When FMC Technologies GC Jeffrey Carr hired three new lawyers for his department recently, he took two from law firms and one who had gotten some in-house experience after a law firm stint.
Although he hired law-firm trained attorneys, he will still have to teach them to do things the FMC way. And while law firms teach practical skills, their training emphasis is on putting out fires, whereas in-house counsel focus on preventing them. As a result, Carr thought about—but rejected—the idea of hiring recent law school graduates and training them from scratch.
