In-House vs. Law Firm: Elizabeth’s Story
This one's for the lawyers — if you've ever pondered in-house vs. law firm (and specifically which one is best), Elizabeth offered to share her thoughts on the two jobs with us. Huge thanks to Elizabeth! – Kat
After over a decade in law firms, I moved to an in-house position almost two years ago. It was a great move for me, both personally and professionally, and I get a lot of questions from friends who are considering similar moves. The most frequently asked are 1) how I got the job, and 2) whether in-house life is better than law firm life.
How I Got My In-House Job
The short answer to how I got the job is that the company had been a client at my previous firm, and when there were some retirements and leadership transitions, the folks who I had worked and socialized with for years were now in charge. They called and asked me to join them, and it’s been a really great fit.
If I could give any advice to folks early in their careers, it would be that there is real value in building relationships with your fellow junior-level employees. I’ve been fortunate to have great mentors and sponsors, but some of my best opportunities came because my peers knew that I did good work and was pleasant to be around.
As for whether in-house life is “better” than law firm life, the answer is that it’s better for me, but it may not be for everyone!
{related: how to track billable hours: tips, tricks, and best practices}
In-House vs. Law Firm: Which Is Best?
Pros of In-House Positions
Goodbye, billable hours
Tracking your life in six-minute increments is an absolutely bonkers way to live.
As a junior partner, I spent a lot of time working with associates, serving on committees, and doing firm administration work that couldn’t be billed. These things were an important part of the job, but they didn’t “count” because they weren’t billable, so I was working nights and weekends to make it up.
Now, I don’t have to parse which parts of my job “count” and which don’t. I do my work and I go home when I’m done.
(And that’s always before 6:00 p.m.)
{related: how to deal with not making partner: reader advice}
One client only
Working for lots of clients means that you’re constantly trying to figure out whose work is the most urgent at any given time. When you have one client, it’s a lot simpler.
Also, if you assume for argument’s sake that each client has one genuine legal “emergency” per year, and you’re working with 10–15 clients, that’s once a month when your schedule gets completely blown up without warning, and then you spend a few days cleaning up the mess. With one client, there’s a lot less unpredictability.
Learning the business
I always think the best lawyers are the ones who understand their clients’ business well, but it can be challenging when you’re juggling lots of clients.
It’s much easier when you work in the same building. And, because you know the people and what they’re working on, small issues can be escalated to you before they become big issues.
{related: financial tips for women lawyers just starting in Biglaw}
Cons of In-House Positions
Financial
My current salary/benefits package is basically equivalent to what I was making when I left my firm, which is very fair and very good. Long term, I probably won’t reach what a senior partner at a law firm would be making, but on the flip side, I also won’t be putting in the same hours.
Sometimes you need a quick answer
As a junior associate at a big law firm, you’re often given a complicated question and then have hours and hours to research it and provide a nuanced answer. As in-house counsel, sometimes you need to be OK with giving the best answer you can based on the limited information and time that you have.
Fortunately, the non-legal folks in the business usually know which questions require hours of research to be exactly right and which ones you can answer off the cuff.
(Although I do occasionally have to explain that there are some specialties where I would be way too nervous to even think about answering. ERISA people, your practice area is terrifying.)
It’s been an adjustment, but I think I’m slowly becoming more confident and saying “Based on my past experience, the answer is X. If you need me to be 100% sure, I’ll need some more time.”
{related: do you still apply when you don't meet the job requirements?}
Readers, have you investigated in-house vs law firm life? What conclusions have you drawn for yourself — and what do you see with your friends and colleagues who have made the choice?
Further Reading on In-House vs. Law Firms:
- What I Wish I'd Known Moving In-House [Legal 500]
- The Secret to Going In-House [Above the Law]
- The “Dark Side” of Going In House [FindLaw]
- 10 Reasons Why I Love Going In-House [Above the Law]
- The Pros and Cons of Going In-House [Attorney At Law]
- How to Become In House Counsel [YouTube / Brittany Tran] (and it looks like she later moved to legal ops)
Stock photo via Stencil.
I’m on my second in-house gig and very happy. I like a decent-sized legal team – not necessarily massive, but upwards of 5 so you aren’t alone. I know someone who is the sole legal person at her company, and no one really understands her job and she doesn’t have anyone to brainstorm with and I think it’s very lonely. To me the biggest challenge is not being the person who is always saying no or making things more complicated. I work in a highly regulated industry and am often the bearer of bad news along the lines of “no, we cannot implement your revolutionary new business model in any way shape or form without getting into serious trouble”. I’ve really had to learn to rephrase things as “could we do this instead” or “here are the risks, are you comfortable with them” instead of “absolutely not”. Financially I’m a similar position as the OP – they matched my law firm salary when I left, but I won’t have the kind of growth I would have had as a partner. I’m fine with that, because my hours are reasonable (generally – it’s not a 9-5, but much better than biglaw), I like my team and company, and the work in interesting without being super stressful.
+1 to a decent size law department. I have only worked in-house in law departments which are larger than 25 in-country, and larger globally (my last gig had 200ish globally). I can’t imagine not having colleagues to bounce things off of, collaborate with, get subject matter area expertise from. Now it limits you a bit, in the sense that you don’t do much outside your role, but at least at the two places I have worked, the GCs are committed to moving lawyers around for growth so you can still het it.
The one or two person law department is not a work environment that I personally would be comfortable with but someone else certainly might!
I worked in a 50+ attorney in house department for over a decade, and then moved to be a solo GC. The quality of your life as in house counsel depends on the quality of your client. In my case, I am not the bearer of bad news. The execs understand the risks and we make decisions together. It’s collaborative. As far as brainstorming, I still call former colleagues, and I have developed a good relationship with outside counsel. But I do miss being able to walk into somebody’s office and talk something out. Here’s what I don’t miss: Large in house departments are very political. It’s usually a flat organization and really hard to move up. There’s a lot of palace intrigue and trying to predict the future. It can be exhausting and I was glad to leave it behind. I don’t miss being in a large department at all.
The admin work (making copies, mailing stuff, making travel reservations, proofreading documents, etc.) has always fallen on me in my in-house roles. I’ve worked at companies with legal departments ranging from 10-50, and typically only the GC/CLO/tip top lawyer has a dedicated admin. While sometimes there may be a shared support or admin person, they are usually supporting the whole department and not just a handful of people so the help provided is limited. (* I left a biglaw office where a secretary would support 5-6 attorneys, and I know some offices have since moved to a pool/shared services type model.)
I know companies vary, but in-house I’ve rarely had unexpected disasters come up that ruined a weekend/evening/etc., whereas a 3 pm Friday emergency that resulted in 10-20 billable hours of work on a weekend may have happened 2-3 times a year at firms.
You do not want to live inside of the client. You will be overworked, underpaid, under resourced, and asked to train people in India to do your work. Entire teams of business partners and entire legal sub departments will turn over while you work in house. They will ask you to learn to do radically different areas of the law for 16 hour days and weekends. Then they will transfer all of that work to a team of ten contingent workers and announce that you will be working on procurement contracts. They will tell you that you are too old while you discover that many colleagues have been using painfully out of date photos and are themselves septuagenarians. You will long for the days that clients would only come to you with “excellent” questions.
I’m the GC of a small in-house team. Like Elizabeth, the organization is a former client from my law firm days and I was lucky to have a pretty quick move from associate > deputy > GC. To those saying they wouldn’t feel comfortable at a small legal department, I understand where you’re coming from, but don’t underestimate the power of other GCs in your industry and good outside counsel. I also collaborate a ton with the non-attorneys at my organization, I need to understand what they’re doing and I like to explain to them what my thought process is because it helps us work together to reach a decision.