Knowing When It’s Time To Leave

This list of good reasons to leave your job as in-house attorney is comprehensive, if not exhaustive. Among the more interesting: If you like finding problems more than solving problems, leave. The author quotes a maxim in support of that proposition: “A fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer” and observes that if attorneys take more pride in pointing out the flaws in a client’s preliminary plans than in the solutions they help develop, they are indeed foolish.

Some of the suggestions may be self-evident:  If you do not like the company you work for, leave. In-house lawyers have one client. Find one you like and serve it well; If you do not like, or at least respect, the people you serve, leave.

The author exhorts in house attorneys to recognize and have respect for the extremely hard job their clients have, and calls attention the difficult task of selling more and more products and services at increasingly greater margins in a prudent, responsible way.

He advocates being grateful that there are talented people who have the skills to execute the strategies that attorneys help develop. He states that “we all became lawyers hoping we could help people,” and notes that in-house lawyers get to do that every day, as the products and services that their clients provide play an important role in the economy and in the well-being of the users of the clients’ products and services.