Community Perspectives: Those who made the jump to in-house successfully, how do you make yourself stand out from other candidates?

In-house legal professionals discuss how they secured their in-house positions.

(Author) An Attorney

I'm looking to make the transition in-house. I'm not receiving interest from my applications. Is 10 years of experience the issue? The litigation background? Is it my resume? How have people made this jump successfully? Do I need start asking for referrals? For those of you in this situation, what did you find that worked for you? My current position and firm are good, just looking for a new challenge and to expand my skills.

Other follow-up notes:

For the jobs requesting 8+ years of experience, what are the salary ranges for non-tech companies?

I am at not at BigLaw, I'm in the Am200 - will this prevent me from being considered?

How did you get past the screenings to get them to discuss the experience with you? My experience would transition nicely into an in-house role, but I need the opportunity to connect.

General Counsel Responses:

Tailor your resume for every position. Most companies use software to weed out applications so if you’re not hitting on their key terms it’s unlikely a human will read your resume. And as others suggested, you should apply to large companies that are likely to have ongoing litigations because of the industry or highly regulated (pharma, banking, etc.). - Good luck!

Counsel Responses:

Your 10 years of experience may be part of the problem. That’s about when you might start being up for VP/Director level roles, but if you have no in-house experience they’re not going to want to bring you on at that level, yet may consider you too senior to bring on below it or expect you to be unwilling to take such a large pay cut. Your litigation background is definitely a barrier, unless you’re applying for the very rare in-house litigation positions or you’ve been litigating in a specific area (like employment). There are some roles that may be more open to a litigator re-tooling, but you’re going to need someone to go out on a limb and give you a chance, and the 10 years of experience hurts you here, as well. I actually did make this transition, but it was around 6-7 years of experience, and it was very difficult even then (and it took me at least 3 years of heavily active searching and applying). And yes, you absolutely should be asking for referrals — that’s ultimately what got me in the door. (I came from BigLaw V10 and V25). - It definitely felt impossible at times, but I got here eventually. Several of our more recent hires did not come from BigLaw, and in fact I think may not have worked at firms at all, so it’s certainly not a requirement. But they did have on-point experience, which our recruiters sussed out. On the flip side, we also had a recent job search for which none of the applicants really had on-point experience (it would be rare if anyone did), and it was pretty clear that big firm experience wound up being a significant factor for the hiring team. It’s not strictly the name per se, but the way they conducted themselves and discussed things in the interview — I hate the term “polished,” but it was used. If you can exude that without actually having been through the salt mines, and demonstrate that you have meaningful training and experience on sophisticated matters at whatever other firm you were at, I would expect that to be what matters. But without a referral, on-point experience, or a big firm name on the resume, you might get skipped over by the recruiters in the first instance since they’d really have nothing to go on.
Another factor to consider is that this has been an incredibly hot hiring market for firm lawyers to exit and go in-house. There’s just a lot of supply against comparatively lower hiring demand. It's a good idea to network like hell as a way of standing out.
For litigation from firm, I would recommend looking at much larger companies with bigger legal departments. They operate more like a law firm and will be more likely to have litigation-specific positions and find previous in-house experience less important, because you will be working more with other lawyers and less with business people. They are also more likely to have positions for 10 yrs that aren't General Counsel (which would be hard to do as your first in-house job). For example, Viacom (or whatever they are now) and NBC have huge legal departments that operate more like a law firm.
Not sure LinkedIn would help, but I’m biased because both of my in-house roles came just by applying cold online. They aren’t going to not interview a qualified candidate — getting in front of them on LinkedIn likely won’t change much. It’s probably a better use of your time to add as many external recruiters who specialize in-firm to in-house on LinkedIn, so they have your name and you see their postings. Don’t send them your resume unless it’s for a specific listing, though.

Attorney and Associate Responses:

I’m having the same problem. I'm interested to hear the feedback you get. I'm 19 years practicing, but exclusively employment law. I’ve seen quite a few attorneys in employment law with more years of experience than me move to in-house, but I still think it creates a challenge. I’m at a global employment law firm so that does help, but my options are limited to employment counsel positions, so that is another challenge.
I’m not quite sure what level that is. Outside of tech, funds, and I guess pharma, etc., for Senior Counsel or Associate General Counsel (at a company where that’s above assistant instead of vice versa), you’re probably looking at high $100k to very low $200k with a 15-20% bonus and maybe a little equity if you’re lucky and depending on the company. VP/Director should be mid-$200k + 20-30% and equity.
I am 5-6 years of experience in litigation, and I've been at applying for about a year and it has been impossible! In addition to the hurdles already mentioned, the lack of a “top law firm” on my resume is probably huge, at least for bigger/more sophisticated corporations. I guess I’ll just give up now, because I wasn’t even in AmLaw200 AND I quit that toxic place before looking.
I’m at an F50, and have never worked in BigLaw. Plenty of big companies don’t care about firm pedigree; it’s about the right skills, experience, and attitude. Having a good resume and tailoring it to the job descriptions and then just applying a ton. I probably applied to over 50 postings on LinkedIn. Some took months before I heard back, but eventually I did. I ended up doing around 15 screeners. Some I dropped, while some dropped me. I moved forward with 8. The final round of interviews was with 3 companies and I received 2 offers.
I'm going to seek out a decent firm job and then continue the in-house search/keep the dream alive.
I'm having the same problem.
Recruiting firms. Some focus much more on in-house than others. Finding the right one will open doors for you. Otherwise, network on the social sites. For myself and someone with 10 years of experience, recruiters were able to get me interviews and offers at multiple opportunities. It’s doable, but you just need to sift through the ones that aren’t helpful.
I’m having the same issue and am also 10 years of experience. I was lucky enough to get my first in-house job, but no bites for any new opportunities. I moved in-house 3 years ago, so maybe when I was 8-9 years of experience. Mostly doing corporate, commercial and contracts work for public interest firm and eventually small, private practice. I'm looking because I want to know what the market will pay.
Goinhouse.com guide will help.