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Is in-house lifestyle much, much better than big law?

yes

Sho 'nuff.

BigLaw is a service industry, with prompt turnaround whenever the call comes being a leading contributor to the awful lifestyle. It also has major advancement issues and highly stressful work.

In house will mean you basically work on a corporate schedule, and advancement likely won't be a leveraged pyramid.

But it's less money, and perhaps "less interesting" legal work - but that's very difficult to pin down and depends on too many factors for generalizations to be worth while.