K&L Gates Chairman Likes to Hire Smart and Sassy Lawyers
If you like hierarchy, methodologies and formal structures, K&L Gates is not the law firm for you.
That’s the message from K&L Gates chairman Peter Kalis, who tells the Careerist that he prefers job candidates who are “iconoclastic—smart, sassy and a bit edgy.” Lawyers who “bow to icons” aren’t the type he wants working at his firm.
“I don’t want malleable,” Kalis tells the Careerist. “I want formidable.” He expects “searching questions” during the interview on topics such as how the law firm deals with the changing demands of law practice and work-life balance.
Candidates who don’t do well with him project “smugness and self-absorption.” Asked how he detects those qualities he answers: “Body language. Sometimes people say outrageous things. You can also tell total self-absorption when people describe themselves as the hero of every story.”
