Credit: Faberr Ink/Shutterstock.com

Looking to hold onto a valuable member of your company's legal team? Giving that lawyer more responsibilities and opportunities for growth will help retain them—perhaps even more than a pay raise would.

According to the 2018 Evers Legal Career Satisfaction Report, a survey released this week that reflected responses from 180 in-house lawyers at various career levels, money mattered, but other factors mattered more.

Some 67 percent of respondents said the most rewarding aspect of their job was working with a great team. This factor was followed by intellectual stimulation at 59 percent and responsibility at 53 percent. Only 26 percent believed that compensation was the most rewarding aspect of their work.

Mike Evers, the president of Evers Legal, an in-house legal recruitment agency, said that when lawyers go in-house, they typically make a tradeoff—less pay for what they view as more rewarding work. With the exception of a company's general counsel, there is an understanding that in-house attorneys generally make less money than those in law firms, Evers said.

“The general wisdom within the legal community is that for the most part, in-house pays somewhat less,” Evers said.

Evers said because of the work, those who go in-house do not typically go back to working for outside law firms.

“When people who are already in-house move, it's rarely because they want to go back to a law firm,” Evers said.

Evers said that typically, in-house attorneys will move to another in-house position at a company instead. He said that the reason may be because they have hit a promotional ceiling or that when a company is bought, the in-house attorneys may feel they have less job security.

Despite companies touting flexible work options as a hiring perk, a flexible work schedule—including the ability to telecommute—was not among the top factors the survey found in-house attorneys consider in their evaluation of job satisfaction. Only 28 percent of respondents indicated that a flexible work schedule would make their jobs more satisfying.

Evers said this may have to do with an in-house attorney's desire to network at the office and make connections.

“The more you work from home, the more you hurt yourself,” Evers said.

He explained that when there is a significant amount of telecommuting, an in-house attorney may be perceived differently. He said it would be disadvantageous for an attorney who is looking to move up the ladder to want to work from home a majority of the time.

The report states that the findings of this year's survey back up Evers Legal's first career satisfaction survey in 2016, which also indicated that in-house practitioners seek additional responsibilities in their roles and intellectual stimulation over compensation.