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One of the joys of my job as a legal recruitment specialist comes from speaking with numerous legal professionals, enabling them to connect the dots in their professional lives – and helping shape where they’re heading.
Even more rewarding is placing someone into a leadership role in legal, or watching a candidate gain promotion to a bigger role. Just as our company purpose states, the buzz comes from changing people’s lives through creating opportunities for them.
If you ask a legal professional (in house) about career goals, a typical answer would be to become general counsel, be it a short term or long term. The questions following up is: where does my gap lie?
One general sentiment about the current legal recruitment market is that it has gotten tougher in the past year or two, especially for some senior roles. There are fewer senior positions, such as Head of Legal roles, in the market – and when one opens, it tends to be quite competitive among candidates.
Companies are getting more cautious, as are candidates. That said, there are candidates successfully moving forward with their career goals, while some remain in the same role and feel frustrated. So how might you best plan for your next career move? Here are a few tips from my side.
Unlike working in a law firm, an in-house lawyer is often surrounded by a wide range of issues: commercial, IP, compliance, corporate governance, labor, M&A, and litigation. It seems like everyone is responsible for all of these. Yet it is equally important to find your edge: know where your passions are, and really work on them, whether critical for your business or specific to your industry.
Examples include M&A transactions that require strong deal structuring knowledge; strong commercial understanding and business relationship-building across various business units. Others include compliance investigation; trade secret and IP protection; or regional level exposure with an ability to manage stakeholders and legal issues across different jurisdictions. Other key skills include people leadership and senior stakeholder management skills, industry specific knowledge and regulatory requirements.
I’ll never forget when during a job brief with one of my recent assignments, the chief counsel brought a name-card with him, asking me if I knew the candidate and if that person would be interested in their role. That card was from a networking event many years ago, and it still spoke for the candidate.
During the recruitment process, there are various cases when clients or recruiters might take references from your previous line managers, subordinates, HR partners, CFOs, and business stakeholders. The ‘word of mouth’ effect plays an even bigger role in the current environment, where everyone seems to be connected in some way. Being known as a legal specialist, a strong business partner, or a problem-solver can add so much value to the salability of your job application. We see quite a number of high-quality candidates who come to us from referrals and recommendations, eventually get placed.
Most in-house legal teams are small and have a very lean structure. This means there may not be many layers to climb up – and even taking on new projects or transferring role may not be essential to building a case for a promotion.
However, through these opportunities, you can gain exposure in critical business issues and strategic investments; deal with new legal issues in your industry; gain opportunities to work with different stakeholders; or acquire the chance to win a global CEO award on your performance.
Do so, and the achievement part of your resume may well catch the eye of a recruiter. A lot of my clients say that to be a great in-house lawyer, curiosity and a passion for new challenges are both major assets. Therefore, my advice is, if you’re faced with new challenges or projects, adopt a ‘say yes’ attitude and take on the challenge. You’ll very likely gain more from it than you first expect.
I trust my observations are useful: if you have of your own hiring tips, or questions about your next hire, do contact me at any time.
