Guide to the In-House Transition?

[AllWellAndGood]

Hi all,

I was wondering whether anyone can either direct me to a general guide to navigating the transition from Big Law to in-house, or could provide a bit of detail from their own experiences or from those of people they know.

I'm a junior corporate/commercial associate in Vancouver at a national firm. I enjoy my practice generally but I'm not in love with the work model or the 6 minute increments, and I am increasingly curious about in-house options. I was wondering about a few things regarding the transition to in-house, and I assume many others reading this forum might be as well.

1. When would the sweet spot be for transitioning, is it still 4 years of Call as I've read or has that changed? What are the risks to leaving at 2-3?

2. When a company states that they are looking for a lawyer with "three years experience", how does one measure that? I presume that of course the time articling does not, but if I am a BC call (May) wherein I have the stub year, are corporations asking Year of Call, or are they meaning total months as a lawyer as I expect?

3. Is it beneficial to seek out a recruiter in advance of wanting to move in-house, or is it better to just review job boards/LinkedIn independently?

4. If you have an interest in working with a client, how do you have that conversation (with the client, with your firm, etc)?

5. What are the obvious things that I am not considering about the transition that are making you go "oh no, this junior has no idea what he's getting into"?

I appreciate any comments!

[Jaggers]

I went in house after five years, and for me that was a good time. You won't get a huge amount of mentoring or supervision in house, so you need a certain level of confidence.

We recently posted a job saying we wanted 10 years of experience, but I interviewed people with less than two and more than 15 years of experience.

But I personally wouldn't count articling as "years of experience".

[t3ctonics]

1. I went in house after four years. I agree with Jaggers that you probably won't get as much mentoring or supervision as you would at a firm, so it helps to have some experience and confidence. Law firms generally have stronger mentorship systems and often actual educational programs for junior lawyers, as the partners want to be able to sell your work at ever-increasing rates. Many in-house legal departments still have these things, but not to the same degree. Law firms have a continuous pipeline of articling students being trained into associates being trained for partnership, while in-house legal departments usually just hire someone to do a job. To learn and grow as an in-house lawyer you need to be more proactive.

Generally speaking in-house positions become much more accessible after 3 years or so.  I think 3-5 years is the sweet spot, but there are still plenty of opportunities for lawyers with more experience. The risk earlier is just not having enough hands-on learning and experience to be effective (which is why there are so few entry-level in-house positions).

2. "Years of experience" should generally be taken as years post-call. HR departments and non-legal recruiters might count articling or even summer employment, but I'd expect any lawyer to be concerned with experience as a lawyer. Some postings will specify a range of years of call, which can be unintuitive - when you're called to the bar you're a first year call, then on January 1 of the next calendar year you're a second year despite having less than a year of experience. That said, like Jaggers noted, employers will often interview outside the range of experience posted. Sometimes legal departments need to fill one specific role requiring a certain amount of experience in a specific area, but even then they'll usually be willing to flex a bit. Other times they have the range of expertise needed, and just need another lawyer to take some things on (more often the case for postings for junior roles). So I wouldn't be concerned about limiting yourself to postings you fit perfectly into, but be aware that those looking for more experience should be expected to be at a higher level of responsibility and independence, and those looking for less experience will be looking to pay less.

The opposite is usually but not necessarily true. Watch out for postings looking for something like 3 years of experience for a high-level position (titles like Director, General Counsel, etc., part of executive leadership team, strategic-level responsibilities, etc.) because those places probably just want to underpay for executive-level responsibility and you will have no support or mentorship to grow. I know someone who took on a role like this just a couple years out of law school and he really struggled as the sole in-house counsel for a business organization (junior mining). He relied heavily on outside counsel for years on a very tight budget, and eventually got up to speed but it was very difficult, plus he was incredibly underpaid for the level of responsibility. That said, a position like this could be fun for a more experienced lawyer that is willing to take the pay cut; I also know someone else who took a job like this as a 15-ish year call and loves it. 

3. I haven't used one myself, but from what I've heard recruiters are a bigger help for law firm jobs and executive-level in-house jobs. Regular in-house jobs will usually just be posted. That said, I don't think it would hurt, and a recruiter may have leads on upcoming postings from their network that you can prepare for before they're actually posted.

4. This depends on the people involved, but if you have a good relationship with the partner in charge of the firm's relationship with that client and are sure you don't want to stick around long-term you could bring it up with them first. Personally I wouldn't risk it unless I knew the client had an opening, or at the very least consistently spent enough on external legal in my area of practice to justify employing a lawyer full-time. I would not bring it up with the client myself unless I had a close direct relationship with the lawyer that would be in charge of hiring, which is unlikely at the junior level.

5. Just consider the difference in the nature of in-house practice a little more. The big one is you have one overarching client that you are stuck with. A lawyer's practice is defined in large part by their clients, and every lawyer in private practice has pain-in-the-ass clients - but what if one of those was your only client? Of course, you can also have awesome clients, and one of those as your only client would be sweet. When considering an in-house position you need to consider the culture of the legal department, but also the organization as a whole. Look at employee and customer reviews to see what their organizational culture is like, and maybe talk to some non-legal staff. Check their recent reported decisions and news articles about them to see what sort of trouble they've been in (this is also great interview prep). 

Also have a plan for how you're going to keep learning and stay up to date on the law, so as to mitigate the effects of the lower level of mentoring and internal educational programming. Something that keeps you in touch with the broader legal community is a good idea (like CBA sections or other associations).

[Jaggers]

I got a job with a client, but I never talked about it in advance. I just did a good job on their work and when they had a spot, they offered it to me. There are probably ways to signal to your client that you'd want that. Just tell them that their work sounds really interesting and open a discussion. I don't think most of the best entry level in house jobs are posted through a recruiter.