So, You Want to Go In-House?

Many law firm lawyers yearn to move in-house with a corporate law department, noting such benefits as abandoning the hassles of timesheets and eliminating the pressure to develop business. However, to successfully make this move, you must understand how the ideal in-house candidate profile differs from that for most law firms, and how best to present yourself as such a candidate in an interview.

The Ideal Candidate

While lawyers at a firm typically specialize in a specific practice area, most in-house counsel are generalists, juggling anything law-related that comes their way. They handle a varied caseload where no two days are the same. This requires multitasking and legal triage skills to quickly prioritize tasks and delegate as needed. Most lawyers make the move in-house while mid- to senior-level associates, or later, having garnered solid law firm training. New law school graduates typically lack sufficient business experience and exposure to a variety of practice areas and legal tasks to immediately step into an in-house role.

In-house legal departments primarily hire lawyers with transactional expertise, especially in corporate, securities, mergers and acquisitions, and—depending upon the company’s business—real estate or intellectual property; labor and employment expertise also is desirable. While litigation management skills are valuable, most corporations other than those with the largest law departments send active litigation matters to outside lawyers. Consequently, law department positions for pure litigators are few and far between.

Companies overwhelmingly favor lawyers who know and understand their business. The ideal in-house candidate has experience either working within, or representing clients in, the same or similar industry as the prospective employer. Especially attractive is an attorney with secondment experience, where an attorney from a law firm works “on loan” at a corporation’s location for a set period of a few months to a year or more. At a minimum, the candidate must understand the target company’s business workings and its market position.

In-house employers usually don’t value academic credentials such as law school prestige and the candidate’s class rank as highly as law firms do; rather, they weigh experience and interpersonal skills much more heavily. This depends, however, on the backgrounds of the corporation’s executives and general counsel—if they have fancy pedigrees, they are more likely to want candidates with similar backgrounds.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills are mandatory. You need confidence and strong negotiating skills, not just for deal-making across the table, but also to advocate for your recommendations within the company. You’ll interface with non-lawyers at all levels of the organization, from board members and executives to line workers and everyone in between, including salespeople, scientists, engineers, and administrative staff. You must know how to translate from legal jargon and clearly recommend what the company should do as a result of your advice.

A strong in-house candidate also combines legal skills with creativity to resolve complex business problems. Many businesspeople resent their lawyers as roadblocks who only offer reasons why a strategy won’t work. A good in-house counsel must produce innovative solutions with acceptable levels of risk, so the company can achieve its goals yet stay out of trouble.

In a corporate legal department, you’re paid for results, not your time. Unlike in a law firm, where you can research all aspects of a legal problem and polish your work product, in a business environment you must be decisive and willing to make a judgment call, even if you’re not 100 percent certain. You must develop the ability to accurately determine when “good” is “good enough” to get the job done, and focus on critical tasks that add value to the business. There’s no time for “analysis paralysis.”

The ideal in-house candidate is a people person. You must engender respect, yet work collaboratively with a proactive, service-oriented attitude. Corporations usually don’t have their attorneys, even the junior ones, work in back rooms, isolated from the businesspeople. You share office space and meet with your client on a daily basis. To give advice based on a thorough understanding of how the business works, you must get out and see how people do their jobs.

The In-House Interview