Thoughts on working as in-house counsel versus at a law firm

  • If you are planning to practice business law, and the following appeal to you, you should seriously consider serving as in-house counsel at some point in your career:
    • If you would enjoy feeling a strong connection to, and playing an integral part in, the overall business mission of a company (versus providing services as needed on a project basis only)
    • If you would enjoy serving as an institutional connector and communicator, learning multiple aspects of a given business and helping them all to work together in light of the law
    • If you can be comfortable with managing legal risk, and making difficult trade-offs
    • If you would enjoy serving as a translator between the languages of law and business -- understanding both key business concepts and key legal concepts, and being able to think about them simultaneously (also an important skill at a firm serving corporations, obviously, but particularly critical if you are serving as general counsel)
    • If you would prefer to do more generalized than specialized work (most General Counsel use outside firms for two things in particular: for highly specialized or particularly complex tasks, and when the company needs a certain amount of sheer manpower for a given project or issue – handling most other legal issues in-house as much as possible)
  • In-house counsel roles are becoming increasingly important, as more and more of business is perceived as “touching legal issues” – lawyers are getting drawn into many more aspects of company operations than they used to be, increasingly at both high and lower levels of the organization. This puts a premium on having good communication skills, at many different levels of sophistication.
  • In-house counsel tend to focus more on the perspective of the business, while the value-add of outside lawyers tends to be their special expertise, awareness of the latest legal trends, and ability to identify all potential legal issues in a very organized way (in addition to being able to provide manpower on demand when needed).
  • One perspective from a current General Counsel: “There are two ‘integrity’ positions in a business organization -- two positions where at the end of the day it is your job to ‘speak truth to power’: the Chief Financial Officer and the General Counsel. You cannot shirk these responsibilities, and in these positions, it is critical to have the kind of relationship with executives where they know you are coming to them not with a political agenda, but to deliver perspectives and advice that you truly believe in.”
  • If you think you might want to work as a General Counsel some day, make it a point to stand out on projects for which a corporate General Counsel is your ultimate client. One interviewee noted that most of the in-house associates he has hired over time have been associates from firms that he had used for past projects – and sometimes people “from the other side of the table.” In his words: “I can recognize talent when I see it.”