Content of the Week: 28th July 2025

How to Write a Legal CV

I see a lot of CVs, and most of them are fine. They cover the key aspects of your roles, and provide enough information for someone to know where you worked and what your job was. But that's not enough when there are 1000+ people applying to jobs.

Here are three tips that can help make your CV stand out:

1) Add context to your achievements - saying that you 'led an acquisition worth $[X]xmillion transaction' is good, but give me some more. Which jurisdiction, what exactly was your role as the leader, what challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? Don't do this for every part of your CV, just one or two bullet points per role (your CV should be no longer than 3-4 pages).

2) Mirror the language of the JD. Go beyond just tailoring your experience to the JD, and actually get a feel for how the business communicates through the JD. Use their terminology e.g. if they say 'data protection' you should do the same, not say 'data privacy'. If it's a startup and they write less formally, give that a go (to a certain extent, remember that you're meant to be the 'serious' person so don't go too gen z).

3) Master using white space, and don't be afraid of it. A CV should be easy to digest, if you've used size 9 font and clumped everything together it won't be appealing to read and people focus less on the content.

In my opinion, the best CVs are clear and explanatory, they don't have fancy colours or pictures. If you're a senior lawyer or compliance professional feel free to drop me your CV in a message and I'll give you some feedback!

Interview Questions for Senior Lawyers

It's time to give you some insights into how recruiters are finding the best senior talent for leadership roles. Most recruiters just ask about scope of work, headcount, what's wrong in their role, and it's hardly insightful.

So here are 10 questions we ask to get a true understanding about someone's leadership and strategic capabilities, and how you should be answering them.

1. “What’s the single most important decision you made as a GC in the last year?”
Strong answer: One that shows commercial alignment e.g. “we walked away from a major deal after I flagged regulatory exposure. Six months later, the market shifted and validated that call.”

2. “How do you measure the success of your legal function?”
Strong answer: moves beyond activity metrics. “We tie legal KPIs to business outcomes, like contract cycle time, litigation avoided, and stakeholder trust scores.”

3. “What would your CEO say is your biggest contribution?”
Strong answer: reflects reputation and business impact. “They’d say I bring clarity and challenge to the board, especially in moments where risk and ambition clash.”

4. “Tell me about a time legal had to slow something down, and how you handled the tension.”
Strong answer: balances firmness with empathy. “I front-loaded the risk early, brought alternatives, and let the business own the decision with legal's input.”

5. “What have you deliberately stopped doing as your team has matured?”
Strong answer: signals trust and evolution. “I stopped being the final reviewer on contracts. I now spend more time externally, on regulators, peers, and market signals.”

6. “What non-legal conversation are you involved in regularly?”
Strong answer: demonstrates seat at the table. “I’m active in pricing strategy and procurement transformation. I bring a lens that combines policy, market practice, and leverage.”

7. “When was the last time you were genuinely challenged by someone in your team?”
Strong answer: shows confidence and openness. “One of my directs pushed back on our risk posture with good data. I changed course, and told them so publicly. Whether it was right or wrong I supported them and helped them learn from any mistakes made, without any 'I told you so's'.”

8. “How have you grown your successor?”
Strong answer: reveals long-term thinking. “I’ve built a shadow ExCo role for them, exposing them to board papers, budget rounds, and crisis simulations.”. If you haven't got an answer to this, then there's a problem.

9. “What role should legal not play in a business like yours?”
Strong answer: Clarifies healthy boundaries. “We shouldn't be the culture police. We set frameworks, but leadership must own tone and ethics.”

10. “What’s the biggest blind spot GCs often have?”
Strong answer: reflects introspection. “We sometimes underestimate how much the business wants legal to lead, not just advise. I’ve learned to step into that space.”

Briefing a Recruiter on a New Job

I love taking briefs from clients, I spend a lot of my time doing it and after 100s of them you get to learn what they really mean. Here are a few of my favourites.

Saying “we have a dynamic environment.”
Meaning “no one’s sure who owns what. The last person figured it out… eventually.”

Saying “we want someone commercial.”
Meaning “I need to know what the lawyers are actually talking about, and they somehow need to keep the CFO calm when they say he/she can't do something that'll make millions because it's highly illegal.”

Saying “this role has high visibility.”
Meaning “you will be dragged into meetings with people who don’t know your name but really enjoy giving opinions on legal issues they know nothing about.”
OR "your manager is a micromanager".

Saying “we want someone resilient.”
Meaning “the last person left. So did the one before them. But we won't look internally at the problem, we just hope you don't quit as quickly as they did.”

Saying “we’re flexible on background and salary.”
Meaning “as long as they’ve done exactly this job, in this industry, with this title, on this salary, and live 11 minutes away, they're great. We'll consider giving them an extra AED1k per month.”

If you're briefing a recruiter, we can see through the realities - talk to us about the problems and our job is to work with you to find solutions.

How to Negotiate Your Salary Increase

Bonuses have been paid, summer holidays are in full swing, and 2026 budgets are on the horizon. That's exactly why NOW is the time to begin negotiating your next salary increase.

You need to begin planting the seed with your manager, with HR, and other decision makers, and start the discussion as to one of two things:

1) If you've hit your targets, make them aware. And tell them that you therefore deserve to be rewarded for that in the next review. If they say no, ask why not, and remind them of their commitments to you and how you've returned that with hard work to achieve targets ahead of time.

2) If you haven't yet hit your targets so far this year, ask what exactly you need to do to get a pay increase in the next round. Recalibrate, make sure those targets are clear, get them in writing, and execute. And if you're struggling to hit those KPIs, now is the time to ask for her. Don't leave it until the end of year review, it's too late.

Most people don't ask for a pay increase, but I bet that you're significantly more likely to get one by asking, and even more likely if you have clear parameters around how to get it.

If you aren't sure what you should be asking for, here's our salary report from the beginning of this year: https://lnkd.in/dtHjNenh

Tell Me About Yourself Interview Question

"Tell me about yourself"

It's usually the first question in an interview, and in my opinion it's the one people waste the most.

The interviewer has your CV, so giving them a full recap of where you worked, your job title, and basic responsibilities adds no value and doesn't elevate you in their mind. And they've probably had the same answer from 5 others. Trust someone who interviews people for a living, it's repetitive and uninspiring!

Here's how I would answer that question:

1) Start with why you do what you do. What motivated you to get into your first job, and then each role you took after. E.g. I was always motivated by driving legal strategy, so as a junior lawyer I moved in-house sooner than the average person in order to get exposure to the business and advise them with the support of an experienced GC.

2) Anchor your answer to the problems of the business you're interviewing with. If you see in the news that they're struggling financially, talk through how you reduced legal spend. If they're growing inorganically, discuss your M&A work more heavily, focusing on acquisitions you've done in their industry.

3) Discuss what you liked and didn't like in each job. This isn't a time to moan about ex-employers, rather explaining your style of work. Again, link it to this company e.g. if it's a bigger business say you prefer structured environments, mature teams, high-value work.

4) If your CV is jumpy, tackle it at the start. I guarantee it's a concern to the interviewer, so use point 3 to go through why you made moves and why you don't think this role will be the same.

5) Finally, touch on things you can't explain in your CV, like management style, approach to problem solving, communication style with internal and external stakeholders, your long-term plans.

Ultimately, if you can tell an engaging story that goes beyond your core CV, that'll get you ahead of the game early on in the interview.