How do I answer competency questions?

• Law firms will have criteria for the skills & qualities they look for in their trainee solicitors.
• Interviewers want to hear examples of when you demonstrated these skills.

• Know yourself & your application: there is a chance that interviewers might want to follow up on something you mentioned in your application form.
• Consider examples from your legal & non-legal experience!
• Don’t worry, you won’t lose brownie points if the situation or problem was part-and-parcel of your daily tasks provided you hit the other pointers & explain the results or what you learnt from it.
• Try to provide different examples to the ones on your application form. If you do use an example from your application form, expand on the details, but do not over-embellish or lie.
• When giving examples, try to quantify your results or achievements where possible e.g. 50 people attended the event I organised for my university’s law society.
• Don’t forget to use ‘I’: it sounds obvious, but it’s easy to slip into ‘we’ when the question is asking about what you did in the situation. While it’s great to give credit & demonstrate teamwork, the interviewer wants to know what YOU did in this situation.

Example Questions:

• Give an example of a time you experienced conflict or disagreement. How did you resolve this?
• Give an example of your ability to negotiate & persuade. How did you go about this, and how successful were you?

STAR: Situation, Task, Action & Result 

• Situation: Introduce the situation to the interview, set the context.
• Task: Describe the task you had to complete, including the expectations & challenges it would involve.
• Action: Explain what you did & how you did it.
• Result: End with the results of your efforts, including accomplishments, rewards & impact.

BACK: Background, Action, Consequence & Knowledge

• Background: What challenge or problem were you facing? What did you need to do in this situation? Briefly describe the context you were in, including your general roles & responsibilities.
• Action: What did you actually do? Talk through your actions chronologically & highlight what part of the issue each of your actions targeted.
• Consequence: What was the outcome of your Action(s)? Summarise the overall result of this challenge – was your team/client happy with the result? You’re being asked to demonstrate a specific skill asked of you by the employer, make sure you link back to it.
• Knowledge: What did you learn from this experience? Lawyers are constantly learning. Demonstrate that you can recognise your strengths & weaknesses, including what you would do better or instead if faced with a similar challenge in future.

PEE(L): Point, Example, Explain (& Link)

• This interview technique is pretty self-explanatory & highlights the importance of linking back to yourself, why the legal industry & why this law firm in your answer.

TELL ME ABOUT A TIME WHEN YOU DISPLAYED LEADERSHIP SKILLS?

Worked Example 

• Situation: In my second year at university, I developed my leadership skills by working as a student committee member of my University’s Law Society. At the end of last term I was working on a panel event for 20-30 students, to increase their understanding about working life in a law firm & barrister’s chambers.
• Task: I had to lead in the planning process, including organising & coordinating activities, setting targets, delegating tasks & making decisions. It was a challenging event, given that we had to arrange all of the speakers & the ticket sales virtually, given lockdown.
• Action: Through setting out my expectations early on, I was able to respond promptly & firmly to scheduling issues & queries from both panel members & student attendees, so I was able to manage this well. Also early on, I also showed an interest in 1st year students, as this event would be most useful to them. I ensured that our marketing material for the event encouraged them to attend, & suggested that they ask questions at the event, which built their interest & confidence, & motivated them to take part in the event.
• Result: The enthusiasm of the students was evident by the large number of attendees, which was especially gratifying given the busy student schedule at the time. Developing these techniques was a challenge at first, but experiences of this kind developed my resilience, which I feel would be useful in a leadership role in the future.