A young attorney with three children abandoned a job at a law firm to seek out a better work-life balance, with a new role inside of a corporate legal department. Instead, the last year has been full of late-night Zoom meetings, a scramble to keep up with a shifting regimen of public health regulations and less influence over the company’s overall policies than the attorney originally envisioned.

This hypothetical scenario is too close to the mark from what is actually happening among in-house teams these days. Mark Yacano, managing director of the transform advisory services group at Major, Lindsey & Africa, theorized that interest in corporate legal roles would continue after the pandemic, given the grueling hours law firms demand of their associates.