Interviewing for a Contract Legal Position

Contract legal hiring has gone from a trend to an established part of the legal workforce. With 50% of law firms and 30% of in-house legal departments utilizing contract professionals, now is a great time to be a contract attorney or paraprofessional—and MLA’s Hire an Esquire is a great place to expand or start your freelance legal career! And, as the legal industry enters its busy season, the need for contract work will be increasing. But once you’ve made the decision to become a contract attorney or paralegal, created an account, and applied to positions, how do you prepare for the next step—the interview?

Of course, you want to show up on time, prepared, and looking professional. These are the basics. But what qualities should you highlight during the interview to make employers interested?

MLA’s Hire an Esquire clients are looking for candidates who have the experience and expertise their roles require. They’re also looking for soft skills like flexibility, adaptability, and drive that allow candidates to quickly get up to speed and successfully navigate a new project and environment. Possessing these traits and knowing how to showcase them in an interview will help you land the job and jumpstart your freelancing career.

Here are 4 things to do and to demonstrate when interviewing for a contract legal position:

1. Be consultative. Ask questions so you can gain a thorough understanding of exactly what the role involves and what the hiring legal team needs both from a hard and soft skill perspective. Reiterate the problem you are being asked to solve and then explain how you will help to solve it. This ensures that you understand the expectations of the project and that it will be a good fit for you. It also demonstrates to the person or organization hiring you that you can take the initiative to understand the scope of work and unknowns on a new project in a new environment.

2. Showcase relevant experience. Contract work often requires a very specific expertise and skillset. If you’ve been consultative in asking questions to fully understand the scope of the project and the dynamics of the work environment, you can emphasize similar projects that you’ve worked on and how your skillset is aligned to the role. This will also allow you to paint a picture of what working with you looks like. But be careful to avoid tunnel vision; you may pigeonhole yourself. Any role likely has more skill requirements and moving parts than can be expressed in a job description and interview, and good engagements tend to lead to more projects with expanded scopes.

3. Show your adaptability. The willingness to learn new skills, to adapt to new ways of doing things, and to take on new responsibilities is a sought-after characteristic during any hiring process. And even more in the temporary nature of freelance work where you’ll be in a variety of different work environments and need to adapt more quickly than when taking on a traditional long-term job. Emphasize your willingness and ability to learn new operations and workflows quickly and provide examples of how you’ve done this in the past. Employers don’t want someone so set in their ways that they won’t be able to mesh well or succeed at their firm.

4. Don’t require micromanagement; be self-sufficient. With contract work, time is precious. You are most likely being brought on a temporary project to help meet a fast-approaching deadline or assist in something crucial for a firm. There is no time for onboarding, training, and supervising like there might be in a traditional long-term role. Describe past examples that demonstrate your self-sufficiency and ability to accomplish goals successfully in the fast-paced freelance environment. This will help to reassure the interviewer that you can be thrown into the thick of a project (or emergency) and come out standing on the other side unscathed and with completed work.

The age of contract legal work is still new and is a learning curve for most. Keeping in mind what these roles may ask of you and how you can meet those expectations is how you’ll get ahead in the game. Good luck!

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