How to transition out of in-house with limited experience? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I began working in-house right out of law school. The job has been almost purely contract negotiation. After four years, it is getting kind of boring and monotonous. Consequently, I am considering that I might feel more fulfilled if I had a more diverse set of clients/issues and felt like I was doing something more meaningful (perhaps some vein of prosecution or litigation).

However, because I went straight to in-house, I feel like I am missing a lot of valuable experience that is part of the day-to-day in those fields. Aside from some limited experience in positions I held in law school, I have largely never been in trial, taken a deposition, written a brief, etc.

Are there firms/organizations/positions though which you can transition/expand your practice while allowing for the development of some skills on the job? I am aware of gap in skill set that I need to confront, but I am also not enthused about starting over like I am a brand new summer associate when I am four years into my career.

[lawgirl3521]

Have you considered going in-house at a faster paced, more-diverse-in-terms-of-work company? In-house tends to have the best hours and work-life balance when compared with other traditional law jobs. Not sure if that is something that is important to you, but I have several friends who would love to be able to go in-house, but have found that it is relatively hard to break into without previous in-house experience.

[Yugihoe]

Why don't you just job-hop and try other in-house positions as described above? Other companies might give you a chance to broaden the type of work you do and would also be a way to get more money too.

If I had to guess, I would think that it would be very hard for you to try to do a complete 180 switch into the litigation type roles you seem to be alluding to since you are 4 years out and have 0 experience in that. You could try to find a small firm but seems like it would be a set back compared to the in-house lifestyle and $ you likely have now.

[Anonymous User]

I was just in the same position as you, OP. I looked at two routes for myself. The first, as others mentioned, is to look at other in-house jobs. I was in-house at a F500 company, but in a smaller division that gave me reasonably strong experience for my first job. I looked at other F500's, smaller publicly traded companies, as well as start-ups. Each have their pros and cons, which I'm happy to flush out if that sounds amorphous to you. Start-ups or smaller publicly traded companies might fit youbill because you'll have a more diverse set of responsibilities than being "commercial counsel" in an F500. In my search, I kept my focus on the particularly industry (healthcare/technology) I was in. I think that made me marketable to all sizes of companies.

The other option, the one I ended up choosing, was the tech transactions/IP transactions group within firms. My theory was that this would give me a more diverse set of deals and companies than I was seeing in-house. I also realized as I progressed through the search that lacking firm experience was going to keep me in the commercial counsel role, and prevent me from ever getting to a GC-type role. I just chose the firm (which I don't want to say) so I can't yet reflect on how that choice has panned out.

Happy to provide more info, so long as I can retain anonymity.