The Career of the In-house Lawyer

Abstract

The rise in the significance of the in-house lawyer, both in absolute and relative terms within the legal profession, and, in individual terms, the prospect for many of substantial lifetime employment in that capacity, raise questions of career and job satisfaction prospects. How does a career as an in-house lawyer compare with that of private practice? At what points are there or might there be movements between this role and other branches of the legal profession? Does working in a company or organisational environment create opportunities for other careers? These and other questions are considered in this chapter on the basis of comments made by those who participated in the research. However, it is important at the outset to recall the point made in the introduction that it can be misleading to treat comments made as a fixed and static summary of ‘reality’. The in-house lawyer career is undergoing change not only as inhouse lawyers and the profession at large, individually and collectively, become more aware of the in-house lawyer’s significance, but as changes take place in company structures and in the wider ‘business structure’ of the legal profession itself. (For example, by the time this study came to be written up, growth in the economy, and the financial services sector in particular, had already created a severe shortage of commercial lawyers, which meant rapidly improving pay and career prospects in private practice.)