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Originally Posted by Unregistered
OP here, I appreciate that you tried to help. I understand that the "tried and tested" way of going in-house is to get a few years of experience in practice and then moving in-house.
My premise is, however, different in that I think of such in-house experiences as a way to understand legal/operations from the client's perspective (where they focus on the commercial drivers and deal with stakeholders coming from different backgrounds- e.g. management, commercial teams, technicians such as engineers, etc.) which is contrasted from the regular trainee/assoc-partner relationship and dynamic.
My thinking is that gaining experience in such a setting (as well as developing a working relationship with the in-house team there which you could hopefully bring back to your firm) will stand you in good stead for private practice in which you can be distinguished from your pure pp peers who have no such experience, or alternatively give you the chance to move in-house from then on.
My questions (1) and (2), and particularly (2), therefore relate to the above premise which would be helpful to all involved.
This is especially prevalent in that future PTC trainees can now seek in-house stints as part of the PTC requirement. So, as someone interested in potentially taking up that path, I was curious if anyone has heard of how law students/trainees in particular have managed to land such roles (in contrast to young assocs who have worked with such in-house teams in their capacity as external counsel, and thereafter move to join them).
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Lol bro I will be super honest, you probably absorbed the B.S. that has been used to justify reducing the bar pass rate and increasing the TC period.
In-house depts usually have no time to train you up (with the exception of super large firms with 10+ legal counsels which are rare). The reason why the "tried-and-tested" method of getting into in-house is to spend a few years in private is because no in-house team wants to take someone who can't hit the ground running.
Most in-house depts just don't have the structure to slowly train you up, since you are a cost center and not the profit-generating side of the company.
While spending one or two years in-house will not hurt your chances that much (of returning to private practice), I assure you that you will not be getting a leg-up on peers who spend the whole time in private practice. In most cases, you will be asked to show how your in-house experience is comparable to work done in that particular sector at law firms (which is difficult because it is usually not comparable). In other words, "understanding things from the stakeholder's perspective" is deemed to be far less useful than knowing how to do **** from the law firm side.
If your end goal is private practice, the only TRUE benefit of going in-house (which you have identified already) is that you can build connections and hopefully bring a large client to your law firm. If you can't bring your old in-house firm to your law firm, then your value drops drastically.
However, if your end goal is to stay in-house, then going in-house from the start is a good idea and saves you the stress of entering private practice (not that in-house has no stress).