Is the Grass Still Greener In-House?

Job-seeking attorneys are gravitating toward roles inside corporate legal departments, but perceptions that in-house offers a better work-life balance than a law firm or the ability to influence decision-making could prove disappointing. Law.com reporter Frank Ready sought out TRU founder and CEO Jared Coseglia for his input.

Jared Coseglia said that most job-seekers want to be working in-house. “That doesn’t mean that the reasons why they want to work there are accurate. For example, there are some people who believe that working in-house or in corporate will be an easier job, or a higher quality of life than a law firm or a service provider. … And I would say that, depending on the vertical, it’s probably not true most of the time,” he said.

As the landscape of global privacy regulations has continued to expand, one area where legal departments have been especially keen to hire is data privacy. Coseglia noted that those employees—lawyers and nonlawyers—often wind up working very hard, and very long hours. “So I don’t know that quality of life is necessarily the selling point. … I think [privacy people] go to corporate because that’s where the action is. That’s where [compliance] programs are being built,” he said.

Coseglia indicated that there was a time when e-discovery specialists gravitated toward in-house because they wanted to be closer to where key decisions were being made, to influence policy and approach. “That, maybe more so than quality of life, has been the big shock for people in-house, at how slowly decisions are made. At how little impact sometimes people are able to have, which is jarring, I think, sometimes from their expectations,” he said.

Read the full article HERE!