Community Perspectives: I've submitted over 1300 applications for in-house positions.

In-house legal professionals talk about their experiences with lengthy in-house position searches.

(Author) an Attorney

Hi Everyone,I need assistance deciding whether to give up my search for in-house counsel and start something else. I applied for over 1300+ positions since August 2021. Since then, I have gotten some interviews but no job. I have a unique background in accounting (8+ years), law (4+ years). I was applying for Associate Corporate Counsel or Corporate Counsel positions that require 3-5 years experience, and mainly focused on contracts or general corporate work (not focused on securities or employment law). I currently do not have any role specific resumes, and haven't yet tried a career coach. I will try to do more networking, and getting in touch with my former colleagues. I don't get much feedback from interviewers.

I need advice and feedback that I’m not getting from interviewers. Most employers want to have someone who has already done the types of work they are looking for, and that’s in their best interest. I recognize that I am on the lower end of preferences, though I believe my accounting/finance background gives me some chance of being useful to an organization. Personally, I have not seen any corporate positions requiring 0-2 years to date. Some start from 2 yrs, the majority start from 3 yrs. I do admit that I haven’t utilized and tried the cover letter approach as much as I should.

I started using indeed to look for jobs and I will try glassdoor, but I found that majority of corporations post on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's filtering process isn’t so accurate. They have filters such as Associate or Senior vs. number of years, and they lump together Associate General Counsel in that bucket as well. I wonder if there’s a way to link to their data feed and run a query, because I’m sure I’d make something more useful than that.

There is no opportunity to switch practice areas with my current position. Notwithstanding, there isn’t any corporate work available, my contract position with my current company ends this month. I have considered litigation again, and then trying to transition into some corporate work, but litigation started to take its toll on me, which is one other motivating reason to find in-house opportunities instead.

Overall, I am very keen in learning tech and software. (I come from a long line of engineers, so I guess it comes natural to me. My decision to become a first generation Attorney, is another story). I have extensive experience dealing with various business departments at my prior position as a Financial Analyst, where I had to actively be involved with their spending and budgets, and in the process learning all of the nuisances in procurement, acquisition, and business development. In my head, I always thought having a business litigation background complimented a corporate counsel position because in the process, you gain valuable insight on what should’ve happened in contracts and negotiations that never did, in the hopes to prevent future litigation. Even using this logic, I can see why companies would prefer someone with more expansive litigation experience.

- Thanks!

General Counsel Responses:

You don't have actual corporate experience, which might be the issue. Contracts are at least somewhat trainable (commercial) but true corporate, that's something you have to get in firm practice. I'd recommend trying to get into the litigation group somewhere, or you need to try to switch to firm practice area.
Your best bet is to switch to a law firm and do a new practice area.
Management is already a lot of work. Having to train someone from scratch is asking for trouble, which is why most don't hire for potential. But if we did, honestly, I'd hire on BigLaw first, and it doesn't seem like you have that much experience there either.

Counsel Responses:

What kind of in-house positions are you applying to, and what has been your practice while at the law firm? You mention complex commercial litigation and “business divorce”, what types of clients do you work with? Any specific industry? I will say, litigation in-house positions are hard to find, most hire from their stable of outside counsel lawyers, and many require more legal experience than 4 years, particularly if you don’t have any labor and employment in your background.
This is going to be a bit harsh, but you’re going to have a tough time until you get more legal experience under your belt. In-house legal departments don’t have a lot of time, if any, to train junior lawyers - which is why most positions start at 5+ years experience. It doesn’t seem like you’ve worked on transactions, so a corporate role would be a stretch. If you’ve only worked on a few cases (and they’re all the same type), it’ll be hard to find a litigation position with that since you’re competing with attorneys from big and medium sized law firms that have 8+ years of varied litigation experience. While your finance experience may be a plus depending on the company, most won’t consider it really applicable for an in-house role. Have you applied to junior in house positions, those looking for 0-3 years of experience and not gotten any bites? Applying to everything is not a good strategy; make sure you tailor your resume to what the job post is looking for (to the extent you can) and use a cover letter to explain how your full work experience will benefit the company.
Ultimately, I think you need more experience on transactional and corporate work if you’re trying to get a corporate counsel position. Based on what you've mentioned, I never would have put you in a corporate counsel role. Take some time to really figure out what kind of work you want to do, and not only highlight that experience in your resume but also in the work you do going forward so you can add that in. It doesn’t sound like you want to do litigation, but making a change in practice area while trying to go in-house will be next to impossible. If your current firm only gives you specialized work, look to go somewhere else - maybe try for a mid-size law firm doing general corporate work. That will give you broader experience to land a corporate counsel role. Also, some product counsel roles have a “jack of all trades” kind of feel to them since you’re the lawyer for the product/service, you may be able to find one that fits with your accounting/finance background. As others have said, networking is key. Keep in mind that a lot of in-house counsel shops hire from their bench of outside counsel because they know you already understand the work and the company. If your current job isn’t giving you exposure to multiple clients and types of work, find a place that does.
For what it’s worth, if this is for BigTech, 3-5 means 5-7 for most applicants. That said, corporate counsels usually deal with commercial contracts and various BUs. Do you have any experience dealing with your client’s non-legal departments?
I wouldn’t say companies prefer a more expansive litigation experience, but more so that they’re not interested in training you beyond preliminary understanding of the products and departments you support. They want you to hit the ground running (i.e. some director of engineering wants to build something/ negotiate something and you need to be able to shepherd that through execution.) For example, when we hire commercial for our team, we’re looking for someone who knows enough nuances about our products and industry to foresee the type of demands customers and vendors may make and take things off our plates. We don’t want to have to teach someone how to do that — that just creates more work.
Was your accounting experience at an accounting firm? Perhaps try targeting in-house positions at accounting or consultancy firms where some familiarity with the business model would be helpful. If you’ve done accounting and then litigation, I don’t think you’d be a particularly strong candidate for general corporate work.
I would try to capitalize on that telecom experience. Companies like it when they don’t have to start at zero with in-house counsel.

Attorney and Associate Responses:

I have been job hunting myself and never apply for anything that isn’t 0-3 years, 1-3 years, 2-4 years, 1 year experience or 2 years experience. Utilize Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed. You’ll see these job alerts under ‘Commercial Counsel’, ‘Corporate Counsel’, ‘Legal Counsel’ and you can go further and be extra specific with Associate Corporate/Commercial/Legal Counsel. On LinkedIn, you may limit job search via experience using tags of Entry and Associate. I wouldn’t advise use of the experience tag on Glassdoor, because it just hides everything.
Few tips after browsing (what I think was) all of your comments below: 1) Be more selective in where you apply, and focus your applications on things you're interested in. I saw you mentioned your interest in tech, but hone that further in terms of what work you want to be doing - figure out if you want to do privacy, licensing, corporate, real estate, etc. 2) If the role you're eyeing isn't firmly within your wheelhouse, consider moving to a firm where you'd do the sort of work you're interested in. In-house hiring has only gotten more competitive, and with in-house hires more and more juniors over the past few years, you are now fighting against waves of people who already have in-house experience in whatever sort of role you're looking to jump to. 3) I can't imagine anyone's resume lines up with 1300+ positions, and if it does, you're painting with broad strokes when you should be laser focused. Your resume experience should be tailored to the position you're applying. It's totally fine to have specific resumes for specific role types; just keep detailed notes so you aren't sending the same company wildly different resumes. Good luck!
I think it’s helpful to have someone like a career coach who has expertise and can assist you especially when you’ve hit a roadblock. That’s what I recently did.
I would suggest searching for people on LinkedIn who are in similar roles of interest to you and trying to connect with them by sending a note or a request to connect. That’s what I do. Then try to see if they’d be willing to speak to you about how they broke into their role. My experience has been that some people have been willing to help. They may be able to give you some insight on what you need to do to improve your chances for attaining this type of role. I am considering in-house for myself in the future such as Trust counsel. I have to work my way up to that type of role and I’m fine with that and committed to doing so. Hope this helps.
Sorry. This sounds awful. Honestly I think you are applying to too many places. Are you taking the time to personalize your application to each place? Contacting HR and communicating why you think you’ll be a good fit? This is very important because I can always tell when people contact me about a job opening (I’m at a firm btw) and it is clear they know absolutely nothing about the role and they are just applying everywhere.
What is your networking game looking like? 🧐
Keep at it!!!! Networking defies conventional wisdom in that, if you have a connect and are likable, you can land a role you aren’t 100% qualified for. Put more energy into connecting with people.
Networking is key!
It’s much harder to go in-house as a litigator, especially as plaintiff’s counsel. Also, your resume is way too cluttered. You should delete everything before the accounting experience (I.e. assistant, intern, bookkeeping) and combine duplicative college degrees. I rarely recommend working with recruiters, but in your case, it will probably help to work with a one to mark up your resume and apply on your behalf.
I was in a similar position for a couple of years… I had three interviews and was offered a position with my current employer. I had only applied to around 60-70 jobs I would guess. My current role I landed because it was a current client, who had witnessed my work on an ongoing matter over a period of 3 years. They weren’t rolling the dice, and my current boss was my in-house contact when doing the outside counsel work, and we got along really well. Most people I know who go in-house have been an outside counsel for the company/organization.