I thought I'd do my own little episode on it. A little context without turning this into a full-blown memoir, because I want it to be useful rather than just me complaining or telling you about my own experience. I had an opportunity presented to me relatively late in my training contract, but I had a I don't know if premonition is the right word, but I'm gonna go with it, that it just wasn't the right move. My father was, as it turned out, terminally ill at the time, and ultimately I decided to go home. I was really worried at that point that the gap on my CV, even though I was keeping myself busy with various other little projects, might jeopardize my trajectory. For a while, applications really yielded little success. And while I felt like I was kind of treading water, gradually opportunities began to crystallize, and I had to make some quite deliberate choices about the direction that I wanted to pursue at that stage. The consequence of that period was that I ended up interviewing for quite a remarkable. I say remarkable because I never anticipated doing this array of roles, different firms, practice area, locations, different kinds of sectors of law as well. Um interviews went very well, and others not so much. Uh, but now I've accepted an offer and I'm preparing to start this new little chapter of mine. Looking back to the first NQ interview I did, I remember kind of scouring the internet and feeling mostly underwhelmed by the resources available, which is precisely why I wanted to share my reflections in this episode. Broadly speaking, I think the information fell into two camps. So, first, recruiter websites, which tended to be very generic, very high-level, and focused on kind of just interview skills or knowing your practice area without ever really explaining what that actually looks like in practice. And second, a handful of individual posts or threads, which were helpful, don't get me wrong, but often quite briefed and focused on kind of overarching themes rather than the reality of what you actually asked to do in NQ interviews. I assumed then that I would get more detailed guidance from recruiters and from firms themselves, and in a lot of cases, that just didn't happen. I'll talk more about that later, especially recruiters. But overall, I was fairly disappointed, especially coming from having done training contract assessment centres where you are literally flooded with information nowadays. There are, of course, some reasons for that, but I'll I'll come onto that later, and I think the point still stands. Just to be clear before we get into it, I am not claiming to be some kind of expert. I'm not a recruitment guru, I'm not pretending this is a definitive guide to NQ interviews by any sense of the word. I am doing this purely because I was absolutely terrified before my first NQ interview, and I very nearly backed out because I felt like I had literally nothing to go on. And I don't want people to be scared away from doing external NQ interviews purely on that basis. So this episode is really just gonna be me sharing what I learned along the way, especially because as I said, I ended up doing quite a lot of these interviews, and so I can talk generally speaking from a few different perspectives. But as I said, and I want to reiterate again, I'm not an expert. Um I'm gonna keep this episode as structured and easy to navigate as possible. So I'll be adding uh chapter navigation in the description for once, which I know a few people have requested a few times. Um so here's what I'm gonna cover. Let me just get my notes up. Yes. Uh first, why I think there's a real gap information around NQ interviews. This is very much my own assessment, so feel free to skip it if it's not your thing. Um, then legal recruiters, my experience with using them, what worked, what didn't, and where I think I made mistakes as well. Then I'll talk about how I actually found roles, including kind of when I stopped relying on recruiters. I'll get into that and started applying directly. Then I'll do a brief section on CVs. This definitely isn't my area of expertise, but I'll explain what worked for me and how I adapted my CV when applying for this fairly wide range of roles I keep going on about. Afterwards, I'll focus on interview preparation, competency questions, technical exercises, and the various kind of meet the team or partner stages and what you might expect during those stages. Based on my own experience, of course, I can't speak for the whole profession. And then finally, I'll include a section on reasonable adjustments and the NQ process from a neurodivergent perspective. I've put this towards the end as I appreciate it won't be relevant to everyone, um, but I thought it would be useful to include given the usual focus of this podcast. So let's get straight into it. Section one, where I think the problem lies. I think there's a pretty significant information gap when it comes to NQ interviews, and that's especially pertinent when you compare it to training contracts. There is obviously so much guidance out there now. Websites, courses, forums, podcasts, entire careers teams dedicated to it. But with NQ interviews, it's a very different story. Now, to be fair, there are usually fewer people doing NQ interviews than TC assessment centres, particularly if you exclude internal retention processes. And there's this expectation that by that point you'll know more about your practice area, have more connections, and generally be able to model for interviews with less handholding, which is technically true. But I think there's also a bit of a stigma around external NQ interviews. Either you don't want your training firm obviously to know that you're looking, which is completely understandable, or you don't have an internal offer for whatever reason, which isn't always performance-based, but it still feels awkward to explain. And you definitely don't want to shout about it online. Or a lot of people don't anyway. The goal standard is obviously very much train and be retained, even though that isn't always realistic. It can encourage people to stay put for the label of being retained rather than because the role is actually right for them, which is why you often see people, I think, leaving not long after. There's also the very real practical issue that moving at NQ level is hard. You're still on a steep learning curve. And if you move externally, you're also learning new systems, new people, and new processes all at once. When you put all of that together, what you end up with is a real lack of accessible guidance, and it's pretty daunting. These are the first interviews where you're expected to already have kind of this solid grasp of a role and the area that you're applying for. While, of course, there are similarities with training contract assessment centers, it's definitely not a repeat exercise. The goalposts have moved. Firms want to know that you can actually hit the ground running, particularly if you're journeying externally. The difficulty is that you can't really talk about this process openly with many people for all the reasons I've just mentioned. You're also not part of a big cohort of applicants all going through the something at the same time, sharing notes. Uh, firms themselves don't tend to help much either. In my experience, you go from half a website dedicated to training contracts to not a single line on NQ recruitment. I've asked for more information after receiving interview invites, and often the response has just been the interview will assess whether you're a good fit or something similarly brief, which is obviously not very helpful. Just as a caveat to what I was saying earlier, and yes, I'm adding things in as I'm editing this, is when I say that you need to hit the ground running, um, I just mean that there's an expectation that you will obviously jump up from your training. I don't mean that people are not going to see you as what you are, which is an NQ, and therefore it kind of consolidates the point that you still do need information about these interview processes. It's all about section two, legal recruiters. So unfortunately, I can probably count on one hand the number of recruiters I worked with who gave me information that, in my opinion, went meaningfully beyond what I could find online or what I already knew, or what was in the copied and pasted email from the firm inviting me to interview. In quite a few cases, recruiters actually made the process more difficult. Communication between me and firms was slowed down, information wasn't passed on, questions weren't asked, or I was given advice that was, in my opinion, either quite biased or occasionally just turned out to be incorrect. A lot of the time I found myself thinking, you know, what is this adding? Especially when the role was advertised to apply directly anyway. And obviously, there are firms where you will have to apply through a recruiter, and that's just how the market works. But part of my frustration came from the fact that many recruiters didn't really look listen to what I was looking for. For some that made sense. They operated within a very narrow group of firms and simply couldn't branch out. It's fine. For others, it felt more like, okay, so you don't want to work at Kirkland, would you like to work at Scabin? Just to be clear, that's not a criticism, Kirkland or Scabben. That's not to say they're exactly the same firm, but it's more about the assumption that everyone wants to work at the same firm at the same time in their career. If you join the Magic Circle firm, you'll start getting LinkedIn messages from recruiters about big US firms surprisingly early, sometimes from your second seat onwards. In fact, I think I've got a few in my first seat. And if you reply saying you want to explore broader options, the conversation often just ends. Now, to be fair, I think I also made some mistakes at the beginning. I didn't ask enough questions, I didn't go into the process with much of a strategy. So these are some of the things I really wish I'd asked recruiters from the outset. First, how broad is your practice? Are you focused on large US firms only, or do you actually cover a range of firms and roles in a range of locations? Second, how up to date are you on what's out there? There were times I saw roles advertised on a recruiter's own website that would have been perfectly for me and it hadn't been put forward at all. Then I kind of thought, okay, maybe there's a reason there. So I'd email and they'd say, oh no, sorry, we just we just forgot to send it to you. Third, where do you actually have contacts? Do you have experience placing candidates at these firms? How well do you understand the recruitment processes and what they're actually looking for? Fourth, how comfortable are you asking firms questions on my behalf and maybe even pushing back when necessary? And finally, sometimes it's completely reasonable to ask if this role is publicly advertised, what value do you add compared to me just applying directly? Now I'm sure a lot of this comes down to just recruiters being busy and oversubscribed. And as I've said, I did work with some gen, well actually, I don't think I have said this, I've worked with some genuinely good ones who genuinely wanted to help. I definitely don't want to over-generalised. There are some fantastic people that I worked with. But if you're working with a recruiter that it isn't adding value, I don't think there's anything wrong with applying directly, as I did for the role that I accepted and quite a few of the other roles that I ended up getting offers for, especially if you know you're a good applicant for that role. And with that, I'll move on to how I actually found roles. Where do you actually go to find the roles? First, don't sleep on firm or company websites. It sounds like a lot of admin, but many mid-tier firms, specialized boutiques, and especially kind of in-house legal departments, don't always use recruiters. They'll post a role on their own careers page and occasionally nowhere else. Um, so I'd make a list of kind of 10, 15 places you're interested in. Don't wait for a notification, go directly to the source. I kind of checked every week or so. Then you've got specialized job boards. So beyond just LinkedIn jobs, which is a very useful source, look at things like the Law Society Gazette or Tokyo Illegal or the lawyer jobs. These are great because the filters are actually decent. You can kind of drill down into nearly qualified and specific practice areas without getting a hundred irrelevant hits that you can end up on things like indeed. If you're feeling a little bit burnt out, part of the traditional billable owl model, um, you can have a look at flexible legal providers. Think of places like Axiom, Flex Legal, or Lawyers on Demand. These are good because they allow you to do placements or interim roles. It's perfect if you aren't 100% sure of what niche you want to settle into yet, or if you want to experience life outside, life inside, rather, say like a big tech company or a bank without committing to a permanent contract from day one. It gives you that variety and frankly a bit more control when maybe you've only sat in kind of four to six areas of private practice. There are also obviously public sector roles of which many NQ roles don't ask for specific experience. So look on civil service jobs or government legal department, you know, things like HMRC, the FCA website have dedicated NQ intakes. If you're looking for in-house positions, I'm by no means definitely not an expert on this. Um we did actually see there were quite a lot at NQ level that I spotted, and not all of them are looking for in-house prior trainees. The same job portals above um work as well, but obviously just setting alerts on LinkedIn. Also, if there are specific businesses you're looking for, then following senior legal counsels or general counsels on LinkedIn to see if they post anything can be helpful. Obviously, following this route from private practice can take a little bit more research, but it's worth considering if it's something that might suit you better. Um on a final note on this, I just want to say that there's this myth that in the second you finish your training contract, the world just kind of opens up and every door is unlocked. I don't think that's strictly true. In some areas, it does, don't get me wrong. In others, not so much. You're gonna see a lot of roles asking for kind of one or two years PQE, and it can feel like a bit of a gut punch when you are NQ, but anything is strictly stuck to the lane that you've trained in. I got through final rounds for roles where they were kind of miles away from what I did in my training. You don't have to look at your training contract and say, Well, this is my life now. That's very much a trap, and it's okay to look around, it's okay to speak to people and just try things out. You've probably got mentors and partners whispering in your ear that you have to stay in the kind of biggest private practice firm possible for as long as you can. They'll obviously tell you that it sets you up for life, and sure for some that's that's a dream, and you know, that's a perfectly good route to choose. But if it's not your dream, then you don't necessarily have to spend the next three or four years on something that doesn't fulfil you just for the sake of a line on your CV. There's a world beyond, you know, there's a top 20, even top 200 law firms. There are really fascinating in-house roles when you're actually part of a business. There are offshore roles in places like Cayman Islands or Channel Islands if you want a total change of scenery. There's legal tech for people who want to disrupt the way that we work. Uh, not necessarily in a bad way, by the way. Uh there's firms in new locations with clients from different sectors with totally different training and development approaches, with a handful of people in your team rather than 40 if you want it. Or the opposite. It's worth looking around, is all I'm saying. The most important thing I think you can do in the kind of final seat of your training contract is reflect. Think what do you want today? Because that might be very different from what that 21-year-old or however old you were when you started your training. It's okay to pivot. Nothing is impossible and no move is strictly permanent, but obviously it's it's there's a caveat there in terms of making sure that you're not doing anything which is gonna completely kind of stop you from doing other things in the future. But speak to more senior people, get the advice. So I'm not gonna go on and on about CVs because as I've stated multiple times now, do you know what it is? I think it's do you know when you see people complaining about future trainees offering training contract advice to aspiring lawyers and people moan about it because obviously they've not actually started in the role yet. I feel like that's kind of what I'm doing, but just want to reiterate again that it's not my area of expertise. Um and to be honest, actually, CVs is one area where I think that recruiters actually do okay. Like a lot of them have templates on the websites, or they provide you pretty accurate advice over a telephone call. My own CV was quite basic from a layout perspective, nothing particularly creative or eye-catching, and that was quite deliberate. What mattered far more was kind of how clearly it told the story of what I'd done and what I was looking to do next. The first thing I would usually change, depending on the role, was the profile summary at the top. I kind of treated that almost like a signpost the reader. It needed to make it kind of immediately obvious what role I was applying for, what my background was, one or two key highlights that captured my skills or experience. In practice, that often meant deciding what I wanted to be known for in that application. If it was a technical role, I'd lead with more technical experience and drafting. If it was more client-facing, I'd led with client contact, responsibility, and commercial exposure. Obviously, in the context of private practice and key roles, it's it's probably going to be a bit of both. The background was the same, obviously, me, but the emphasis changed. Um I then spent most of my time tailoring the experience section of my training contract. That doesn't always mean kind of inventing new examples. More often it just meant being Selective. So depending on the role, I would either change the tasks I included for each seat or reframe them to emphasise different skills, you know, for example, drafting, project management, working autonomously, whatever. Um, I was also quite intentional about ordering. I always put the seat that was most closely aligned with the role that I was applying for at the top of the CV. I'm sure some of this is just common sense. The seat would typically have more detail, perhaps kind of eight bullet points, whereas other seats that I'd done maybe only kind of three to five. Um, you know, it's just about relevance. I'd usually then include kind of a short additional section covering broader experiences, things like business development activity, internal projects, or firm initiatives that I was part of. In my case, that also included um this, the NQ Lawyer Project. NQ Lawyer Project, God, I've I've been talking about this for too long now. Um, ND Lawyer Project. These sections can be helpful because they show commercial awareness and engagement within obviously the wider business, but they should really never overshadow the training contract itself, which is always going to be obviously the main event. One thing I would say is that it takes time to get comfortable with how you describe your experience. Early on, I found it quite difficult because I was trying to do several things at once, show the breadth of the work that I'd done, reflect the calibre of the clients, demonstrate my impact and articulate obviously the skills that I developed. It's quite a lot to balance. With practice, though, you do generally start to do that more naturally. Kind of using active language really helps phrases like proactively manage, took responsibility for, led on, whatever, make a difference and they kind of allow the reader to see not just what you're exposed to, but how you actually operated as a lawyer and what you would bring to the team going forward. That's how I structured mine. Um, obviously, people will have different experiences. I'm sure some people who've changed careers, their CVs are going to look a little bit different. And if you can get someone more senior to review your CV, that can also be really beneficial. I had a fair few people who looked at mine that I was very grateful for, um, and they gave me some pointers, and it really, really helped, or just some recruiters which you trust and know that have the expertise. So I guess we're now on to the bit that I mainly wanted to share today, um, and I want to spend a bit of time going through the common interview formats I came across and kind of crucially the types of questions and exercises I was actually asked to do. As obvious as it sounds, and as much as I've stated this, I think this is one of the biggest information gaps in the NQ process. It's often not all that clear what you're going to be faced with, and that uncertainty can be more stressful than the interviews themselves. Like, I think a lot of people say, Oh, it's because there's often less stages than trading contracts. In my experience, a lot of the larger firms, their NQ process were just as rigorous, slightly less scary because you kind of know what you're doing a little bit more, but still. What I will say up front is that this is obviously based on a limited number of firms, practice areas, and sectors. Uh, but hopefully, by grouping up my experiences, it gives you a clearer sense of what you might expect, but won't necessarily get. Um, so I'll start with private practice because many firms followed a broadly similar structure, even if the order varied. Most processes included some form of competency-based interview, often with one or two partners. These ranged from being purely competency and motivation focused to having a more overt commercial element. In that sense, they felt quite similar, but not exactly the same as training contract interviews. Um, you were still expected to obviously know the firm well, its values, strategy, clients, and market position to be able to articulate why you wanted to be there. Um, but I would say there was less direct questions about the firm. A consistent theme across all of them was the why us question, um, and more specifically, why us and not your training firm. I don't think this was about identifying 15 perfectly formed differentiators because there probably aren't them, particularly if you're applying to quite similar firms, or really criticising your training firm. In reality, that's quite difficult and probably not particularly persuasive. What worked better was being very positive about something the firm you're applying to could offer, whether that was culture, development, um, you know, a particular client base or sector, team structure, use of technology, etc. And then clearly linking that to you personally, what you value, and then what the firm values. Quite a few interviews involved drilling into matters on my CV. Uh, that was sometimes technical and sometimes not. Um, but you do need to be very clear about what your role actually was, uh, which is why the general advice is obviously not to put anything on your CV that you can't talk about in depth. Depending on the practice area, um I was asked to talk through deal structure and explain why it was set up in a particular way, why certain elements were missing, or what issues arose during a transaction. In a regulatory context, that might look more like explaining how you went about finding certain information, talking through a standard regulatory process, or when a particular exclusion might apply. In both transactional and regulatory interviews, I was almost always asked to explain client decisions from a commercial perspective. So, why did they make this decision? Why did they not do this? Occasionally things did get a little bit technical, um, and to be honest, it sometimes felt a little bit of a look of the draw as to whether it was something you'd come across. There were moments where I kind of thought, I'm not sure I'd be fully comfortable with this, even if I was more qualified. Um, but I'll come back to the technical side later. And generally it wasn't too bad. Interestingly, uh, I was rarely asked very formulaic competency questions like tell me a time you demonstrated X skill. Instead, questions were definitely more practical and reflective. So, how did you build relationships within your training firm? How did you work with local council? How did you manage your time? How did you use AI in your work? Those sorts of things. Overall, I actually found that many private practice interviews were relatively light on formal consequences questions, and at times it felt like firms weren't especially focused on it. But that makes it even more important, obviously, that you proactively sell your value in everything that you apologize, my laptop died. Um, what I was saying was that makes it even more important that you proactively sell your value in everything that you say. From the very first tell me about yourself, I would consciously weave in the skills and attributes listed on the job description and start shaping the narrative I wanted to leave them with. One thing I think a lot of trainees struggle with, and I definitely did, is feeling like you played quite a minor role in the success of a dealable matter. It's I think very important, therefore, to remember that smaller and less complex tasks can still be critical to a matter running smoothly. You almost certainly did things that improved efficiency, strengthened client relationships, or ensured a high quality output. You just need to kind of go back through your matters in detail and really unpick what you specifically contributed. That might sound underwhelming, uh setting up a tracker, coordinating with local council in a certain way, organising regular calls, but those things matter. What's key is linking them to how you'll perform as an associate and how they'll align with what the firm and or business, I guess, is actually looking for. For the same reason, I think it's helpful to flag any work that you did that would typically sit more with an associate. So first drafts of substantive documents, managing processes, coordinating work streams, or acting as a point of contact. Um although, as I've said, I didn't really find the competency element as intense or structured as, say, training contract interviews, I actually found it harder to communicate what I wanted to communicate in the right way. That might sound odd, but the looser structure means that you have to be much more intentional about how you present yourself. Two final points on competency interview. First, I won't generalise too much about in-house roles, um, because I've done a handful of interviews and never worked in it. But I consistently found that those interviews were far more detailed from a competency perspective than private practice. Of course, that obviously makes sense because there's often less emphasis on deep technical knowledge, because unless you've done an in-house training contract, you're unlikely to have it if you're moving from private practice. There's a kind of different skill set and a mindset that they're assessing that comes through quite clearly in their interviewing. Secondly, in-house interviews tended to involve more overtly commercial questions, which again makes perfect sense. They were clearly testing whether you understood the business and whether you could work with a wide range of stakeholders. In contrast, private practice interviews didn't involve much standalone commercial questioning beyond what I've already mentioned. I was never personally asked to like a what's currently affecting our clients type question, although I know I have some friends who were asked that kind of thing, so it's probably still to prepare for it. Either way, I think it's still helpful to demonstrate somewhere in the interview that you're keeping up with market trends, particularly if you've had a gap from private practice like I did. The technical parts of interviews were without question, really, the most stressful bit for me. I had very little sense of what level they were pitching at, and in hindsight, I wish I'd worried less about them initially and spent more time refining my competency and motivational answers. Early on, I definitely think I sacrificed one for the other. For context, though, a lot of the roles that I was applying for were very broad in terms of PQE, so they would go from NQ to six-year PQE, and so you were kind of like, although you know that they were probably going to see you in proportion to your level of experience, you still knew you were up against people who would have a lot more technical knowledge. Another mistake I made early on, um, which I'll really emphasize, was trying to know everything though. For one of my first private practice interviews, I spent the best part of about three weeks revising technical material. Don't do that. It's unnecessary and frankly quite counterproductive. I overloaded myself and my mind went blank and I couldn't recall things clearly in the interview, and it just ended up being a complete flop. A better approach, I think, is to focus on overarching themes, things like CLE clauses in core documents and what those core documents are, main processes, the different strands within your practice area, and what role you would take as an associate. Then kind of layer on a solid understanding of the technical background of, at the very least, your own matters. In terms of structure, technical assessments generally fell into a few categories. So, first you had interviews with no technical questions at all, uh, which surprised me, but it was usually clear that the firm was kind of prioritizing certain skills rather than certain technical knowledge, um, and was quite comfortable with people developing technical skills in the job, which you know, if that's something you're looking for, then that's a great way to kind of grasp it. Second, there were scenario-based questions. So these might involve being given a hypothetical, and basically you'll be asked to talk about how you'd approach it, how you'd draft something, or what legal regulatory, or policy considerations were relevant. Some were quite straightforward and some were more challenging. Um, if these were given orally, write them down because some were very, very long, not necessarily impossible to get right, just very difficult to take in initially. Um so don't hesitate to ask for a moment to think. Like I think it's expected that you'll do that. Often interviewers would also guide you with follow-up questions on these, um, which kind of led you nicely to the answer sometimes, even if initially you were a bit dumbfounded by the question. I only had one interview like this where I kind of felt like it was just a pure tick bock knowledge exercise, and I think a lot of people at my level would have struggled with that unless they are very far advanced. Um and then thirdly, there were documents. I'd also like to say on that previous one that I had also not prepared in the way that I should have done. I'd spent a lot of time but done it in the wrong way. So I don't I don't want to just blame the firm for that because it's not entirely their fault. Thirdly, there were document or contract review exercises. So this normally involves spotting issues and explaining how you'd resolve them. These were generally manageable, given the limited context you provide and the fact that obviously they can't provide you with a full suite of documents. The real differentiator wasn't necessarily spotting the issues because I think a lot of non-lawyers may have been able to spot the overarching problems within some of these contracts, like that things were written too broadly or whatnot. Um, it was mainly how specific and practical you could be in proposing solutions. I never had any written assessments. Um I don't know why, I don't know if other firms do written assessments, maybe it's to prevent II use, I don't know. Um so essentially using your preparation time effectively was the key here. Um finally, there was more free form QA style technical questions. These involve being asked about clauses, concepts, mechanisms within your practice area. Um, you know, why you would or wouldn't use something or what advantages it may offer a client. Nothing was wildly obscure, but the depth was up to you. For example, in one that I was offered, I was asked what reasons I'd give a client for using one exchange over the other. Most people could give you an answer to that. What mattered was how granular and commercially grounded you could be in your answer. Overall, I really wouldn't be too stressed about the technical element. It does require preparation, particularly if you've been out of the seat for a while. Um, but only one interview genuinely left me feeling a bit out of my depth, and as I said, that was kind of a combination of imperfect preparation and a genuinely difficult set of questions. But generally, I found the questioning consistent with the level I had reached in my training. So that's gonna be it on general interview processes. I'm not gonna go into things like how to choose your practice area or how the most to make the most out of your training, partly because the episode would be far too long and partly because I think I need a bit more time and experience to speak meaningfully on those topics. Um, what I do want to add though is a section on reasonable adjustments, particularly given obviously the usual focus of this podcast. I'm including this because I think the NQ process can be noticeably more difficult in this respect than the training contract stage, uh, often because they are a lot less formal, and therefore a lot of people will say, well, it's just going to be a nice chat, and therefore we can't see how you would need it, or we don't know how to put it in. Broadly speaking, as I've said, I would find that reasonable adjustments were more resisted, or at least kind of more awkwardly received. There was often kind of an unspoken assumption of you're an NQ now, you really shouldn't need this anymore. That assumption is obviously flawed, um, but it came up often enough that it was quite frustrating. One of my biggest issues, actually, that I forgot to mention during the recruiters section of this, so section two, um, I was repeatedly advised not to ask for reasonable adjustments at all on the basis that doing so would reduce my chances of getting the role. The implication was obviously that requesting adjustments would be seen as a negative signal or something that would count against me in the selection process. There was definitely moments where I had to stop and actively decide whether I was going to ask for adjustments or not. Uh in some I did, in some I didn't. And that's a pretty uncomfortable position to put someone in. Uh kind of having to weigh up access needs against employability before you've even walked in the door. I don't doubt that those recruiters were right on some firms, and that some firms would take issue with it at this stage. But what made this advice particularly frustrating was that it simply wasn't true across the board. In several cases, firms were perfectly willing to accommodate what I was asking for, and I think in reality the adjustments themselves were quite minimal and well within what you'd expect from a fair recruitment process. It was really just me trying to get more structure. Um there's kind of a wider issue here. I think that you know the interview process is often your first real insight into how the firm operates under pressure. If something small and reasonable becomes a problem at that stage, it's worth asking yourself what that might mean for the day-to-day reality of the role, especially when being an NQ is objectively hard. Um, you know, you're learning a new role, often in a new team with higher expectations and less margin for error. And that's kind of exactly the point where support matters most. Of course, you know, it's very competitive for NQ jobs, and so a lot of people are obviously just going to go for what they can get, which is completely understandable, but I think it's worth taking into account. I know there's still that kind of narrative that reasonable adjustments just don't work in these kind of environments, and and I mean in the kind of very big firms, and I I fundamentally disagree with that. I know some people will probably go mad at me on Reddit about that, but to me that view kind of reflects a lack of imagination rather than the practical reality. In my case, a lot of what I was asking for was as basic as having an agenda in an advance, and frankly, I think that's something that should be standard in any interview process anyway. Um, but they're not hard, they're not expensive, and even if they are, like it's it it's pittance really to certain law firms, and I think it just takes a little bit of imagination to see how these things would work in practice. Ultimately, for the firm whose offer I did accept in the end, reasonable adjustments were not an issue. The response was essentially like, okay, we'll sort it out for you. No drama, no pushback, or anything like that. Okay, so I'll leave it there. If there's one thing I hope kind of comes across from this episode, beyond the fact that I am not an expert, is that NQ interviews aren't some completely opaque or mystical process. Even though they can feel like that when you're in the middle of them, they're often inconsistent and sometimes frustrating, but they are they can be navigated once you have a clearer sense of what's actually being assessed. I also really want to emphasize that. Struggling with the process doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. A lot of the difficulty comes from the lack of transparency and the fact that you're expected to make quite a big career decision at a point where you're still probably very much learning who you are as a lawyer and what you want from the job. If you're listening to this while preparing for NQ interviews or even just thinking about whether you want to move externally at all, I hope this made things feel a little bit less daunting. And perhaps most importantly, I'd really encourage you, as I said before, to think about interviews as a two-way process. Um, it took me a while to just stop saying it's like I really want this firm to like me, and step back and think, actually, do I like them? Yeah, the firms are assessing you, but you're also learning a huge amount about them, how they structure the process, what they focus on, and how they respond to questions or requests for support, and how they speak about their people, all tell you far more than a careers page ever will. If nothing else, I hope this episode helps you see that NQ interviews are not just a test of your competence, but you know, an opportunity to work out whether a firm is actually somewhere you can grow, do good work, and be supported while doing it. As always, thank you very much for listening. If this episode resonated with you or you have your own experience you'd want to talk about in a future episode, feel free to reach out because let's keep conversations going. Um, and I'll speak to you next time on the ND Lawyer Project podcast. I can't ever get that right.