Companies with the best in-house departments Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi,

Which specific companies have the best in-house legal departments to work for? Gathering from other posts, I've heard that companies that are better respect their legal departments, have a legally-relevant product, and are led by GCs with solid management experience. Curious which specific companies these are.

Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous User]

quick bump! interested in any comments

[Anonymous User]

all I've heard is that Amazon and Comcast are both very bad (law firm type hours and culture)

[SFSpartan]

What's "best" really depends on what you are looking for. That said, I've heard good things about HP's program

[albanach]

What's "best" really depends on what you are looking for. That said, I've heard good things about HP's program

I think that's the point. Some in-house departments are very small, using outside counsel for almost everything. They might be a good place to work, though much of your time may be simply managing those outside lawyers and then making recommendations to managers.

Others operate much more like a medium sized firm, doing everything from real estate, supply chain, HR, employee benefits and small to medium M&A stuff internally. They too could be great places to work because of the types of work, or could emulate big law firms by way of hours, but with less remuneration.

[SFSpartan]

What's "best" really depends on what you are looking for. That said, I've heard good things about HP's program

I think that's the point. Some in-house departments are very small, using outside counsel for almost everything. They might be a good place to work, though much of your time may be simply managing those outside lawyers and then making recommendations to managers.

Others operate much more like a medium sized firm, doing everything from real estate, supply chain, HR, employee benefits and small to medium M&A stuff internally. They too could be great places to work because of the types of work, or could emulate big law firms by way of hours, but with less remuneration.

You basically made my point for me - we can't really answer OP's question unless we have more info about what he/she values and is looking for in a job.

[Anonymous User]

OP here: I was curious about "best" in terms of
(1) great managers,
(2) good learning experience (generalist experience),
(3) a culture in which the company sees lawyers as partners, not as pure cost centers;
(4) predictable, not necessarily shorter, hours.

If that's too hard to measure, just would be curious about any places that have generally good vs bad reputations and why.

Eg: the points about comcast, amazon, and HP are helpful

[lawmoose]

To echo some of the other comments this is really an impossible question to answer. There isn't a closed universe of "firms" like there might be when talking about BigLaw or a geographic region. There are literally thousands (maybe orders more) companies out there with (substantial) in-house departments (by which I mean they don't farm out everything, but at least handle some substantive work in-house).

It might be possible to talk about what companies have a reputation for terrible legal departments (see above), but any comments about companies with good in-house departments will be one-offs, likely based on personal experience, that may be different for everyone. For instance, I worked at a chemical company in-house for a decade - our EHS lawyers had much better jobs than our HR lawyers did (we went through HR lawyers like something goes through something - trying to think of a Hermes Conrad reference here and cannot), but it also depends on what you like - our EHS lawyers traveled more than our HR lawyers (which they all seemed to like), our SEC/M&A guy I think lived off his expense account and no one cared because he kept outside counsel costs low, and each business unit had a different lawyer who had a completely different experience depending on the business management.

That said, I know that years ago Dow had a program that was very well regarded - you would cycle through departments and they did an excellent job of training people. A lot of the lawyers I worked with over the years came from there and they all had great things to say about it (and lawyers who went through that program are actively sought out by recruiters in the chemical industry). I don't know if the program still exists though.

[Anonymous User]

OP Here -- @lawmoose -- very helpful and the kind of information I'm looking for.

Just general impressions of specific in-house departments and any specific details that inform that impression would be great, if knowing about (1)-(4) isn't possible.

[Anonymous User]

this is a great question/thread. it will certainly be hard to list specific companies -- and surely the individual manager you're dealing with makes a really big impact on your job experience -- but it's good to start the discussion. I've generally heard pretty good things about LinkedIn and Google's in-house teams. Not so much with respect to Uber.

more to the point, I think the lesson here is that it's important for employees interviewing at in-house jobs to look for certain factors you've listed in deciding whether the place is a good fit:

-what business units does the role work with

-do those business units respect the legal team and have a good relationship with them?

-what sticks and carrots are in place to incent other parts of the company to play nice with the legal team? for example, was there a big legal issue in the past we can point to that they'll want to avoid; or are there robust policies saying they can't do xyz without legal sign-off?

-what are the attitudes of the legal team toward their colleagues. do they respect them and enjoy working with them, or do they view them as constantly trying to avoid/hide from them?

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone have thoughts on the oil and gas industry generally? Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Cheniere, Baker Hughes etc.?