Legal Life outside Private Practice

Ciarán Fegan

Group General Counsel, GRAHAM Chair, In-House Lawyers Group NI.

Changing trends in legal life are nothing new. COVID has opened up and/or expedited changes in attitudes and practices in the world of the workplace and has arguably been a catalyst for many looking for career options outside of the traditional, but the scope of legal practice outside of the conventional law firm is a change that has been growing in almost all jurisdictions for quite some time.

What do I know about this? I’m one of those who have made that move, and I made it a long time ago. My journey to the profession was the orthodox one to most - straight from school into an undergraduate law degree (a sadly now discontinued Law and Accounting degree at QUB); IPLS entrance exam; finding a master; starting my apprenticeship; qualification into the firm in which I trained. I was working in a good firm and I’d enjoyed what I was doing. My caseload was varied –spanning criminal cases, Judicial Review and other large High Court and Court of Appeal litigation, but perhaps driven by my undergrad background, I found myself drawn more to the more corporate and business-focused application of the law. In late 2007, I thought about making a move to scratch that itch, and in March 2008 I moved into my role with GRAHAM, one which has grown and developed significantly over the past 16 years.

The in-house community is far from just within the world of corporates. Many practitioners are within the public sector, through local and central government organisations and departments and NGOs, as well from within the third sector, and even within many of the bigger national and international law firms currently operating in Northern Ireland. The in-house lawyers are there within the organisations as the first line of advice, the lodestar and first responder in legal matters. As with all lawyers, in-house practitioners are there to help businesses and other entities assess, manage, and mitigate risk; they’re the touchpoint between the organisation and its external legal and (increasingly frequently) commercial advisers, and are usually the gatekeepers of those relationships; they’re the translators, taking often complex advice and distilling that for non-lawyers and advising on its application and consequences.

The roles, given their locus, tend to be more commercially focused, and the seemingly ever-increasing compliance requirements have made this a fertile bed for the growth of new roles and practice areas - increasingly, my own role has branched out to encompass corporate governance, data protection, corporate criminal offences, reputation management and more. Very often those transferable skills which are second nature to solicitors, skills such as research, analysis, advocacy, communication, negotiation and often most importantly hard work are valuable commodities in a business setting and that diverse mindset, coupled with technical legal knowledge and skills, can often be a valuable proposition for many organisations.

In 2022, as part of the Society’s Centenary Year, it commissioned a report by Hook Tangaza into the profession in Northern Ireland. Among its many findings, one of the most striking facts was that even almost three years ago, nearly a fifth of the regulated solicitor profession was working in corporate, public or third sector roles. When you look beyond the regulated profession (those practitioners working inhouse are not required to hold a practising certificate unless they are undertaking Restricted Activities; although as the research shows, a great many do), the in-house community is a significant and growing caucus within the legal profession in Northern Ireland.

Whilst there are a number of very large inhouse teams, most are small (a high number of single practitioners, and many teams not growing to more than three or four lawyers) and can often feel isolated. Following engagement within the in-house community locally, in 2014 the In-House Lawyers Group NI was established. The group’s aim is to offer a forum to members (all persons who are enrolled as lawyers and who are employed in an In-House legal adviser capacity in Northern Ireland) to meet, to provide CPD and networking events tailored to the inhouse community, to provide support to members and to engage with the Society and the profession more widely on matters of importance to the in-house community. Membership is free, as is attendance at IHLGNI events.

For those interested in hearing more about IGLGNI and its events please feel free to email inhouselegalgroupni@gmail.com