The inside story on working in-house

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On s1jobs there are lots of openings in the legal world. Want to work in a busy family practice? Handle conveyancing or produce the small-print for multi-million pound corporate deals?

Or maybe you enjoy the combative process of court work, defending or prosecuting those charged with committing crimes?

Legal_2Many of the vacancies on s1jobs sit right at the heart of the legal profession, where you’re surrounded by peers doing similar work.

But that’s not the only place you can practise as a lawyer and last month, at a ceremony in Edinburgh, the Law Society of Scotland recognised three of its in-house Rising Stars.

Victoria Davidson from Royal Bank of Scotland, Sarah Haig from Glasgow City Council and Oksana Orlova-Farrell of JFD Ltd, all have one thing in common: they work outwith any legal practice, delivering advice and guidance on legal compliance to public and commercial organisations.

Government from local to national level, service providers, local authorities, banks and big corporations . . . all have their own legal departments and the Law Society of Scotland is working to broaden its support to lawyers working in these sectors.

At its most recent admissions ceremony in the Signet Library in Edinburgh, when the LSS welcome 106 new solicitors into the profession, the address was delivered by Rosalin McInnes, principal solicitor for BBC Scotland.

And Lauren Findlay, a solicitor in Glasgow City Council’s Corporate Team has recently been speaking about her work.

“When people ask what it’s like working in-house, probably the most commonly given response is that the job is full of variety and no two days are the same,’ she said.

Even though she completed her traineeship at Glasgow City Council, Lauren says she still wasn’t sure what to expect when she took up her new position on the corporate team. What she discovered was the promise of diversity turned out to be authentic.

“One of the things I enjoy most is the variety of work, from drafting contracts for wheelie bins to preparing submissions to the Scottish Information Commissioner.”

From employment law to tenders and contracts, the range of work handled by in-house solicitors can be significant.

Work for a large corporation and you may specialise in just one aspect of the law, but in a smaller firm you’ll be responsible for everything, from the tenancy of premises to making the correct provision for staff maternity leave.

So, if you like every day to be different, maybe a switch from practice to in-house is on the cards.

You can find all the latest Legal vacancies on s1jobs.