A legal department serving a business hit hard by a pandemic economy is struggling with a heavy workload in areas such as privacy and intellectual property. It desperately needs to bolster its head count to keep up with the volume of work, but doesn’t have the budget to hire an experienced attorney. In this scenario, many in-house teams may be more open than ever to hiring graduates fresh out of law school.

Kenneth Rashbaum, an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University and a partner in the New York office of Barton LLP, explained that many corporate legal departments have typically limited their recruitment efforts to seasoned attorneys. But business requirements pertaining to information confidentiality, privacy and cybersecurity are creating more urgency and disrupting accepted norms during the hiring process.