The summer before I entered law school, I worked in the legal department of a major international business firm.  I learned a lot.  But I realized by the end of the summer that most of the interesting legal questions and matters that the business firm generated (requiring transactional and litigation work) were farmed out to a veritable stable of law firms that represented the business firm on a regular basis.  I then determined (based on my very unscientific single-firm study) that in-house work was not for me.  That was 1982.

Fast-forward 15-or-so years.  By then, I had been working at a major international law firm for twelve years doing transactional work I enjoyed.  A client asked me to interview for an open in-house position.  I did.  I was ready to focus my attention on one business and had a good relationship with the in-house lawyers at the client firm.  Many friends had successfully moved to in-house jobs and were happy and well-adjusted in them (some after trying several to get the right fit).  I was in line to get the job.  But the client then determined to downsize and eliminated the open position.  

Several years later, I resolved to pursue a different path.   I decided to spend my second career teaching and writing about business law–a road well suited to me in many ways but less traveled by business law colleagues.  This was a harder decision to reach in many ways.  But I knew it was right, and in the end, I jumped in with two feet.  In 2000, The University of Tennessee College of Law gave me that opportunity.  The rest is a history that readers likely already know well.

What of the in-house road not taken?  

Lou Sirico's post on Saturday at the Legal Skills Prof Blog seemed to beg me to revisit that non-decision from my past.  That post features outtakes from and a link to a BCG Attorney Search post by Harrison Barnes that presents disadvantages to working in-house.  I noted among them the following: "Your skills will deteriorate rapidly and significantly. The most important work will be sent to law firms and not done by you."  That was just what I feared and observed in that summer job back in 1982.  Other listed disadvantages also are things that I later identified as I came to know more about the differences among legal jobs that were available to me at various stages of my career.

Because I love law teaching, researching, writing, and service so much, I am not disappointed that the in-house opportunity fell through back in the mid-1990s.  But I knew at the time I decided to interview for that opening that the advantages of the position outweighed the disadvantages (which extended beyond the list presented in Lou's and Harrison's posts because of attributes of the specific in-house opening I was considering).  The advantages, like the disadvantages, were contextual.  They had to do with what I wanted to achieve with my legal training.  Like many (perhaps most) legal rules, professional positions are not in-and-of-themselves wholly advantageous or disadvantageous.  Advantages and disadvantages come from assessing the rule or position in a specific factual context.

As I weighed my own decision, I reflected on various aspects of the job requirements, the nature and health of the firm, the personnel, the geography, and other factors.  I did so keeping in mind my own long-term and short-term goals–professional and personal.  As I did when I later determined to enter the law academy, I made lists.  I pondered.  I discussed my thoughts with family and friends, including those who had considered or made similar transitions in their law careers.  This is the same general approach that I advise my job-seeking students to use, if they are not already engaging in this kind of exercise. At the time I considered the in-house alternative, I had a lot more information at my disposal than I had during that summer of in-house legal work in 1982.  My wider and deeper base of information reflected (among other things) twelve years of law practice and marriage, a tragic death in the family, and two childbirth experiences–not to mention the beginning of child-rearing for both of those children.  I was a different person, and the legal department opportunity with the client was a different kind of in-house practice than the one I had experienced in that long-ago summer.

I hope that some of these reflections are useful to some of you–in your own career planning or in your advice to students regarding the same.  It seems appropriate to close with one of my favorite stanzas from Robert Frost's iconic poetry.

 . . . I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.