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Why address a law firm audience in a publication designed for Corporate Counsel? (1) Many of our readers are law firm lawyers seeking a change of scenery. (2) Many of you are in hiring manager positions and face the pros and cons of law firm candidates routinely. So, here we go:

Beware of making partner if your career goals include a move in-house. And if you are a general counsel, beware of hiring partner level candidates into their first in-house position.

As a recruiter, I don't question the pedigree credentials or skill sets of accomplished law firm attorneys. Nor do I doubt the willingness of many to switch over to law department compensation structures.

But is the match a good idea? Skill set and experience are two different things. Our clients know the A-tier partner candidate has the intellect and work ethic to execute high level legal tasks and learn on the job. Experience is a trickier topic. Especially for more senior level roles, the right experience includes team building, business counseling, outside counsel management, and budgeting. Perhaps more importantly, senior counsel and assistant general counsel positions require sensitivity to corporate politics and a real fidelity to chain of command. Even general counsels have bosses.

My advice for early career law firm attorneys who envision themselves in a law department:  Move at the mid to senior associate level. This is when you are most desirable for the largest volume of in-house openings, those at the bottom to middle sections of the law department pyramid structure. For counsel to senior counsel positions, companies are more inclined to consider candidates with no in-house experience. Once the partner ring is on your finger, you become a more challenging hire. Beware of making partner unless you aspire to be a successful partner with a law firm and want that path.

For general counsels and other law department hiring managers, I don't have advice as much as I have an observation to make. Within our niche practice of recruiting attorneys exclusively for companies, every candidate we have placed in the past three years came with in-house experience. I have been at this for 20 years now, and it was not always so. Our mix of placement backgrounds was closer to 50/50 ten years ago, meaning about half of our placements were lawyers moving into their first in-house position.

I think this is a meaningful observation that speaks to real change that has occurred on a broader scale. Specifically, law firm career paths and in-house career paths are increasingly viewed as two extremely divergent roads. It used to be much easier for a partner to move in-house as, to keep with the metaphor, the transition was viewed more as just changing lanes.

From my standpoint, I know there are excellent law firm partner candidates for some of our in-house openings. With proper vetting, those with the right culture fit qualities can be identified. And we provide those options to our clients, of course. But when such a candidate is competing for a position with an in-house attorney of equal caliber, the win rate for the law firm lawyer is low.

Mike Evers recruits attorneys for corporate legal departments throughout the United States.  Visit www.everslegal.com. His firm also offers experienced in-house counsel to companies on an adjunct basis.