Possible to work in-house without biglaw? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Title. Is it possible to work corporate counsel without going the big firm route? Are there any public interest gigs or gov't work for regular law grads that line up with corporate work?

[SFSpartan]

It is, but opportunities to do this are fairly rare, as companies want you to come in with some substantive training/don't want to have to train you to do your job.

That said, I know of more than a handful of tech companies in Silicon Valley (i.e. not Apple, HP, etc., which have formal entry-level hiring programs) that will hire people right out of LS. But you generally need a connection to and/or professional experience with the GC to get these.

Tl;dr - This is possible, but opportunities are rare.

[rpupkin]

If your goal is to have a long career working in-house, I would not skip the big law step, even if you have an opportunity to do so. Put in at least a couple of years in big law. You'll unnecessarily limit your in-house advancement otherwise.

[Danger Zone]

The real question is how soon can I leave biglaw

[kaiser]

Yes, it is absolutely possible, just not that common. Some in-house legal departments will even hire directly out of law schools (though this is more common with big companies that have huge legal departments, training programs, etc.). Someone I know graduated from a T25 school and went directly in-house to IBM with no biglaw or firm experience at all.

[Anonymous User]

Some of the research triangle companies do straight to in-house. SAS/ Toshiba