Remote in house Forum

[Anonymous User]

I am looking to transition into an in house role from a V10 tech transactions background and was wondering how common fully remote in house jobs are nowadays? Do you typically need to take a paycut for full remote?

[attorney589753]

Tech trans I don't think you will have a problem, especially if you are willing to go to a smaller company

[Durant123]

Definitely possible to make the move to fully remote. QOL is infinitely better to the point the slight comp hit isn’t felt at all but there will likely be one with any switch in-house, remote or not.

I’d confirm that the role is permanently remote during interviews.

I took a relatively small overall comp cut (25% nominally but lower because it allowed me to move from NY to zero income tax state). Possibly not a cut at all depending on how equity bit of comp shakes out, valuing it at zero for now. Left biglaw after five years, band 1 practice group. More of a finance role, not tech transactions though.

[persia1921]

These are definitely more common these days, but I'd echo the above user's advice and confirm that the role is permanently remote. I've found a good way to get at this question is to ask about how taxes work for remote employees--most companies that are committed to a long term remote arrangement will withhold based on the state you are living in.

As for the comp hit - it just depends. I haven't heard of a Company specifically lowering comp targets during recruiting because someone was working in x state vs. y state.

Random data points (if helpful):

- I have a buddy that just jumped to full remote in-house, 5 YOE. Most of the offers they were seeing were all around $300kish all in. He was just direct applying -- so I think this gives a good sense of the market on the medium to high end.

- I have also seen folks get offers higher than the above ($400-$500K all in) with the same experience, but those are almost always unposted and involve a network play.

[Anonymous User]

In addition to asking to confirm it's permanently remote, a good question to ask is whether all/most of the legal team is remote. I went in-house to a remote position about a year ago when the entire office was WFH. Now there's an active effort to encourage people to come in, and new hires are required to be in-person. The entire legal team is remote, though, and the GC has made clear this won't apply to us. If I were the only remote person on the team, I doubt that would be the case.

[12481632]

Does anyone feel that making an in-house move for first time from biglaw is much riskier to do entirely remotely vs in-person/hybrid model? I lateraled back home to Midwest market from V10 in major market (I’m class of 2018 and still at V50 doing m&a) and I’m starting to seriously consider in-house options but there’s really nothing in my market that’s exciting/appealing whereas I see great opportunities all the time in Chicago/elsewhere and it’s frustrating to me how limited I feel my options are even with great credentials/experience.

[attorney589753]

Does anyone feel that making an in-house move for first time from biglaw is much riskier to do entirely remotely vs in-person/hybrid model? I lateraled back home to Midwest market from V10 in major market (I’m class of 2018 and still at V50 doing m&a) and I’m starting to seriously consider in-house options but there’s really nothing in my market that’s exciting/appealing whereas I see great opportunities all the time in Chicago/elsewhere and it’s frustrating to me how limited I feel my options are even with great credentials/experience.

The answer here is a bit context dependent, how good is your work, what is your reputation at current and previous firm (could you go back), what sort of roles are you looking at. In general some in-house companies and roles are going to have higher performance standards, so you might have the general difference between a small market or old school company versus something closer to NYC finance. I don't necessarily think the remote is a huge factor at your experience level because it's fairly easy to evaluate attorney work product remotely, as we've seen with law firms during COVID, we're talking about drafting skills, asking good questions, responsiveness, hitting deadlines, thoroughness, etc. In-house career prospects are more likely to be tied to one boss/manager (as opposed to being able to bounce around between partners) so probably want to use the interview process to really suss out how well you'd fit with that person, and that might be slightly harder to do remote. Overall job safety probably depends more on those things plus how desperate they need the additional lawyer.

[nealric]

Does anyone feel that making an in-house move for first time from biglaw is much riskier to do entirely remotely vs in-person/hybrid model? I lateraled back home to Midwest market from V10 in major market (I’m class of 2018 and still at V50 doing m&a) and I’m starting to seriously consider in-house options but there’s really nothing in my market that’s exciting/appealing whereas I see great opportunities all the time in Chicago/elsewhere and it’s frustrating to me how limited I feel my options are even with great credentials/experience.

I agree that going in-house fully remote could be a risk. A big part of success in-house is playing the politics right and building relationships. This can be very difficult to do if you can't get in any face time. I'd at the very least want to make frequent trips to an office location.