Specialist or Generalist? In house or firm? No clue where my career is going
Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2017 9:19 pm
I'll be the first to say my current situation is a decent one, so my worrying might be a bit undeserved. That being said, one of the senior attorneys in my department lectured me the other day about my career and had me freaking out.
I'm a 2015 graduate, TT median grades. I started my career at a financial regulator that September, and had already been interning there for ~1.5 years prior. June of 2017 I left the regulator to go in house at a bank as an AGC. I still do regulatory work but because I'm on a small team (6 attorneys total), I do a bit of everything - regulatory coverage, corporate governance, drafting commercial lending docs, drafting and amending internal policies, you name it. Reg and corporate work have made up about 50% of my time lately.
I thought everything was going great until one of the senior attorneys and I started chatting. He basically told me I need to pick a specialty in the next few months and start developing that speciality in order to have some sort of career trajectory. Up until then, I was under the impression that being a sort of "banking generalist" would be fine, especially if I had a few "hooks" of semi-expertise (in my case, regulatory work).
I know there's many who would agree that a speciality is desirable, but is it absolutely necessary? I don't think my current GC wants me specializing like that and makes me worry that if he's right, I need to be thinking about a position with a more defined role. And would that be at another bank? Should I try for a firm (again…)?
What do you guys think?
I'm a 2015 graduate, TT median grades. I started my career at a financial regulator that September, and had already been interning there for ~1.5 years prior. June of 2017 I left the regulator to go in house at a bank as an AGC. I still do regulatory work but because I'm on a small team (6 attorneys total), I do a bit of everything - regulatory coverage, corporate governance, drafting commercial lending docs, drafting and amending internal policies, you name it. Reg and corporate work have made up about 50% of my time lately.
I thought everything was going great until one of the senior attorneys and I started chatting. He basically told me I need to pick a specialty in the next few months and start developing that speciality in order to have some sort of career trajectory. Up until then, I was under the impression that being a sort of "banking generalist" would be fine, especially if I had a few "hooks" of semi-expertise (in my case, regulatory work).
I know there's many who would agree that a speciality is desirable, but is it absolutely necessary? I don't think my current GC wants me specializing like that and makes me worry that if he's right, I need to be thinking about a position with a more defined role. And would that be at another bank? Should I try for a firm (again…)?
What do you guys think?