He's on the right track, except instead of ditching LeetCode use it as a source of code to review. I think many people overlook that each LeetCode problem has an associated forum where people discuss the problem and post solutions.

Here's what I'm going to try if I ever again have to conduct interviews.

1. I'll present the candidate with a LeetCode problem (or let them pick from a list), after emphasizing that I'm not going to be asking them to actually solve it.

2. After they read it we'll discuss it, starting with the problem statement and examples, until we are both sure we think we know what the problem is actually asking. We'll also talk about any edge cases we anticipate might give us problems.

3. We'll talk about possible approaches to the problem.

4. After we have come up with some approach that with sufficient hand waving could convince someone that we could actually right a solution, we'd go the forum for the problem and start looking at the solutions people have posted.

5. For some of those solutions we'll try to figure out if they would work, if they handle the edge cases, spot bugs, see if they are well organized, talk about how well they appear to be written, and stuff like that.