How to Crack the Legal Job Interview in the Age of AI

This column unpacks the ongoing impact of AI on the legal profession, specifically the legal job market and careers within it. Each column starts with an emerging AI-employment trend and ends with actionable insights on how to successfully hire top talent or level up individual careers in the era of AI. This installment highlights the changing dynamics of the legal job interview in light of the technological evolution sweeping the industry. The column archive can be found here.

The interview game has changed—thanks to AI.

In years past, prospective employers and employees could rely on a basic tenet: most interviews were structured around three core questions. Why are you interested in this role? Why are you qualified for it? And why are you a good fit for the company?

Today, there is a fourth, unavoidable question that nearly every hiring manager in legal is asking in a legal job interview—often in the very first round: “How are you using AI in your current job?”

This single question has quietly disrupted decades of interviewing best practices.

How to talk AI when you aren’t allowed to use AI at work

For over a decade under my leadership, TruLegal has coached job seekers to focus on the historical—not the hypothetical—during interviews. Reciprocally, we guide hiring managers toward questions that elicit on-the-job storytelling. We often say: “Ask about what they’ve done. Not what they know.” But that philosophy gets complicated when AI enters the conversation.

In the back half of 2025, over 65% of candidates interviewing through TruLegal were asked some form of question about AI skills—whether they had them or not. For many—most, in fact—the question was as simple as: “Tell me how you are using AI at work.”

And for many, the honest answer was:
“I’m not allowed to use it.”
“I haven’t been given access.”
“Our department hasn’t rolled anything out yet.”

According to Thomson Reuters’ 2024 Future of Professionals Report, only 14% of legal professionals reported actively using generative AI in their day-to-day work at that time, even though more than 77% expected AI to have a “high or transformational impact” on their roles within five years. The appetite for AI is massive. Access and implementation are lagging.

So what should candidates—and hiring managers—do when real-world AI experience isn’t there? If you’re a hiring manager interviewing talent without a ready-made AI story, redirect the conversation toward indicators of AI readiness:

• “What processes would you explore using AI to create efficiencies for yourself or your team?”
• “Tell me about a time you navigated rapid technological change at work.”
• “How have you used technology to influence stakeholders and increase productivity?”
• “If you had an unlimited budget, what legal technology would you acquire and why?”

These questions preserve the integrity of behavioral interviewing while still evaluating the traits that matter in an AI-enabled environment. Because what you’re really testing isn’t tool familiarity. It’s mindset.

What legal hiring managers are really looking for

Right now, legal AI job descriptions are snowflakes. No two look the same. That will change as consolidation continues and dominant platforms emerge in the legal AI software space. But for now, hiring managers are prioritizing qualities that historically have not topped legal search requirements:

• Adaptability
• Ingenuity
• Creativity
• Experimentation
• Change management
• Business enablement thinking

In a recent webinar I led with Hershel Eisenberger, Senior Director, Legal Counsel & Global Head of Privacy at Coca-Cola, we had AI “listen in” on our prep call discussing the “net new” attributes corporate law departments are trying to identify in candidates—internal and external. The resulting word cloud was telling: proactively reactive; adaptability; comfortable with failure; superstructure building; embracing experimentation, creativity, and more.  

In 2025, Clio’s Legal Trends Report suggested that up to 74% of billable tasks in law firms — especially those involving data gathering and analysis — are exposed to AI automation. WorldMetrics.org data shows that AI is successfully automating core tasks like document review (68% of firms) and research (82% of firms), with reported time savings of 50–60% in those workflows.

That doesn’t eliminate jobs. It reshapes them. And it demands professionals who can pivot, redesign workflows, and extract business value from emerging tools. Legal employers aren’t just hiring for what candidates can do. They’re hiring for what they can build tomorrow. The skills they want from talent, AI-enabled or not, lean into traits that are foundational for future professional investment and development. 

What AI-enabled job seekers are really looking for

This shift cuts both ways. The most competitive candidates in today’s market aren’t just evaluating compensation and title. 

They’re asking:

• Do you have a defined AI strategy?
• Are you investing in training?
• Is experimentation encouraged—or considered wasted time?
• Who owns AI internally? IT? Legal ops? Innovation?

High-performing professionals want to work where innovation is supported from the top down. They’re wary of environments that publicly market AI ambition but privately stall progress due to risk aversion or internal politics.

According to LexisNexis’ 2024 survey on generative AI in legal, 89% of lawyers believed AI would impact their work, but fewer than half reported receiving formal training from their organizations. The same report in 2026 now finds that 58% of lawyers report producing work faster because of AI, rising to 65% for those using paid AI platforms. There is still a training and access gap. That gap is now a recruiting and retention vulnerability.

If you want AI-forward talent, you must demonstrate AI-forward leadership.

AI as a topic, not a facilitator

In late 2024 and throughout 2025, many organizations—both law firms and corporations—experimented with automating first-round interviews by deploying AI interviewers instead of humans.

The logic was understandable:

• Increase speed to interview
• Standardize evaluation
• Reduce bias
• Lower administrative burden

But here’s what we observed at TruLegal: candidates don’t want their first impression of your culture to be a chatbot. Over 50% of job seekers represented by TruLegal in 2025 who were asked to participate in an AI-conducted first round interview opted-out of further exploring the employment opportunity. 

While AI can streamline scheduling, screening, and note-taking, the legal profession remains a relationship-driven industry and one that is sensitive to digital assets, paper trails, cyber theft, and bias. While these efforts were rarely deployed for senior-level search, candidates at all levels of professional experience expect human engagement early in the process. Removing it may save time—but it appears it will cull the talent pool significantly before skills or fit are assessed. 

Whether you’re hiring or interviewing, here’s the bottom line:

For hiring managers:

• Evaluate AI mindset, not just AI tool usage.
• Be transparent and articulate about your organization’s AI maturity.
• Prepare to outline training programs and personal proficiency in AI to applicants.
• Ask about influence and outcomes, not just inputs and iterations.

For job seekers:

• If you lack direct AI access, explore with free tools (and your own data) independently.
• Stay informed on dominant and emerging tools in your niche.
• Develop change-management stories, not just technical anecdotes.
• Talking about the wins is impressive, but talking confidently about failure is attractive. 

The AI question isn’t going away. But the most successful legal professionals in this new era won’t be those who can merely wield tools. They’ll be the ones who can articulate how technology—AI included—drives business outcomes, strengthens teams, and creates measurable value.

The interview game hasn’t just added a fourth question. It has added a new lens through which every answer is judged.