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Over my career as a general counsel and legal department leader, I’ve hired a number of attorneys out of law firms and brought them in-house. For many, going in-house was a career goal, an opportunity to escape things such as billable hours, difficult partners, a lack of meaningful work, and pressure to bring in new clients.
Once they settle in, however, they find in-house practice brings its own set of challenges. Navigating the bridge from big firm to in-house lawyer isn’t easy, and many lawyers feel a bit lost without the career structure a big firm provides.
At least in a firm, you knew where you stood—how many hours you billed this year, how many years left until you can be considered for partner, how many new clients you brought in the door. Here are a few thoughts for lawyers adjusting to in-house life.
First, congratulate yourself. Making the jump from a firm to a company isn’t easy, but once you’ve done it, you have opportunities that law firms can’t match. Armed with the good training most big law firms provide, you can move your way up the career ladder within the company’s legal structure, or you can make a move to other companies based on your legal experience, or the business sector that you learn about while in-house.
You might even get an opportunity to move over to a business role, expanding your horizons beyond the law. Often, these doors open as a result of relationships you build within the company. You aren’t chained to a career ladder anymore—you’ve got freedom to go in a lot of directions.
Second, you have to embrace the importance of evolving as a professional—qualities that made you a strong law firm associate might actually hurt you when you move in-house.
For example, law firm lawyers are often trained to be thorough and meticulous with documents: Don’t miss a thing. Raise every potential issue, and be extremely careful before you green light a particular corporate action. If things go bad, you’ll take the heat, so lean toward emphasizing the risks.
All that is great when you’re paid by the tenth of an hour. But in-house, companies often put a premium on being practical, moving quickly, and focusing on the most important issues. The fastest way to get a bad reputation in-house is to be tagged as a “no” lawyer.
Business owners will find ways to avoid you if all they hear from you is “you can’t do that.” Don’t think like a gatekeeper who has to approve things before they can move forward. To earn your colleagues’ trust, focus on collaborating and solving problems together.
Third, you also need to embrace team goals as yardsticks for your professional success. You’re now a businessperson with legal training. That means you look at problems differently, spotting issues but then embracing creative workarounds that don’t just protect the company, but help it meet its business goals. When the company hits its targets, you succeed too, as long as you correctly identified and mitigated risk.
It’s harder, but so much more rewarding, particularly when you work at a company that has a mission and values aligned with your own beliefs. There’s nothing better than hearing business team members say that they want to bring you into meetings not just for your legal expertise, but because you so often come up with great creative non-law related ideas that make the project better. And if your company awards stock options, you share in the company’s financial success.
The idea of your success being tied to the bigger team goes beyond hitting the company’s revenue targets or stock price. In your in-house career, your company becomes part of your brand.
If you work at a successful company, its success has a halo effect on you. And your job hunt becomes easier when you’ve worked at a hot, successful company even if your role in that success was limited. “Look at this resume—they were on the legal team at Apple!”
There’s also a multiplier effect, as the legal and business colleagues with whom you worked (and who also benefited from the halo effect) go on to take big jobs at other companies. Chances are, they will remember you when there’s an opening at their company. When it comes to your career, your network is your most important asset.
The transition to in-house practice from law firm life can be more difficult than attorneys expect, but with some changes of perspective, the new role can be deeply satisfying.
Rob Chesnut consults on legal and ethical issues and was formerly general counsel and chief ethics officer at Airbnb. He spent more than a decade as a Justice Department prosecutor.
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