Prep for Your Law Firm Interview: Corporate Practice

Do a deep dive at the law firm's website about their corporate/transactions department(s), and look for patterns:

• major clients/recent deals—industry or financial sector specializations? 
• recent or open lateral hires—where is the firm seeking to grow or deepen its practice?
• marketing materials—how does the firm describe its practice and core strengths? What niche markets does it identify?

Chambers|Associate – "Student's Guide to the Legal Profession" with charts on diversity, rankings, and summer program projections. Bonus Features tab with tips from recruiters and recent summer associates. Participation by law firm recruiters means you are seeing the firm in the way they would like to be presented to prospective summer associates, so with that caveat in mind, dig in.

Bloomberg Law offers a variety of tools to help you get an overview of a firm's practice profile -

• Bloomberg's 4-minute video on using a Transactional Precedent Search to obtain overview information about both large and boutique firms' corporate practice
• League Tables - top 20 firms in a variety of deal categories
• Deal Analytics - review major transactions by law firm or attorney; search by Advisors (firm) or Advisor (individual). Provides documents and background information on M&A and equity offerings. 

Lexis+ Market Standards - database of publicly filed transactions with coverage of M&A for over 33,000 deals from the last ten years. Click More Filters to search by law firm. 

Many leading law firms publish client advisories, newsletters, and other short articles on their areas of expertise and business development focus—some even assign summer associates to work on updating and adding them. Good places to check: 

• Bloomberg Law Law Firm Client Alerts—search by firm name (search box at top) and filter by date (left).
• Law 360 (also available in Lexis+ Legal News Hub)—search by law firm name for news about the firm and Expert Analysis articles authored by lawyers in the firm.  
• Lexology.com—free legal updates, insights, and analyses by over 900 law firms. Search and filter by firm, work area, or jurisdiction. Register to customize daily updates in specific legal areas.

Law Library Catalog:

Books + Articles