Advice for In House?

[Co1983]

I'm going to apologise in advance if this isn't the right forum to be on but it seems like a very knowledgeable place! For context nothing about my educational background, situation or ambitions are the norm for this site; I don't have an LLB or PGDL; I'm a mature "career changer/not changer" and I have no desire whatsoever to work in a law firm, let alone one in the magic circle or silver circle. However, I am trying to navigate a path from my current role to that of an in-house legal counsel.

Allow me to explain as succinctly as I can! I am a company secretary and I quite like my job but increasingly people like me are getting pushed out by people who are lawyers. Many years ago I did a History degree and then I did the ICSA exams because back in the early 2000s, that is the kind of thing you did if you wanted to be a company secretary. However, quite soon after that the financial crash happened and in that carnage there was less legal work around, the lawyers started entering the cosec profession and I found it harder and harder to progress. However, there was plenty of compliance work in the banking sector. So for a decade, I happily did that instead, doing intricate work reviewing and summarising regulatory change and supporting various parts of the bank to implement the changes. Until I hit the "lawyer's only ceiling" in that profession too. I managed to eventually get a decent opening into the company secretarial world based on my compliance experience but I'm generally excluded from all the most interesting listed work because of my background.

To prove a point (that company secretaries don't need a law degree to understand the law), last year I did SQE 1. Compared to ICSA/CGI, it really wasn't a very hard qualification to get. I suspect it's also true that an LLB or a GDL is also much harder to achieve than SQE 1. And so to my dilemma.

With my background in financial regulation, my years of experience as a company secretary and now gaining SQE 1 combined with the fact that I genuinely enjoy this intellectual challenge, my question is whether there is any path towards eventually becoming the general counsel in a business without having to work for a law firm first? I know the mechanics of the SQE allow it - all sorts can pass as legal experience these days - but my question is more whether it is achievable in practice and if so how?

In particular, some questions I have are:

1) If I complete both parts of the SQE, is there any remaining merit in doing an LLB or GDL? Is there any danger in not doing so?

2) Similarly, would getting a relevant LLM be in anyway useful and if I was really keen to avoid doing an LLB or GDL (and I really am!) could an LLM be a good substitute to show I can cope with the academic side of the profession?

3) Are there any other particular skills in-house firms want that are unique to them?

 

[Jessica Booker]

I'm going to apologise in advance if this isn't the right forum to be on but it seems like a very knowledgeable place! For context nothing about my educational background, situation or ambitions are the norm for this site; I don't have an LLB or PGDL; I'm a mature "career changer/not changer" and I have no desire whatsoever to work in a law firm, let alone one in the magic circle or silver circle. However, I am trying to navigate a path from my current role to that of an in-house legal counsel.

Allow me to explain as succinctly as I can! I am a company secretary and I quite like my job but increasingly people like me are getting pushed out by people who are lawyers. Many years ago I did a History degree and then I did the ICSA exams because back in the early 2000s, that is the kind of thing you did if you wanted to be a company secretary. However, quite soon after that the financial crash happened and in that carnage there was less legal work around, the lawyers started entering the cosec profession and I found it harder and harder to progress. However, there was plenty of compliance work in the banking sector. So for a decade, I happily did that instead, doing intricate work reviewing and summarising regulatory change and supporting various parts of the bank to implement the changes. Until I hit the "lawyer's only ceiling" in that profession too. I managed to eventually get a decent opening into the company secretarial world based on my compliance experience but I'm generally excluded from all the most interesting listed work because of my background.

To prove a point (that company secretaries don't need a law degree to understand the law), last year I did SQE 1. Compared to ICSA/CGI, it really wasn't a very hard qualification to get. I suspect it's also true that an LLB or a GDL is also much harder to achieve than SQE 1. And so to my dilemma.

With my background in financial regulation, my years of experience as a company secretary and now gaining SQE 1 combined with the fact that I genuinely enjoy this intellectual challenge, my question is whether there is any path towards eventually becoming the general counsel in a business without having to work for a law firm first? I know the mechanics of the SQE allow it - all sorts can pass as legal experience these days - but my question is more whether it is achievable in practice and if so how?

In particular, some questions I have are:

1) If I complete both parts of the SQE, is there any remaining merit in doing an LLB or GDL? Is there any danger in not doing so?

2) Similarly, would getting a relevant LLM be in anyway useful and if I was really keen to avoid doing an LLB or GDL (and I really am!) could an LLM be a good substitute to show I can cope with the academic side of the profession?

3) Are there any other particular skills in-house firms want that are unique to them?

1) There would be no logic in doing an LLB or GDL if you passed SQE1 and SQE2 - there is no danger at all in my opinion.

2) An LLM wouldn't be of any greater value than the LLB or GDL. It maybe useful if it was a very specialised LLM that aligned with the in-house work you would be doing, but a general LLM is unlikely to be helpful.

3) From experience, in-house teams tend to value more commercial thinking and relationship building. Commercial awareness is important in law firms, but I think it is more about the practical thinking of business operations that you need for in-house more so than in private practice. They generally want to understand why you want to be an expert at their business rather than an advisor to many different types of businesses. I think generally though the skills they look for tend to be very similar.

 

[Co1983]

Thank-you Jessica. I will happily consign to the dustbin any thoughts of doing an LLB or GDL.

I think you have articulated really well why I want to be in-house in your third point too. I have spent my whole career in financial services and I honestly have no interest in venturing into a law firm to deal with a broader array of clients, or even to deal with multiple financial services clients. Over the years, I've enjoyed working across departments to really understand my employers' businesses not just from a legal but also commercial perspective and I don't want to move away from that. And billable hours holds no appeal for me either!

Given that I'm already quite set on where I want to specialise I will still consider the value of an LLM although I think the price tag would demand that it was more than merely "useful!" It sounds like I might be better off being free to read more widely in my own time rather than focus on one course.

Many thanks for all your help. One more question though if I may? Do you know what the typical route into a first in house job tends to be? All the vacancies seem to be for lawyers or people with law degrees?