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Work in-house in the health privacy space, day-to-day I focus on HIPAA and GDPR. Thinking of what's next since I've been at the same company for several years now.

Would I be crazy to consider going back to a law firm?

I left biglaw as a mid-level several years ago, and enjoy doing GDPR work in-house. Not sure what life would be like on a privacy team at a law firm.

It depends on the type of work the group primarily does, but IME it’s definitely better than typical Biglaw.

Data breach response work—which is often folded to some degree into the privacy group—can be as bad as anything in BL, for instance. Deal support, including diligence, is not at all as bad as for the M&A associates, but can still be rough. Counseling work is great, very intellectual, and predictable.

Some groups may also handle privacy enforcement work (eg, FTC investigations), which is just white collar work, though usually not as intense. A few also do privacy litigation, which is just litigation.

All in all, it is *definitely* still Biglaw, and if you hated Biglaw I wouldn’t recommend going back. There’s a lot of hiring happening right now for in-house privacy lawyers if you want to move. But it’s better than normal Biglaw.

As a side note, US privacy lawyers at big firms don’t do a lot of GDPR work (they usually have a UK/EU office that leads there), and there’s usually only one or two lawyers who focus on HIPAA. If you do try to get back to a law firm, I would try to emphasize any experience you have with the FTC and CCPA.

Helpful to know. Ironically, GDPR is the part of the job which I enjoy the most. So it looks like firms may not be the best place for that work. Or, are there firms out there looking for GDPR specialists?

Feel free to DM me. Would be curious to hear about your experiences as well.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:51 pm

Helpful to know. Ironically, GDPR is the part of the job which I enjoy the most. So it looks like firms may not be the best place for that work. Or, are there firms out there looking for GDPR specialists?

I don’t know for sure, and it’s definitely helpful to have a working knowledge of GDPR. But as a US lawyer I would say GDPR skills are generally a lot more attractive for in-house jobs than firms.