How to hire a Legal Counsel
What the role does, the job description, the interview questions, and the 42-minute screening pack that tells you who can do the job before you book a single interview.
The role
What a Legal Counsel does
A Legal Counsel sits in the Legal & Compliance function. The sections below give you the job description, the interview questions and the screening pack for the role.
Screen before you interview
The Legal Counsel screening pack
Ethics, privacy, risk and rigorous reasoning. Every applicant gets one link. You get one ranked report.
- 1
How do you advise a team that wants to move faster than the law allows?
- 2
Walk us through how you review a vendor contract.
- 3
Describe a compliance issue you identified before it became a problem.
- 4
How do you explain legal risk to executives in plain language?
- 5
Where do you draw the line between legal advice and business judgement?
Interview questions
Legal Counsel interview questions
For the candidates who pass the pack. Each comes with a sample answer on the full page.
Ask these after the screening pack, not instead of it. A candidate who has already scored on Business Ethics and Compliance, GDPR and Privacy, Risk Management, Critical Thinking has shown they can do the work, which frees the interview to do what a test cannot: find out how they think, how they explain themselves, and how they behave when something goes wrong.
- Ask every Legal Counsel candidate the same questions in the same order. Comparable answers are the whole point; a different conversation with each person tells you who you liked, not who was strongest.
- Look for a specific example with a result, not a description of how the candidate would approach it in principle. Follow up once with “what happened next?” and stop talking.
- Score each answer before moving to the next question, and write down what was said rather than the impression it left.
- At volume, record the first 4 of these instead of calling. Candidates answer on their own time, the answers are transcribed and scored, and you keep live interviews for the shortlist.
The pack takes a candidate about 42 minutes, so a Legal Counsel applicant arrives at this interview already measured on the parts you can measure without a meeting.
- 01
Tell me about your legal background and the areas you focus on.
- 02
Why do you want to move in-house, or into this in-house role specifically?
- 03
How do you see the role of legal counsel in a growing company?
- 04
How do you keep current with changes in law and regulation?
- 05
How do you approach reviewing and negotiating a commercial contract?
- 06
Describe your experience advising on data privacy and regulatory compliance.
- 07
How do you manage legal risk when advising the business?
- 08
How do you decide when to handle something internally versus using outside counsel?
Frequently asked questions
Send every applicant one link that carries 4 skills tests (Business Ethics and Compliance, GDPR and Privacy, Risk Management, Critical Thinking), a personality inventory and 5 one-way video questions. springhire scores everything automatically and ranks the candidates, so you interview the top few. The free plan covers 10 candidates a month.
About 42 minutes for the tests, plus 10 to 15 minutes for the video questions. Candidates complete it on their own time, on any device.
A short brief, key responsibilities, must-have and nice-to-have skills and the requirements. The JD generator writes one for this role in a minute.
Questions that ask for a specific past example and a walkthrough of how the candidate thinks. This page lists 8 with sample answers, and the full bank has more.
Yes. The free plan includes every screening tool with 10 candidate credits a month and no card. Paid plans start at $39 a month.
