Career Clinic: West End firm or in-house - which offers more variety of work?

In this market, you will be pushed to find someone willing to take anyone on outside their specialist area in my opinion. Even assuming you are a wonderful candidate, it would make more sense to take a lawyer with a background more aligned to a generalist role and there are plenty out there (following redundancy) just chomping at the bit to get those jobs.

Tough position, but hey, you've got a job in the worst recession you will ever know!

Me -19 Aug 2010 | 17:01

I think you're unlikely to get a variety of work at this early stage in your career. You need to build up your expertise in a number of different areas by moving from one specialised role to another every couple of years, and this way you can build up a portfolio of skills. Only then can you realistically apply for a so-called 'varied' role.

Michael -19 Aug 2010 | 17:05

If you’re undecided about what you want to focus on there’s not a lot of point at going in-house yet. You don’t want to make that move without some vague idea about what industries or role you want and you won’t come across well in interviews with that attitude. It sounds like you need a couple of years seasoning in a West End or smallish City firm, preferably one with enough of a corporate practice that the finance experience you have will give you a selling point in the interview, even if it’s not what you’ll be focusing on full time.

Hmmm -20 Aug 2010 | 09:26

I think an in-house job definitely provides you more exposure to a variety of areas, if you would be interested in that although I can't say that it is absolutely untrue of a small law firm as well. In my opinion, being a generalist gives you more options and flexibility with your career and you can be one size fits all. I moved from a litigation practice setting to in-house and there is a never a dull moment here.

Anonymous -23 Aug 2010 | 10:59

I have seen high quality finance lawyers move to a more varied position with West End firms. In particular, I went green with envy as I watched two colleagues transform themselves from banking lawyers to film lawyers. Film finance is a logical route to take for a high calibre City lawyer looking to add an interesting twist to their career. Whether there are any roles in the West End at the moment for that kind of work, I don't know.

Anonymous -23 Aug 2010 | 11:47

More lawyers want variety to be the spice of life

Your comments indicate that 'variety' is one of your values. Often people don't know their values or consider them when making important choices like which career, employer or practice group will best suit what's important to them.

The downturn has made many lawyers fearful of having a narrow specialism in case of redundancy, but being a generalist is not always wise either because there is a trend to having a clear niche in what is becoming a more competitive market.

More and more lawyers like yourself are wanting better work life balance and the very law firm model inhibits this from happening in reality as the focus is always on maximum billable hours to create profit being the measure of success.

With technology, less people doing more work and social media, balance is hard to achieve, so worth creating efficient systems and thinking it through now to help you have it in the future!

Rachel Brushfield -24 Aug 2010 | 06:24

"You need to build up your expertise in a number of different areas by moving from one specialised role to another every couple of years"

I think this is the original poster's point - this is very difficult to do in commercial private practice and is one of the reasons why I have similar sentiments as regards pigeonhole specialisation. I suspect West End firms will be the same, certainly national firms are - there is little scope to do a broad role as this doesn't suit the current structure in place with most firms. Whether this will continue to be the case in the light of dropping head counts remains to be seen, but I don't think much will change as many lawyers have made a rod for their own backs (whether through their own choice or not) and firms (or at least HR departments) aren't prepared to look at transferable skills, they just want specialised experience. I can't speak for in-house roles however and would be interested to hear views on those.

Anonymous -25 Aug 2010 | 09:36