In-house at 9 months PQE

Hi all. Potential in-house job offer with a asset manager paying c.£100k + bonus and a promise of normal working hours.

At 9 months PQE, I wonder if this is too early?  Conscious of future plans to perhaps go overseas and also a potential issue going in-house so early that I basically can never go back to private practice?

seems like a dreamy gig tbf.

 

Does it come with supervision? If you are in that role and reporting to the board, then avoid like the plague. The extra 15 K a year after tax is not worth potential jail time or the worry.

There's always a really interesting balance to these questions. would it be good for you? Yeah maybe, financially and CV wise. Would you be any good? Hard to answer yourself. Would you end up entrenching the bad habits of a lawyer who's never been trained better? Hard to answer yourself. Ask your current boss.

There's always a really interesting balance to these questions. would it be good for you? Yeah maybe, financially and CV wise. Would you be any good? Hard to answer yourself. Would you end up entrenching the bad habits of a lawyer who's never been trained better? Hard to answer yourself. Ask your current boss.

£100k in-house for someone who is basically a NQ!?  

What Summers said - they are looking for a 'yes man' to sign off anything as good to go and the quid pro quo is you get wedge well beyond your market rate.

See you in the SDT in 5 years time when the whole thing goes tits up and they point the finger at you.

Laz @ 0303 - I know a few who have gone in-house with CPS / GLD / local Government  etc...  Once you are in the arse end of the legal market it is very difficult to get out of it.  

 

O'Doyle, at such a junior level you really need to ask whether you will be able to develop the fundamental skills that you will need to progress in your career.

Is it a large firm with a decent sized legal department that can offer you a credible alternative to the supervision and training that you would receive in PP?  What is the calibre of the other lawyers there?  Would you be surrounded by other competent lawyers at a variety of levels, from whom you can learn?

If it would just be you (or you plus one or more other juniors) reporting into a more senior lawyer then I think you are more likely to struggle in the longer term.

Yeah i would cut your teeth first - 2/3 is still early but do able - doing at NQ I dont think you have seen enough black letter yet to develop effective.

The benefit of PP is the knowledge base they have and the resources they have available - you remember your matters and when you go inhouse you have that cheeky bank of knowledge that something has been done in a particular way before etc. 

I was in-house as an NQ and I more than hold my own technically against colleagues who did a few years in PP. The black letter stuff dissolves pretty quickly in-house at least in transactional roles as far as I can see. Also v technical lawyers don't get very senior in a hierarchical sense. It's always the organiser types that rise if that stuff matters to you. Point is it's very possible to become a very successful lawyer without being a very good one.

I was just going to ask a similar question. I'm a 3PQE lawyer from Europe, have just relocated to the UK for family reasons. I had to realize that my chances of getting a decent PP job without UK qualification and some local track record is pretty slim. But, while I sort out the UK qualification, I have bills to pay, so right now I'm interviewing for a pretty nice in-house role, which I think I would like in the short-term. But, my worry is that I'm not sure I'd have a way back to private practice after that

If you go inhouse you'll find it is less a case of PP no longer being attracted to you but you no longer being attracted to PP.

Unless you like filling in time sheets.