Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50715
Aſter completing her articles at a Bay Street law firm two years ago, Queen's University Faculty of Law grad Jennifer Graham moved straight into her current job as legal counsel at ING DIRECT in Toronto. In comparing her two experiences, Graham says her in-house work is broader and she has ended up with a lot more client contact than while at a firm. There are people to British Columbia Faculty of Law, says the school is always open to thinking about what courses they can do differently. As a general principle though, he and others say the purpose of law school is to provide students with a broader background in law rather than encouraging them to get too narrowly focused too early. Schulich's Deturbide says, "Law school teaches you a new language, it teaches you a new way of I think the law schools should recognize that in-house is an area that it is very likely that one of their students will go to. The in-house bar is getting bigger and bigger. Sanjeev Dhawan, Hydro One Networks Inc. go to for advice and guidance, but she also has a lot of her own files. Tan also noted a similar experience while articling at Loblaw. "They're not holding your hand necessarily, so you pretty much have to figure out how to do things on your own and you ask questions as you go, but there's no one there to just sit down and explain how to do something from start to finish," she says. "It's one of the biggest companies in Canada so you get a really wide variety of work, so they have a labour practice, they have corporate-commercial, M&A, marketing, IT, IP, they pretty much have everything, so I've been told from the lawyers that work there it's kind of like being in a mid-size firm." But while some students might be interested in this type of work, Tan says many do not have a sense that they can do in-house right out of the gate. "There really isn't anything available for students in terms of getting more information on how to make the jump in-house or courses they could take," she says. From their perspective, law schools provide a number of courses that broadly prepare students for everything from private practice to corporate counsel life, but don't generally provide courses specifically designed for in-house counsel. David Duff, associate dean for academic affairs at the University of thinking, it teaches you the basic substrate of the law, and you build on that, and I think those tools, those skills, are useful in private practice, they're useful in working [as] in-house counsel, they're useful in working in any aspect of the law, really. "I don't necessarily think that law schools need to provide a course focused on in-house counsel work. I think what law schools need to be aware of though is that students are increasingly interested in these types of careers and being able to advise them if people, in the future, want to do this kind of work." At U of T, for example, Orchard suggests students think about what this type of role might look like for them and what about it is appealing. Generally, she says, students can use their experience at the summer level as an opportunity to get good training and help shape the career trajectory they see for themselves. Indeed, those already working in-house say there is a lot that students wishing to pursue a corporate counsel career can do within the law school context to prepare. An MBA or even a bachelor's degree in business is not necessary to work in- house, says Tan, but it definitely helps. Having a genuine interest in the company or industry you're looking to work in, as well as in business itself, is also an asset. "Definitely, if you can take core business courses so you have business associations, commercial law, bankruptcy, corporate finance, and if you can take some sort of business workshop where you're practising law, any clinics, those are definitely must-takes," she says. The law school courses that best prepared Tan for in-house work were corporate finance, governance, and M&A workshops, where students had the opportunity to practise negotiations and draſting on how a business could proceed with an M&A transaction, she says. Graham says commercial law courses can provide the relevant background, as can general business and employment law courses, but it depends what kind of company you join. For example, if you're working with a publicly traded firm, securities law would also be useful, as you might be responsible for filing annual reports and disclosures. Essentially, having as wide a perspective as possible is essential to preparing for an in-house role, says Dhawan. "There's nothing formalized in order to prepare you for in-house, but anyone wanting to go in-house, I would definitely suggest that having a good commercial understanding is helpful, and don't think that any of the advocacy- type courses will not be useful if you're in-house," he says. Students who article with a firm could also consider the option of doing a secondment at one of the firm's clients to get a sense of what in-house is like, suggests Graham. Doing your research and getting a sense of the responsibilities, duties, and backgrounds of the lawyers already working for companies you are interested in is also useful, she says. While Dhawan doesn't see an impending shiſt in the trend of lawyers getting their training in law firms before moving in-house, he says a practical element in law school that would serve both in-house and private practice would go a long way. This could involve in-house practitioners as guest lecturers in the upper years, for example. "I think the law schools should recognize that in-house is an area that it is very likely that one of their students will go to. The in-house bar is getting bigger and bigger," he says. ■ C ANADIAN Lawyer 4STUDENTS F all 2011 25