When clients hire me for interview prep, I give them the same advice before every big interview: prepare like you're an attorney going into court.
Great lawyers don't wing it. They know the record cold. They have listed every question the other side could ask and practiced the answer out loud. They know the weakest point in their case better than anyone in the room, and they have decided exactly how to handle it before someone else raises it. Nothing is left to charm.
Interviews deserve that level of preparation. So does every other high-stakes moment in a career: the first week in a new role, the presentation to leadership, the salary conversation, the performance review that decides your next year. Last week the whole country watched what happens when someone walks into that kind of moment without it.
I don't write about politics on this blog, and I'm not starting today. Whatever you think of this administration, or of Katie Zacharia, set it aside for a few minutes, because her week makes the case for preparation better than anything I could invent.
What happened
On Friday, October 9, Zacharia was announced as the new White House press secretary, introduced by the president as an attorney. Her first briefing came the following Tuesday, and by Fox News' own accounting it lasted 14 minutes and took questions from only three reporters. For comparison, Karoline Leavitt's first briefing ran about 47 minutes and Sean Spicer's about 79. She told the room she saw the role as amplifying the president's agenda rather than answering to the press, and the briefing drew immediate criticism.
Midweek, the Wall Street Journal reported, and Newsweek confirmed with the State Bar of California, that she had taken the bar exam once after finishing law school at Pepperdine, did not pass, and holds no law license in the state, despite having been publicly described as a lawyer. On Thursday night she acknowledged the result on Fox News and called it "inconsequential." On Friday, with her standing nearby, the president told reporters, "I think you should reconsider," adding, "Maybe it's not for her." The White House said she was "transitioning out." Five days after taking the job, she was done.
Nobody outside that building knows exactly which part sealed it. But a 14-minute first briefing that took three questions does not look like someone who walked in ready. Her own defense was that she had been on the job "less than maybe eight hours." Probably true. Also the point. When you are the one at the podium, you don't get to prepare after you arrive.
Here is the part I can't get past. She was introduced as an attorney. No attorney walks into court the way she walked into that briefing room. Don't walk into your interview, or your first week in a new job, that way either.
Talent will not carry you to the podium
She was not short on background. She had a real law degree, years of international transaction work in Beijing, and senior communications roles. Plenty of people with that resume could have prepared their way through a first briefing.
Capable people walk in thinking their experience will speak for them. It won't. Experience is material. Preparation turns it into answers you can give under pressure, with someone watching.
Here is what preparing like an attorney looks like before an interview:
- Know your record cold. Every date, title, number, and result on your resume, without looking. If it is on the page, you should be able to tell the story behind it in two minutes.
- Write down the questions you dread. Not the easy ones. The gap, the short stint, the reason you left, the skill you don't have yet. Then answer each one out loud, more than once.
- Study the other side. Who you are meeting, what the team is struggling with, what the last person in the role was known for. Lawyers read the opposing brief. You read the job, the company, and the people.
- Rehearse out loud. Answers that sound fine in your head fall apart when you say them. Practice with a person, a recording, or a mirror, but practice with your voice.
- Plan your opening and your close. Attorneys never improvise an opening statement. Know how you will answer "tell me about yourself" and how you will end the conversation.
If you have an interview coming up, recorded or live, the same rules apply. I walked through the recorded kind in how to handle one-way video interviews.
Know your weakest point before they find it
Every good attorney knows what opposing counsel will find, because they went looking first. That is the second lesson of Zacharia's week, and it may be the more expensive one.
The real story was strong. A JD from Pepperdine is a real credential, and the job didn't need a license. Calling it "attorney" handed reporters a second story, and the two fed each other.
You can't always control how a performance goes. You can control whether your record holds when someone checks it, and someone will. In Monster's January 2026 credibility survey, only 20% of job seekers believed employers verify resume details most of the time. Employers say otherwise: in iprospectcheck's 2026 screening survey of 1,500 companies, 39% verify previous employment for every single hire, and over half said screenings turn up discrepancies regularly. Bar records, nursing licenses, and CPA registrations are public. I spent years at a legal recruiting firm, the only career counselor on a staff of lawyers, and checking licensure wasn't an investigation, it was a reflex.
The rules I hold clients to are simple:
- A degree is not a license. "JD, Pepperdine University" is accurate and impressive. "Attorney" requires a bar card.
- Titles are facts. If the business card said coordinator, the resume says coordinator, and the bullets underneath prove the bigger scope.
A gap or a missing credential, told straight and framed well, beats the stretched version every time. Prepare that answer first. That is the whole point of what do I say about the gap on my resume.
Your first week is a courtroom too
Once the offer comes, the preparation doesn't stop. Your performance and your paper trail get examined at the same time, by the same people. Don't sashay in assuming your resume will carry you. Before you start, find out who you'll work with and what your boss needs from you in the first month.
Walk in ready
If you have a big moment coming, an interview, a new role, a conversation that could change your next year, prepare for it like it is your day in court. Interview preparation is part of my career counseling work, and a professionally written resume makes sure the record you are defending is accurate and strong. For people who hold a JD but not a license, getting that framing right is half of what an attorney resume exists to solve.
Book a complimentary discovery call and tell me what is on your calendar.