The thing with in-house roles (when looked at from a law firm lawyer's perspective) is that we tend to look at the problems with law firm life (e.g. brutal hours, difficult partners & PAs / SAs) and seek to address those concerns without fully appreciating the challenges that are unique to an in-house role and which a law firm lawyer is not as likely to face.
The biggest challenge with an in-house role is that your work / life is completely pegged to how the management of that particular organisation behaves (i.e. the CEO, CFO, COO, Board of Directors). Some leadership teams are very professional, a lot of them simply are not. If the CEO / MD that you report into (or that your GC boss reports to) puts unrealistic deadlines for closing M&A deals or pressures the legal team to take very aggressive legal positions on a dicey matter (I have faced this a LOT of times!), then being able to go home by 5:30 pm isn't exactly a consolation. One common problem (especially in industries that are not doing great) is to show revenues that are not exactly in existence. In situations like that, it's the finance team (and many times even the legal team) that gets co-opted into all this. Decide for yourself if that is worth the easier hours. Feigning ignorance of accounting practices doesn't help!
A lot of senior management (and I'm not talking about the typical la la outfits, I'm talking about some of India's biggest listed cos and international MNCs operating in India) basically take pride in making outlandish commitments internally, to shareholders and most of all to the public at large on their growth and financial performance. There is a deep, dark and very murky undercurrent of .... stuff that floats beneath the rosy picture a lot of them paint. Joining the in-house team (for some companies) basically puts you at the receiving end of it. Sooner or later when the next big corporate fraud is unearthed, the in house legal teams would also start facing more responsibility / flak. When the Kingfisher fraud was unearthed, nobody expected the finance team of the company to land up behind bars. But it happened....
The other thing to consider is the office politics. Unless the top level GC is well respected (or at least feared) in the system, usually the in-house team has little or no leverage in this area because the perception of the in house team being a cost centre makes a lot of other departments dismiss the importance of the legal team. More importance, ironically, is afforded to the external counsel. I've seen this myself many times. The external lawyer at least carries some importance in the system; the in-house lawyer, no matter how experienced, often does not get that respect. It's not always the case but it does happen often.
Another thing to consider is that the industry in which your employer operates is crucial too. Some industries, especially financial services, pharma, healthcare, being heavily regulated require the in-house teams to have a near god like visibility of all laws, regulations and legal updates. That is a notoriously difficult threshold to cross which a lot of in-housers genuinely struggle with. Related to this are the turnaround times, which are usually a fraction of what they are for law firms. The same 7-10 days that's given to a firm to generate an SHA gets reduced to 7-10 hours (maybe less) in a corporate in-house role (I have faced this personally), all on the assumption that you have nothing else to do with your job (forget life) other than frame that document.
Another thing to remember is that in-house roles have only become popular in the last 10-12 years and serious money has only started flowing into this space in the last couple of years (at least in the mid/higher levels). More importantly, it again depends on the company, its management and the industry in which it operates. But a lot of industries have been badly affected by the Pandemic and have gone through tough downsizing. Several in-housers that I know of (I'm talking folks with 10+ years of experience), spent a good part of the last 18 months desperately looking for jobs after the cull.
There is of course great fun to be had in having the partners of all of India's biggest law firms fall at your feet for work (assuming you are in-house in a major corporate behemoth) and to have people falling over to grab your visiting card at those legal seminars (which feel more like tacky Filmfare awards). There is also a great deal of growth when you have joined the right team and report to a genuinely capable management. And yes there are several positives to highlight about going in house. Becoming an industry specialist (which I believe will be a valuable skill in the next 10 years) is more realistic / possible in an in-house role.
But there are some important considerations to weigh when looking at in-house roles. And simply asking what the work hours are like is an incomplete or deeply misguided way of evaluating such a role.
The biggest challenge with an in-house role is that your work / life is completely pegged to how the management of that particular organisation behaves (i.e. the CEO, CFO, COO, Board of Directors). Some leadership teams are very professional, a lot of them simply are not. If the CEO / MD that you report into (or that your GC boss reports to) puts unrealistic deadlines for closing M&A deals or pressures the legal team to take very aggressive legal positions on a dicey matter (I have faced this a LOT of times!), then being able to go home by 5:30 pm isn't exactly a consolation. One common problem (especially in industries that are not doing great) is to show revenues that are not exactly in existence. In situations like that, it's the finance team (and many times even the legal team) that gets co-opted into all this. Decide for yourself if that is worth the easier hours. Feigning ignorance of accounting practices doesn't help!
A lot of senior management (and I'm not talking about the typical la la outfits, I'm talking about some of India's biggest listed cos and international MNCs operating in India) basically take pride in making outlandish commitments internally, to shareholders and most of all to the public at large on their growth and financial performance. There is a deep, dark and very murky undercurrent of .... stuff that floats beneath the rosy picture a lot of them paint. Joining the in-house team (for some companies) basically puts you at the receiving end of it. Sooner or later when the next big corporate fraud is unearthed, the in house legal teams would also start facing more responsibility / flak. When the Kingfisher fraud was unearthed, nobody expected the finance team of the company to land up behind bars. But it happened....
The other thing to consider is the office politics. Unless the top level GC is well respected (or at least feared) in the system, usually the in-house team has little or no leverage in this area because the perception of the in house team being a cost centre makes a lot of other departments dismiss the importance of the legal team. More importance, ironically, is afforded to the external counsel. I've seen this myself many times. The external lawyer at least carries some importance in the system; the in-house lawyer, no matter how experienced, often does not get that respect. It's not always the case but it does happen often.
Another thing to consider is that the industry in which your employer operates is crucial too. Some industries, especially financial services, pharma, healthcare, being heavily regulated require the in-house teams to have a near god like visibility of all laws, regulations and legal updates. That is a notoriously difficult threshold to cross which a lot of in-housers genuinely struggle with. Related to this are the turnaround times, which are usually a fraction of what they are for law firms. The same 7-10 days that's given to a firm to generate an SHA gets reduced to 7-10 hours (maybe less) in a corporate in-house role (I have faced this personally), all on the assumption that you have nothing else to do with your job (forget life) other than frame that document.
Another thing to remember is that in-house roles have only become popular in the last 10-12 years and serious money has only started flowing into this space in the last couple of years (at least in the mid/higher levels). More importantly, it again depends on the company, its management and the industry in which it operates. But a lot of industries have been badly affected by the Pandemic and have gone through tough downsizing. Several in-housers that I know of (I'm talking folks with 10+ years of experience), spent a good part of the last 18 months desperately looking for jobs after the cull.
There is of course great fun to be had in having the partners of all of India's biggest law firms fall at your feet for work (assuming you are in-house in a major corporate behemoth) and to have people falling over to grab your visiting card at those legal seminars (which feel more like tacky Filmfare awards). There is also a great deal of growth when you have joined the right team and report to a genuinely capable management. And yes there are several positives to highlight about going in house. Becoming an industry specialist (which I believe will be a valuable skill in the next 10 years) is more realistic / possible in an in-house role.
But there are some important considerations to weigh when looking at in-house roles. And simply asking what the work hours are like is an incomplete or deeply misguided way of evaluating such a role.