Using Legal Analytics to Help Nail Your Next Job Interview

Nothing helps fight the anxiety of a job interview like preparation. If you are interviewing for a job at a law firm, you have a powerful ally on your side: legal analytics. You can use analytics to find helpful statistics on law firms or individual attorneys that can: (1) help you decide if that firm is a good fit for you and your interests; and (2) impress in the interview itself. Analytics can also help you learn more about companies outside the legal field in case you are interviewing for an in-house position. This post will go over analytics tools on Bloomberg Law, Lexis+, and Westlaw.

For more help with job searching generally, check out our research guide: Legal Job Searching Resources Available in the Law Library.

Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg’s legal analytics platform is accessible from the home screen:

Once you pull up the firm or you have searched for, you can see helpful statistics including most common case type, which side of a case they are on most often, recent activity, firm size, and more:

And you can do the same thing for individual attorneys! If you know who you will be interviewing with, you can find out their school, practice areas, and recent cases they’ve been working on, all of which can be very helpful to know going into an interview. Bloomberg helpfully links directly to its extensive dockets database so you can check out any important ongoing cases for yourself.

Bloomberg also has the most detailed analytics for companies:

This includes common case types, which law firms and attorneys the company most frequently hires, and which jurisdictions they frequent. There is also helpful overviews of what the company does, in-depth company hierarchies to view subsidiaries, and a news tab that pulls up recent articles about the company. All of this is great information heading into an in-house position with a company.

Westlaw Precision

Westlaw’s Legal Analytics Page is available from the “key features” section of the home screen. From there, you can use the search bar to search for specific attorneys or law firms.

Once you pull up the firm you searched for, you can see similar information to Bloomberg Law:

Westlaw now offers company analytics as well, although they aren’t nearly as detailed as on Bloomberg Law.

Lexis+

In Lexis+, the litigation analytics are accessible from the homepage on the left side of the screen:

And just like Westlaw and Bloomberg, Lexis+ can pull up valuable information on case types, frequent clients, and more:

On Lexis+, you can automatically compare two firms or attorneys. This could be helpful when deciding between offers from competing firms, or finding areas of law where a particular firm distinguishes itself.

While these platforms are helpful, be sure to double check any information you can, and don’t let it take the place of all the other research you can do when preparing for a job interview. Analytics platforms won’t help you with major factors like work life balance, compensation, promotion structure, etc.

With these tools at your disposal, you can walk into your next job interview extra confident!