Legal professionals discuss the jump from big law into an in-house general counsel role
(Author) Attorney:
Can people transition from law firm directly to a general counsel role? Can anyone speak to that experience?
Senior Counsel Responses:
Deputy General Counsel Responses:
General Counsel Responses:
I did it as a 10th year associate. I had been a litigator for a few years, then six years of ECVC/sell-side M&A experience. I taught myself the basics of tech trans, real estate, nonprofit compliance, healthcare regulatory compliance, and employment law by not farming all the ECVC work to specialists and doing it myself. I didn’t have any problem doing the GC job from a skills / experience perspective.
But they only hired me bc they knew me - they were the client of my mentor and had been my client for the five years or so before I went in-house. I hated it unexpectedly. It was a health care organization. I didn’t see this from the outside but management was really toxic to line employees and paid them like crap while exploiting them. All of management, me included, were underworked and overpaid. A textbook example of what David Graeber describes in bullshit jobs.
I was on the right side of the politics, but that just meant I was one of the bad guys. And as you’d expect the toxic half of leadership weren’t great partners for legal or compliance.
I stuck it out for a year, then I lateraled to be #3 at a SaaS unicorn healthcare startup. I am much happier not being in charge and having more experienced people to learn from and to have a buffer or two between me and the worst of the management politics.
Partner Responses:
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