The grass is always greener … you know the saying. Lawyers who toil away in law firms, burning the midnight oil working on an assignment that's due the next day, daydream about the cushy life of their in-house colleagues. "Those lucky ducks work 9-5, weekends off, corporate perks, and no firm politics to navigate," they lament. But is that really the case? Is the in-house life the low-stress ultimate legal gig?

Let's look at some of the benefits of working in-house that are touted by corporate headhunters, HR departments and some preconceived notions. The expectation might be that you get to avoid so much of the angst of private practice, like:

• Competing with peers for the next assignment 
• Appeasing autocratic partners 
• Satisfying difficult clients 
• Struggling to reach billing targets 
• Keeping time sheets
• File opening, governance and other administrative duties 
• Pulling evening and weekend shifts
• Getting different work from what you were expecting/assuming 
• Being undertrained and ill-prepared for this work 

Doesn't that sound wonderful? It's no wonder that in-house is sometimes seen as the ultimate destination. However, while some of these hold true in some corporate legal departments (CLDs), many lawyers who make the jump to in-house positions find familiar stresses to those they thought they were leaving behind. Let's take another look at the list and counter it with real life in the corporate world:

• Competing with peers for the next assignment? Yes this happens, there are turf wars, some folks get the hero gigs and others get the dross.
• Appeasing autocratic partners? Yes this also happens, only the bully has a different title such as GC or AGC.
• Satisfying difficult clients who give half-baked instructions? Oh please.
• Struggling to reach billing targets? True, not many corporate legal departments do internal billing, but don't assume the volume of work will be any less because of it.
• Keeping time sheets? Likewise, although many departments don't do this, no time sheets often just means more time on the hamster wheel.
• File opening, governance and other administrative duties? The in-house folks have their own admin, governance, compulsory courses on valueless topics, and the rest. Maybe less of it, but enough to annoy and distract you.
• Pulling evening and weekend shifts. Next time you pull an all-nighter in private practice, look around, some poor soul from the CLD is probably involved.
• Getting different work from what you were expecting/assuming? Now we're really getting to it. Chances are you will have exactly the same problem exactly as in private practice, only in a different setting.
• Being undertrained and ill-prepared for this work? See above, same issue, different setting. You might, for example, have thought that you were going to be advising on competition law, but then somehow find yourself being asked to do impossible risk assessments and set corporate strategies. 

What about the perks of being in a private firm? (Yes, there are some.) First of all, there's the money. The talent wars that have been all over the news (and is the subject of a miniseries of lessons on Lean Adviser) where law firms were throwing money around like Monopoly money to retain or attract associates didn't involve corporations (for the most part). Attorneys who participated in the talent wars came out victorious with record salaries. Prior to the COVID pandemic (and to be honest, a few years before that), the work-life balance solutions that law firms now offer associates were unheard of in law firms. At a recent law school reunion, one classmate law firm leader lamented that the associates were leaving the office while he's still working, which would have been unspeakable in traditional law firm culture.

Which is the way to go? It's not as easy a decision as it once was, when the list above of advantages of in-house work was more true than it is today. Neither are stress free (again, we're generalizing as there are many lawyers who love what they do and have plenty of time for the gym or the school run.