OnBoard Legal

Modern Legal Recruiting

Services

In-House Placements

General counsel and senior in-house search, screened for judgment.

What do you actually need this lawyer to decide?

It is a harder question than the job description usually admits, and the answer determines everything about the search. An in-house lawyer is a business advisor who happens to hold the legal risk. The best ones are asked what the company should do, not only what it is permitted to do. That is a different person from an excellent firm lawyer, and screening for it takes more than a resume and a practice area.

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The department, seat by seat

What changes as you move up is not the volume of legal work. It is how much of the business the seat is expected to own.

  1. Counsel
    Owns the work

    Deep in a discipline: commercial contracts, employment, IP, regulatory. Judged on throughput, accuracy, and how easy they are for the business to work with.

  2. Senior and managing counsel
    Owns a function

    Runs a practice inside the company and begins managing outside counsel spend. The first seat where commercial judgment matters more than technical depth.

  3. Deputy general counsel
    Owns the department

    Builds and leads the team, sets the risk posture, and is credible with the executive group without the general counsel in the room.

  4. General counsel
    Owns the risk

    At the table for strategy rather than summoned to it. Answers to the chief executive and the board, and is expected to say when the answer is no and what to do instead.

Building out a department

Hiring your first, or your next?

The first in-house lawyer is a different search from the fifth. One call is enough to know which one you are running.

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Where the candidates are

A candidate pool most companies never see.

Almost every lawyer in private practice has some interest in going in-house. In the prime of a career, it rarely pencils out. A partner with their own clients out-earns almost any in-house role, and the golden handcuffs hold. Most in-house searches therefore look only at people who are already in-house and compete with every other company for the same names.

In a lawyer’s late fifties and sixties, the arithmetic changes. Compensation matters less. The desire to be rid of time sheets and the endless hunt for clients matters more. These are lawyers with thirty years of judgment and between five and twenty years of full-time work still in them, and our founder has watched a steady stream of them choose exactly this move as the fourth quarter of a career. We work with law firm partners every day, which is where a great deal of that judgment still sits.

Beyond the legal qualification

What we screen for, once the credentials are established

Every candidate on your short list will be technically qualified. These are the things that separate them, and none of these appear on a resume.

  • Commercial judgment

    Can they tell you which risks are worth running? A lawyer who answers every question with no is a lawyer the business quietly stops asking.

  • A risk posture that matches yours

    A regulated manufacturer and a growth-stage software company need genuinely different instincts. Matching that is most of the fit.

  • Standing with executives

    Whether they can hold a position with a chief executive who wants a different answer, and still be invited into the next conversation.

  • Willingness to build

    In-house means fewer resources than they had at a firm. The right candidate finds that energizing rather than diminishing.

Start here

Tell us what the business needs to stop worrying about.

We have recruited into corporate legal departments nationwide, from associate counsel through general counsel.

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