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Traditional law firm interviews rely heavily on pedigree, experience, and conversational chemistry without meaningfully testing a candidate's ability to do the work. As AI takes on more first-pass research, drafting, and document review, lawyers create value by directing the tools, challenging their output, and applying legal analysis to a client’s business reality. General Legal built a practical technical interview, our “LeetCode for Law," to evaluate client proficiency in the core competencies of client communication, AI direction, critical review and revision, and strategic judgment.
As one part of the hiring process, the technical interview is considered alongside experience, substantive knowledge, communication skills, interviews, references where appropriate, and the needs of the role. It uses a controlled scenario rather than a live client matter and is intended to provide direct evidence of how a candidate approaches the work. Ultimately, human attorneys make the final hiring decision, not an automated system.
A Personal Quest
As an engineer’s spouse, I have learned more than I ever expected to know about LeetCode. I have watched my partner spend hours working through algorithms, optimizing time complexity, and proving that they can actually write code under pressure.
My BigLaw interview process looked very different.
I spent 45 minutes shooting the breeze about law professors, favorite restaurants, and the time I worked for India’s first unicorn technology startup. Variations of that conversation were repeated five times across approximately 15 firms.
It was vibes, all the way down.
The interviews tested whether I could hold a polished conversation with lawyers from prestigious firms. They did not meaningfully test how I would review a contract, identify a business risk, communicate with a founder, or make a judgment call when the answer was not obvious.
Lateral hiring can have the same weakness.
I once interviewed a senior associate who presented himself as a blockchain expert - this was peak 2021. After two substantive questions, it became clear that his practical knowledge of the industry was much narrower than his résumé suggested. I quickly realized how credentials and experience weren't enough to prove that someone could do the job.
When I joined General Legal, we were building a law firm designed to deliver legal services at the speed of modern business. Our clients range from solo founders to public companies. Our attorneys work through Slack, email, and live deal rooms, often moving from a product question to a contract issue to a commercial decision within the same conversation. We also use AI throughout our legal workflows. It became apparent that hiring based primarily on pedigree and interview chemistry was not going to cut it; we needed to see candidates do the work.
The Historic Absurdity of Legal Hiring
The legal industry’s lack of a meaningful technical interview process has never made much sense to me. Someone may have spent years reviewing documents at a prestigious firm without developing the judgment needed to independently run a complex matter. An attorney leading intellectual-property diligence for an IPO shouldn't need someone to explain why change-of-control restrictions matter, but the interview process doesn't have a procedure for discovering such skills gaps.
For decades, traditional law firms operated through a pyramid model. They hired large junior classes, assigned them substantial volumes of research, document review, diligence, and first-draft work, and billed clients for the hours required to complete it. With the first years of practice functioning as an extended, highly paid apprenticeship, the interview process had no need to screen for immediate practical competence.
That model is now under pressure. According to Law360 Pulse’s 2026 AI Survey,* 70% of attorneys at law firms reported using AI at least once a week.*
AI does not eliminate the need for junior attorneys, nor does it replace legal judgment, but it does reduce the time required for some tasks that historically occupied a significant portion of junior associates’ days. First-pass contract review, document comparison, research organization, issue identification, and initial drafting can now be completed faster with the right tools and appropriate attorney supervision.
Now, law firms must evaluate candidates differently in hiring.
When technology handles more of the initial production work, firms need evidence that an attorney can:
- Give an AI system clear and legally sound instructions.
- Recognize when its output is incomplete, inaccurate, or commercially unrealistic.
- Identify which issues genuinely matter in the context of the deal.
- Communicate those issues clearly to the client.
- Exercise judgment when the most legally protective answer is not the best business answer.
- Take responsibility for the final work.
A traditional conversational interview reveals very little about those abilities.
Modern Lawyering
At General Legal, AI does not replace the attorney responsible for the work. Our systems may help to accelerate initial research, drafting, issue spotting, document comparison, and contract analysis, however, an attorney still has to direct the system, reviewing and revising until they can stand behind the final result.
We aren't hiring attorneys to copy AI output into a client deliverable, but rather ones who know enough to challenge it with clear, precise instructions grounded in legal reasoning. In this day and age, it's critical to recognize that fluency in client industries and business models, as well as the ability to adjust tone, detail, and terminology for different clients (incl. startup founders, product teams, colleagues, and enterprise general counsel) are valuable skills that go far beyond general commercial-contracting knowledge.
The 80/20 Inversion
The Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession has described a potential “80/20 inversion” in legal work, meaning a potential shift in how attorneys divide their time, with AI reducing information-gathering work and increasing the relative importance of analysis, judgment, and communication.
Historically, an attorney might spend approximately 80% of their time collecting and organizing information and 20% analyzing its implications. AI has the potential to reverse that ratio by reducing the time required for information gathering and increasing the relative importance of analysis, judgment, and communication.
Lawyers remain just as important as before, but their value manifests differently. In tailoring a markup to the deal's context rather than mechanically applying an abstract legal standard, the job becomes much more focused on looking beyond the four corners of the immediate assignment to ask the questions a client eager to close a deal may not have considered.
Building Our “LeetCode for Law”
Because the traditional interview process could not reliably identify these skills, we built our own, simulating the environment in which they would actually work. The assessment is based on a controlled scenario, a simulated work exercise designed to evaluate a candidate without using a live client matter.
1. Client Communication
We simulate the kinds of written interactions our attorneys have with clients.
We evaluate how efficiently the candidate learns about the client’s product, commercial position, and actual objective. We look at the questions they ask, the assumptions they challenge, and the way they explain the issue.
A startup founder may want a direct recommendation in plain language. An experienced general counsel may want a more technical explanation of the available options and their consequences.
The candidate should have an understanding of the audience such that they are able to adjust their tone, level of detail, and terminology accordingly, communicating in a way that helps the client make a decision.
2. AI Direction
We ask candidates to use an AI-assisted legal workflow to draft, analyze, or revise part of a document. We evaluate whether the candidate can give the system clear instructions grounded in sound legal and commercial reasoning. AI direction means telling an AI system what to do using instructions that reflect the legal and commercial objective, rather than relying on generic prompts.
Strong direction requires the attorney to understand:
- The client’s objective.
- The purpose of the agreement.
- The parties’ relative leverage.
- The relevant legal and commercial risks.
- The desired outcome.
- The limitations of the tool.
A precise instruction requires the attorney to know what they are asking for and why, avoiding vague instructions which produce generic results.
3. Critical Review and Revision
The most important part of the exercise, after the AI produces an output, the candidate has to review it. AI-generated work can sound polished while missing context, overstating a legal position, proposing commercially unrealistic language, or failing to identify an important issue.
We evaluate whether the candidate can:
- Identify errors and unsupported assumptions.
- Recognize missing issues.
- Distinguish material risks from minor drafting preferences.
- Explain why the system’s output falls short.
- Improve the substance rather than merely editing the wording.
- Revise the work to reflect the client’s actual business context.
The AI tool does not score or select the candidate. General Legal attorneys evaluate the candidate’s reasoning, communication, and final work.
4. Strategic Judgment
Finally, we introduce situations in which the most protective legal position may not be the right business decision.
The candidate may need to decide whether to insist on a contractual change, accept a manageable risk, suggest an operational workaround, or raise the issue directly with the client before revising the document. This helps us understand whether they can look beyond the clause in front of them and understand the transaction as a whole.
That means asking questions such as:
- How much leverage does the client have?
- Is this risk likely to materialize in practice?
- Would insisting on this position delay the deal unnecessarily?
- Can the risk be managed operationally?
- Does the proposed position conflict with something the client has promised elsewhere?
- Which issues should be escalated, and which are too trivial to derail the transaction?
The attorneys we hire understand the difference between obvious legal answers and the best commercial answers and can navigate between them readily.
Before and After Implementing This Assessment
I initially assumed that the technical interview would mostly confirm what we had already learned from the candidate’s résumé and earlier conversations. Instead, the exercise repeatedly changed our view of candidates.
Some people without the most prestigious conventional background performed exceptionally well, asking sharp questions, identifying pressing risks, and producing clear, commercially sensible work. Others with outstanding résumés struggled to translate abstract legal knowledge into practical advice. We have received pushback from candidates who believed their experience should speak for itself, however, a work simulation meaningfully enriches our hiring process by giving us evidence of how candidates think.
We admit that no assessment is perfect. A strong attorney can have a bad day, and a single exercise cannot predict every aspect of future performance. We may have passed on people who could have been excellent in the role, but the technical interview has nonetheless become an important factor in our hiring process, one puzzle piece we consider revealing a professional dimension left behind in the traditional process.
A technical interview gives candidates a realistic opportunity to show us how they work by measuring skills directly connected to the role they seek.
- Candidates are evaluated against the same core competencies.
- The exercise reflects the work attorneys would perform at General Legal.
- It does not contain confidential client information.
- Candidate work is not used as uncompensated work for an active client matter.
- Human attorneys make the hiring decision.
- We assess the candidate’s reasoning, not merely whether their answer matches a hidden preferred response.
- Reasonable accommodations can be made where needed.
Competence Over Pedigree
The work of the legal profession is changing because of AI, which means that the lawyers who thrive will not be those who completely resist AI, nor will they be the ones who trust it blindly. We look for people who can walk the middle ground, exercising human judgment even as new tools help accelerate certain parts of their work. The best lawyers will be technically fluent and legally knowledgeable with a strong sense of commercial judgment. They'll be disciplined in verifying answers, adept at communicating with clients, and professionally responsible.
At General Legal, we value competence over pedigree. Our “LeetCode for Law” is designed to identify the attorneys who can perform the work our clients require. When a General Legal attorney enters a deal room, their confidence will not come solely from the prestige of their previous firm, but from their ability to do the work.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI direction?
AI direction means giving an AI system clear instructions grounded in sound legal and commercial reasoning, taking into account the client’s objective, the agreement, the parties’ relative leverage, the relevant risks, the desired outcome, and the limitations of the tool.
What is critical review of AI-generated legal work?
It involves identifying errors and unsupported assumptions, recognizing missing issues, distinguishing material risks from minor drafting preferences, explaining why the AI output falls short, and improving the substance to reflect the client’s business context.
What is strategic judgment in legal work?
Strategic judgment means understanding the broader transaction and deciding whether to insist on a contractual change, accept a manageable risk, suggest an operational workaround, or escalate an issue to the client.
Does the AI tool select the candidate?
No. The article states that the AI tool does not score or select the candidate. General Legal attorneys evaluate the candidate’s reasoning, communication, and final work.
How does the assessment address fairness?
Candidates are evaluated against the core competencies required for the work attorneys would perform at General Legal. The assessment does not contain confidential client information and candidate work is not used as uncompensated work for an active client matter. Human attorneys make the hiring decision, and reasonable accommodations can be made where needed.