In-House Counsel, Job Searches

4 Red Flags At In-House Interviews

Think about these things as you apply for an in-house job; they may spare you a couple of years of misery.

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dartboard pen inside straightI’ve written before about the fundamentals of bad in-house jobs. But a bunch of you wrote to say that I’d overlooked some stuff.

On reflection, you were right.

Here are a few more things to think about as you interview for an in-house position.

First: Be careful if you are permitted to interview only with your prospective managers.

Places that have high attrition — because of poor working conditions — may limit who you can talk to during interviews. Rather than talk to people who will be your peers when you accept a job, you’re permitted to talk only to senior managers (who uniformly rave about the great opportunity that awaits you).

That can be a red flag.

How do you cure this? Several of my correspondents offered different suggestions. Some said you simply shouldn’t accept a job if you were permitted only to interview with managers in the law department. One person suggested that you break through the barrier yourself, asking to interview with someone who would be your peer if you accepted a job at the company. But the best solution may have come from yet another correspondent, who suggested using LinkedIn to learn more: Use LinkedIn to contact people who used to work at the company, and ask them what they thought of their old job. People will generally share their thoughts, and former employees are more likely to tell the unvarnished truth than current employees. That’s a good thought; borrow it.

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Second: Be careful if people outside the law department are responsible for selecting who the corporation will retain as outside counsel.

There are several problems if people from outside the law department choose outside counsel. First, non-lawyers are less able than lawyers to judge the quality of outside counsel. If non-lawyers are making the selection, the company may be hiring less competent folks.

Second, as a matter of corporate housekeeping, the hiring of outside counsel should be centralized. If it’s not centralized, Firm A gets hired because the firm offered reciprocal business to someone at your company. Firm B gets hired because a partner at the firm went to high school with someone in your business. Firm C gets hired because you haven’t used them in a while. And so on. Centralized hiring (with luck) avoids those problems.

Finally, if people outside the law department hire outside counsel, that’s a sign that the corporation doesn’t hold the law department in high regard. That’s bad.

It’s critically important, when push comes to shove on important issues, that a corporation values the input of its lawyers. That’s not just the only way to be sure a company obeys the laws. It also provides courage to the more junior lawyers who must regularly push back against bad ideas, or proposed misconduct, that folks in the business suggest. Junior lawyers must have courage — and courage takes the knowledge that the corporation has their backs. If the law department isn’t respected, the junior lawyers are less likely to make hard, but necessary, choices.

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Third: Be careful if current employees rarely advance to more senior jobs.

Occasionally, of course, corporations must look outside their own ranks to hire people. But the preference should be to promote from within. That’s how you create career paths for current employees; it’s how you keep them engaged in their jobs; it’s how you show you respect them.

If a corporation is always hiring from the outside, then the job you’re hired for will be the highest job you ever hold at the corporation. If that’s okay with you, take the job; if not, keep looking.

Fourth: Be careful if corporations don’t provide meaningful performance reviews.

I know, I know: Law firms aren’t the greatest at HR, so you really don’t think this matters. But that’s just because you’ve become accustomed to being ignored at your firm. (“We have to coddle ’em? Judges won’t coddle ’em! Opposing counsel won’t coddle ’em! If those young whippersnappers can’t survive without us telling ’em how great they are all the time, just let ’em move on. There’s always more where they came from.”)

At a corporation, HR matters. And having regular, and meaningful, performance reviews is important. This gives the junior lawyer the chance to discuss concerns with the senior person (or ask for more money), and it forces the senior person to sit down and reflect on things the junior person did well or poorly, or what the corporation can do to advance the junior person’s career. If a corporation has eliminated meaningful performance reviews, and replaced them only with on-line “goals” that must be met, that’s a bad sign. You should expect more from your employer.

Think about those things as you apply for an in-house job. They just may spare you a couple of years of misery.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now responsible for litigation and employment matters at a large international company. 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 [email protected].

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