once you jump from a firm to in-house?... gist of the article is that if you go in-house you may actually never be able to land a decent job again even if you graduated from a top law school and worked for a top firm. Including in-house to in-house. The article seems to hint that patent law and other focused areas may be an exception but never explicitly states that.... I'm curious if there is a pay ceiling working in-house - I understand you'll never make partner level money but I wonder how raises work in-house or if they are fairly non-existent. ... In-house, is there mentoring? Or should I be firmly planted in a firm until I do everything with complete autonomy?
I've seen some, but admittedly not a whole lot of movement from in-house back out to firms. A main issue might be, once you've got 10 years experience, any firm wanting to hire someone at that level also wants them to bring a $300K-500K book of business with them. If you're coming from in-house you can seldom promise any book, except in cases where an in-house dept is "right-sized" or outright dissolved and it's understood you'll be bringing the in-house work with you to whatever firm you land at.
In-house to in-house, there seems to be no impediment to movement. Corps wanting to hire experienced attorneys have a definite bias for those with corporate/in-house experience.
Pay ceiling? Depends on the company. As you note you'll never make $300K-$400K-$500K in today's dollars like some partners do. When the economy is more normal, I'd say 4-7% is a pretty typical in-house annual merit raise, with spikes on promotions (which may be 4-6 years apart). Especially in large legal depts where they tend to want to flatten things out and standardize. Whereas in a smaller, more entrepreneurial company the raises might be much higher. At least until the company folds. When times are not so good, it can be pretty pernicious. You hear excuses along the lines of, "we're belt tightening and so the corporate average salaried raise is set at 3.5%. Oh, but for you guys in legal, since you're all HCEs, the average raise is pegged at 2.0% and maxes at 3.6%" (not just in legal - R&D divisions top-heavy with well-paid PhD's get the same song and dance). Meanwhile, the CEO gets his 12% raise and a $1.8 mio "performance" bonus despite all that "belt tightening" for the rest of the corp. Oh well. Bonuses in legal departments are not unusual and may be tied to your performance rating, the company's performance against set targets, or combinations of the two. May be in the form of cash or stock options in a public company, or both. Generally options are thought of as more of a retention tool than a bonus, since they often have a set time limit (1-3 years) before they can begin to be exercised.
Mentoring - again this will obviously vary depending on the size of the department. In very large departments you'd likely find fairly formal programs for mentoring, training/onboarding, ongoing training, etc. How many reg.nos. are already employed at the company in question? In a smaller department with just you and the one other guy up to his eyeballs with work, well, good luck. Write here often with your questions.
But if you're interested and are reasonably competent, don't let the fact that you're still asking questions stop you. Heck, lots of us are still asking questions. Also, does the company in question have a pet patent firm to which they send overflow work? If you're walking into a situation where you'll be the entire patent dept. and you're still sending the firm work as well, lean on their expertise from time to time if you get something sticky you can't figure out from the CFR/MPEP, or something completely outside your current skill set.
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Topic: Is it true you can never go back.... (Read 1281 times)
