(Author) Associate

Does anyone actually regret going in house? If so, why?

General Counsel Responses:

• I think there’s a lot less consistency/a lot more variety in in-house jobs than in firms. It’s easier to generalize about BigLaw than in-house. I read these comments and similar posts about regretting or disliking in-house and it’s universally people with jobs that sound nothing like mine. Just flagging as I definitely didn’t understand this when I went in-house.

Counsel Responses:

• I couldn’t have said it better myself! This sums the worst of it up completely. Still will never go back to a firm though…

• I still have no regrets. There are lots of pros to go along with the cons others have listed.

• The fewer layers between you and the CEO, the less of this you deal with. That said, you’ll never avoid the reality that you’re part of the company and have to live with whatever decision (good, bad, or ridiculous) the business might make, and that you may be blamed for bad outcomes that are entirely out of your control. You aren’t impacted the same way in a firm. The incompetence I sometimes encounter is truly shocking. The worst performers I dealt with at my old firm were still (generally) really smart and qualified people. I deal with people now that are, well, sometimes not so bright.

• I’m still very happy with my decision to go in-house. Oddly, the one thing I wish I had more of is substantive work (I’m a litigator). Most of my time tends to be spent getting business people up to speed or getting their sign-off on something.

• Hours mostly. Work is interesting but I could make a lot more working these hours at a firm. I’ve only been here (at Facebook/Meta) a few months. My core team of about 40 attorneys works a lot of nights and weekends. Most of the attorneys I work with on other teams are also putting in long hours. I’ve really only worked with privacy, cyber, product, litigation, and eDiscovery. I'm not sure about other legal teams. I work around 55 hours per week.

• Nope, I love it. (Fintech)

• $$$$.

• Nope! I love in-house, but I’m at a company that has interesting work, make good money, have good work/life balance. My legal department is small and I’m a generalist so it’s new challenges every day. I was a litigator in mid-sized firms for 11 years before going in-house.

Attorney and Associate Responses:

• I’m not sure I quite regret it, but there are many aspects of in-house work that drive me crazy. If you work at even a medium-sized public company, you’ll likely find the bureaucracy to be orders of magnitude more crushing than what you experienced at a firm. There also tends to be an infantalizing managerial mindset in many companies, which is an outgrowth of bosses having bosses who have bosses who report to more bosses. This can be very demoralizing. Things that could be done in a day take weeks. Then you will likely have the experience of your calendar getting filled up with calls every day - I went from very few internal meetings at BigLaw to 10 or more calls a day in-house, which dramatically limits the time you have to actually think through issues. You might also find that incompetence is tolerated much more at a company than at a firm (and is far more endemic), and then during difficult financial periods the people who get fired are, inexplicably, among the few competent employees. On top of all of that, you have the usual stuff about lawyers in-house being a part of a cost center, having to take instructions from idiotic salespeople who don’t have a clue, and just generally feeling as though you went from doing a high prestige role to becoming a mere cog in the wheel. All of that said, not every in-house experience is like this, of course, and the very high degree of predictability and reasonable hours relative to BigLaw can and often does entirely make up for everything I’ve written above.

• The above comment is incredibly spot-on. I also think this is why it’s better to move in-house when you’ve got more years under your belt, so you are confident enough in yourself and your skills to stand firm against this kind of stuff.

In-house? Be a part of the conversation on Fishbowl (anonymous).