Career Clinic: Should I turn down a magic circle job to pursue my tech law ambitions?

Too soon...

You know the answer. You are too young/inexperienced to go in-house. Stick where you are for a few years or try and move to a tech role in private practice. If you go in-house too soon you won't have the breadth of experience to develop into a well-rounded useful lawyer.

Associate -07 Oct 2011 | 15:45

In-houser's view

I'm the GC at an IT company. Many people like me would think you need more experience before we'd be happy to take you on. For the best development at this point in your career, my advice is to stay in private practice for a couple more years. If you have to move firm to find a good IP/IT role, go for it.

Tom Kilroy -07 Oct 2011 | 16:41

Move firms!

Like you I had an IT background before qualifying as a lawyer and wanted to practice IT/IP lawyer upon qualification. I think that if you want to reuse your prior experience and industry knowledge (and they are generally v useful in this field), then look to move sooner rather than later. It's a shame you did not get a chance to do a seat in that department at your current firm, but that may not hold you back from getting an NQ role at another firm (particularly if you've picked up any IT/IP law knowledge from law school or general reading). The market for IT lawyers seems fairly robust at the moment, so get in touch with recruitment consultants.

IT Lawyer -07 Oct 2011 | 17:57

What are the choices?

The other posters are talking sense in advising you to get more experience before moving in house.

If you want to work in an in-house technology role, the best options to prepare for that will be either a private practice IP/IT role or a corporate/commercial role working with technology or media based companies where a level of technology expertise is expected across disciplines.

If the option to stay where you are will not enable you to get experience or develop skills that help with your longer-term goal, you need to either look for a move or re-think it.

While not as bad as in some areas, the market is tighter now it was a few years ago and it's more difficult to change track completely after a few years than it was in the past because there are more people chasing jobs.

Weight it up carefully. Good luck.

Young Fogey -10 Oct 2011 | 11:34

Follow your heart

Firstly, can I congratulate the last two posters (only) for actually reading the question. There was no suggestion of going in house now, so I don't know what the first few were going on about.

This is a no-brainer: do something you are really interested in (and have some useful experience of) or follow the rest of the MC sheep to the slaughter. Your question implies that the only thing holding you back is the assumption that being at a MC firm must automatically trump any other option. That is a myth!

Follow your heart - you will never be successful and happy unless you enjoy what you do.

Indahouse -10 Oct 2011 | 12:57

IP/IT

Having been both a lawyer and a recruiter I would advise that you pursue your genuine interest and try to find an IP/IT position at another firm. This will also set you up nicely for moving in-house at a later date. I have worked with a number of NQs recently who have done the same thing and who have now secured suitable positions. If you would like assistance in finding the right opportunity please don't hesitate to contact me (chris@cgwlegal.co.uk).

Chris Woodward -10 Oct 2011 | 16:46

View from another GC at an IT company

If you want to end up in-house then, as Tom Kilroy says, you'll be better off with two or more years of private practice experience first. Depending on the role you pitch for in-house, that may not require much IT experience - we've had a lot of success with lawyers having construction or other project backgrounds, but some roles need prior sector experience so you would be more limited in choices without specific IT experience.

If you stay with your firm for at least a year's PQE (and preferably two plus) it will show people like me that your firm rated you highly enough to keep you; if you move on straight after qualification it is far from fatal, but you'll have to explain your decision more carefully.

Jonathan Smith -11 Oct 2011 | 17:24

It may be more difficult to make the change later

I too had the option on qualification of staying with my large firm and qualifying into a department that I was not particularly interested in, or moving to a smaller firm where I could do the niche area that interested me.

I chose the latter and I have no doubt that it was the right decision. It is easy to explain in future interviews that you did not have the option of the practice area that you wanted on qualification, so that led you to move. It can easily be presented as a positive thing by showing commitment to that practice area from the off.

In addition, if you were thinking of making the move at say 2PQE, my experience is that you would be at a competitive disadvantage against people of the same level who have been practising tech law where you have done two years in some other area of law, notwithstanding that you did so at a more well-known firm.

Aside from myself, I know of at least two other people who wanted to go into niche areas and faced this very dilemma. One stayed at their existing firm in a non-related practice area, got behind the competition and was never quite able to make the move across. The other did make the jump on qualification and has now moved again into what is his ideal role.

I think that if you have the opportunity to get into your practice area now, you should go for it.

Sage -12 Oct 2011 | 09:36

CV first

The short answer is no, not yet. I suggest you build your CV by doing the following:

(1) accept an associate position at the MC firm is my advice, as the assumption I would make on reading a CV with MC TC and a different job on qualification was that a qualification job was not offered.

(2) ensure as much as possible that the MC associate position is as close to your interest as possible. Any corporate role is fine for this purpose. Don't assume this will be easy to get, you need to appear focused and to want the job.

(3) use your qualification leave to work out a list of firms you are interested in and discuss with recruiters. Fortunately for you, corporate is relatively quiet at the moment meaning you can take a while to think before moving on.

(4) hopefully get more relevant private practice job within 6 months of qualification

(5) stay in that job for 2 years PQ and then start thinking about the in-house move.

Good luck.

Stupot -12 Oct 2011 | 11:58

Clarification

Original poster here.

Thanks for the advice and support so far. To clarify, I'm not interested in moving in-house for another few years. The question is more in relation to how difficult it would be to make the move to a different firm now, considering I haven't done a seat in the relevant area.

As a further question, can anyone tell me what kind of pay difference I would see when eventually moving in house? Say, at 3-7 PQE?

Original poster -12 Oct 2011 | 14:25

Industry experience?

OP, when you say you have "industry experience" in the IT sector, do you mean technical IT experience or something else (e.g. you worked in the HR team at at IT company). I ask because if you have actual IT experience (or something like project management or contract management experience) you're probably going to be a more attractive proposition to another firm at this stage...

just wondering -13 Oct 2011 | 10:51

response to OP

(1) ease of moving to another firm without doing a seat in the relevant area?

To be frank, 6 months as a trainee is of minimal benefit anyway, I would definitely consider hiring someone who's experience wasn't bang on at that level (you are talking about a move away from the MC at 0-1 PQE) - at that level it is raw ability not experience, which is why I would be more interested that the MC firm had offered you a job. See points 1 and 2 of my post above.

(2) pay difference

I am currently paid more in-house than I would be at the MC firm I trained/qualified with. However, there is a greater risk of your pay stagnating in-house, i.e. you will need to be prepared to move jobs to secure pay rises. It is also a different game, you will need to embrace managerial responsibility early and get line reports to put your pay up. It tends to be lumpy steps up rather than the (theoretically) smooth curve of getting paid more with each year of PQE. Being a technical specialist will not get you up the pay grades so quickly. This is particularly true of the 3-7 year PQE level you flag. Within that range you will see people who are team leads and people who are on their own. In some cases you will see people reporting into someone with less PQE (and consequently sometimes earning less), it is not a solely PQE driven structure in-house.

Also IP/IT tends to fall under the general commercial heading which as far as I have seen, observing colleagues but noting it is not my area of expertise, doesn't tend to be one of the bigger paying areas of practice in the City at least. You can get a general picture from recruitment consultant salary surveys though.

Stupot -13 Oct 2011 | 10:58

Job opportunity

If you do happen to have IT knowledge and/or experience, I know someone who is currently looking for an NQ lawyer to do commercial/IT work (at a well regarded international firm) - if you email me at s.l.krafft [at] lse [dot] ac[dot] uk I can give you some more details. For the record I'm not a recruiter!

not a recruiter -13 Oct 2011 | 13:25

If you really want to do IP/IT, I suggest that you move to one of the top-tier firms - smaller than magic circle but top 15 - you will get better experience and more standalone work. A lot of work in an IP/IT magic circle firm is corporate support.

Mdme F -11 Nov 2011 | 16:20