The Good, The Bad, and The Surprising: Law Firm to In-House Counsel Journey

So previously I worked for small law firms, for those of you who have read all of my blog posts before, including during the coronavirus pandemic, you will know I wrote about my experience with having to work at an old-school law firm that was for the most part all paper based in 2020 while taking over for a maternity leave contract for the 1 litigator at the firm. After that I continued to do civil litigation and family law mostly, but also a bit more general broader law. I had a few creative business clients that would ask me to help them review publisher agreements and labelling requirements for shipping products and this was work I realized I wanted to do more of but it was very seldom. After my mother passed, I went through a phase where I wanted a change. Now I’ve gone through my fair share of changes, considering I chose to clerk at a law firm that worked with a lot of entertainment, artists and creative people when I was in Melbourne completing my PLT, before doing a placement in criminal defence in Canada, and then moving on to civil litigation and family law. It’s not easy to make a change, and you will feel like you are either starting again, or you don’t have enough experience in the area to sell yourself in that field. I felt this.

I struggled, as I noted in my other post: Rocky Road: A Young Lawyer’s Resilience Journey and Pursuit of Career Transformation; I almost felt like giving up, but then I found myself amongst great friends I met in the LPP who wanted to help me. I joined on to a fellow friend’s startup business contract model for others. I got to sit in on consultations and learn from a friend with great international business experience. Soon enough I received a call to become the first in-house counsel for a company working in the hospitality space.

For other lawyers who started their practice mostly in litigation or even doing general law firm practice as opposed to specializing in corporate transactional work, it might seem daunting trying to get an in-house counsel role however companies can also vary in what their needs are and some prefer to have a more generalized lawyer or someone who can handle a variety of different disputes and things that come up.

The Role of In-House Counsel

So what exactly do I do? How has my role changed? Do companies still hire external law firms and if so, why and how does that affect your role?

1. Provide Immediate Legal Advice

There are companies that want their own private legal advisor. If they’re expanding or have a lot of different things going on, they may not want to look for a law firm outside and book a time to get an answer. It can be more cost-effective for some companies to hire an in-house counsel, analyst or some form of a legal team to be able to research answers for them.

2. Contract Management

Some companies like the one I am currently working for also have a lot of contracts. The decision-makers don’t always have time to read the fine print over again and want you to advise quickly of what the contract says they can or cannot do. Some companies may even hire people just to organize their contracts. Some private companies have contract analysts and contract managers. Oftentimes, I think the legal counsel role will intersect with this, especially at a company that does not have a robust contract team yet or they may have the final check with the legal counsel.

3. Bridge Internal and External Legal Work & Litigation

When dealing with litigation, even when we have external counsel representing us, I assist with ensuring external counsel has all of the information they need. As I have a greater understanding than others at the company of the legal processes and civil procedure, I can ease some of the tension for the executives in re-explaining the processes, and I can assist with putting together the material like a rough draft or outline for external counsel better. I can save the company at lot of costs, by often doing a lot of the groundwork preparation before sending things to external counsel. I can also assist with brainstorming solutions that are advantageous to the company. As a legal professional, we often have stronger communication skills than others, and this has often helped bridge the executives and the company with navigating the legal process with external counsel. I will work closely with different personnel in the company and outside the company, such as staff, accountants, and outside experts to compile and map information and then explain it or draft an initial draft claim or defence for external counsel. This speeds things up while ensuring accuracy and that our company is represented in the best way. If we have complex matters, by being with the company, I am able to gain the advantage of knowing the company well enough and the personnel working for the company to be able to gather the relevant facts and save the company from having external counsel spend a lot of billable hours interviewing various company personnel or trying to understand all of the information that is being conveyed from people who may be good at numbers and the business but may not be able to write that down in words. Having worked at a law firm before and dealing with a variety of people, I know that with some clients, I may have to spend additional hours interviewing them as they cannot put together a written coherent narrative and if I asked them to, I would not be able to understand it well. Many of you who work at private law firms understand how clients may not be the best-written communicators. However, as in-house counsel, my company has the advantage of having someone dedicated to spending time gathering the information and putting together the narrative in a way for external counsel to easily understand it. I also know what a lawyer is looking for and why certain details for facts are important.

There are times when I will spend time getting documents that I know external counsel will need to see, and then writing the synopsis of what the client needs from external counsel. These are some of the ways in which I may be involved with external counsel on litigation files. However, there are also times, when I may take on files myself and we will not have external counsel at all. External counsel helps however when the case may be more complex, there are multiple layers to it, we are short on time and have a deadline so it is all hands on deck to speed things up while still ensuring we are best represented. External counsel also helps when they have greater experience with certain procedures or areas of law, as none of us are total experts at everything, and while we want to utilize their expertise, we also have certain components of legal projects where we can manage it on our own and allow our expert external counsel to focus on their expert areas.

4. Research and Strategic Planning

I also do a lot of research, and assist with brainstorming solutions for the company or assist with helping the company hire external counsel to best approach certain cases. I also will at times be their initial or final reviewer of contracts or transaction documents. Sometimes I will be required to present an approach to others at the company or discuss how we can proceed on a project.

The Reality of In-House Counsel Work Hours and Structure

In terms of hours I work, it can still be chaotic at times. Often times there is this perception that in-house counsel will more or less be a 9-5 lawyer, however that has not been the case for me. This will vary depending on the company, where the company is at, whether the company has a developed or structured legal team and process for various matters, and what kind of work they want or expect in-house counsel to assist them with. There are days where I can have a normal structure, but then there are also days, as with other litigation lawyers where I might work into the early odd hours and pull 12-16 hour days to meet deadlines or work weekends because of the nature of last minute circumstances that change. I had two of my longest work weeks in a long time recently at my in-house counsel position. I made this video post of one of my weeks, and the following week was my longest, including having to work on the weekend:

After these long weeks, I was allowed to take a longer weekend off to recover. This helped a lot as we all know burnout is very common in the legal industry amongst legal professionals. It will not always be like this however and during another period when a company is not in the midst of dealing with disputes and focused on regular sustainability then there will likely be less chaotic hours to put in.

Pros and Cons: Law Firm vs. In-House Practice

In terms of the biggest pro and con comparison for me from litigation and general law firm practice to in-house counsel thus far would be:

There you have major differences I’ve noticed between the 2 different environments with pros and cons for each. This is my experience, however many may have difference experiences. Let us know in the comments if you have thought about switching from private practice firm life to in-house or vice versa and have been curious to know or if you made the switch, if you found these relatable or if you had a difference experience.