The Fundamentals Of Bad In-House Jobs

A few things to look out for if you're considering taking an in-house job, according to Biglaw partner turned senior in-house lawyer Mark Herrmann.

I recently had lunch with a 40-ish person who was a veteran of several in-house jobs.

“I’m really pleased with my current job,” she (or he, but I’ll use the feminine) said. “It’s about time. The in-house jobs I’d held before were disasters.”

My ears perked up.

First, I’ve held in-house jobs at only one company, so my experience is limited. I was curious to hear about life elsewhere.

Second, this could be a blog post waiting to happen! If someone had a bad in-house experience, then I should alert my readers about things that could go wrong in-house and, perhaps, things about which my readers should ask when considering taking an in-house job.

What did my lunch date tell me?

She started by telling me about her first in-house job: “The law department was physically separated from the business. We didn’t just work in a separate law department. We literally didn’t have the ability to walk into the business units. You needed a security badge to swipe in to where the business folks were working, and our badges wouldn’t let us through the door.

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“Do you know how bad that is? One of the best aspects of being an in-house lawyer is working closely with a business. If you go in-house and work in an isolated law department without easy access to the business, you’ve lost one of the most enticing features of in-house life.”

Eureka! My lunch date was indeed a blog post waiting to happen! That experience is surely worth noting, and it’s probably also worth exploring before you take an in-house job: Where do the lawyers sit, and how easily do they interact with the business?

At this point, I knew I had it: The beginning of a column for Above the Law! But my lunch date hadn’t yet given me enough details to type ’em up and call it a week. I had to tease more information out of her: “Was that the only problem with the job?”

“No,” she offered. “That business used the law department basically as glorified clerks. The in-house lawyers were saddled with all of the tedious, repetitive tasks that required no thought at all. If any interesting legal projects came up, the company immediately hired outside counsel. The job stripped away everything that’s fun and challenging about practicing law.”

That’s good to hear, I suppose, so you know the problem can exist. But it would be hard to learn during a job interview whether an in-house position suffered from this problem. I suppose you could ask: “Does your in-house law department handle challenging legal issues, or do you do only tedious crap and retain outside counsel to do the good stuff?” But I’m afraid you’d hear only lies in response to that question, so it would be pretty hard to ferret out the truth.

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I was disappointed by that second point, but I remained relentless on your behalf: “Were there any other problems with that job?”

“Yes,” my lunch date confided. “The in-house lawyers acted like a small, bad law firm. Everyone was afraid of taking definitive positions on legal issues, for fear that the business wouldn’t follow the advice or some other lawyer would disagree with the advice. So all the lawyers regularly gave weasel-worded, heavily caveated advice. Like lawyers at bad firms, we always said that there were several ways of looking at the issue, and any one of them might be right, and we really couldn’t offer a definitive answer. The lawyers who ran the department were happy with this, because it meant that none of our lawyers was ever wrong. But it also frustrated the business, because we were never giving any useful advice.”

Again, that’s good to know, but hard to explore in an interview. I suppose you could ask: “Do your in-house lawyers spew pablum or actually give helpful advice?” But I doubt the answer to that question would reveal anything useful.

Finally, my dining companion told me about a second in-house job that she’d held: “My next job was a fiasco, too, but for entirely different reasons. There, we had senior business executives who had no respect for either our law department or the law generally. If we told the business that certain conduct was prohibited, the business would tell us to find a way around the law or would go ahead and do the prohibited stuff despite our advice. One day the company’s chief risk officer had the temerity to tell the business, ‘No.’ The business guys called security, and I saw the chief risk officer being escorted to the door. That’s when I started my job search.

“After I left the company, a couple of whistleblowers reported the company to a regulatory agency, and the joint is now out of business. What a disaster.”

A disaster for her, maybe, but a jewel for you and me! Over the course of a pleasant hour, I’d amassed everything needed for this week’s column, and you now know a few things to look out for if you’re considering taking an in-house job. Forewarned is forearmed.


Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.