For years, many of us toiling away in law firms thought that life would be so much better as an in-house counsel. You didn’t have to bill time; you didn’t have billable hour quotas. You didn’t have to hustle business. Life would be so much simpler.
But a couple of recent surveys pretty clearly confirm that the grass is seldom greener. A study by Axiom, an alternative legal service provider, for example, has disturbing news for those thinking about jumping ship to in-house. 89% of the in-house lawyers surveyed say they are dissatisfied with their positions. That’s just about every in-house counsel surveyed. 61% say they are very stressed with their current jobs (so much for the simplistic, carefree life we outside lawyers envisioned).
What’s the source of the dissatisfaction? 100% say the volume and complexity of the matters they handle are increasing. 81% say they are under-resourced. 41% say they have to spend too much time on administrative tasks. And 33% say their teams lack the legal expertise to do their job.
50% say they don’t even like the work they do and are convinced their talents are being wasted. Despite all this, 76% say there is or soon will be a hiring freeze in their departments. The old “do more with less” model doesn’t seem to be working.
This should bode well for business for outside lawyers, right? Wrong. According to in-house counsel, the advice they get from outside lawyers is too conceptual and too impractical. Managing outside counsel takes too much time. Law firms don’t prioritize their business. It takes too long to get outside lawyers involved to help much. And, of course, outside lawyers cost too much. Only 7% believed that outside lawyers could effectively help them.
The big