Promoting in-house career pathways for next-gen lawyers

With in-house legal careers rarely discussed in law school, Berggren emphasised the importance of shifting this narrative and actively promoting greater understanding of these career pathways among law students.

“It’s an important conversation for us to be having because when you’re in law school, there is a whole range of careers that open up to you as a result of having a law degree. I just don’t think we raise that awareness enough that there are a third of lawyers in Australia [who] go into in-house careers,” she said.

Berggren explained that in-house legal roles offer a “complementary career” path that still allows lawyers to apply their analytical skills and legal expertise.

Despite the growing prominence of in-house legal teams, Berggren said that law schools “definitely still lack” sufficient awareness of the breadth of opportunities available to graduates in this space.

“I did notice, though, that the College of Law actually has a Graduate Diploma of Applied Law of in-house practice, which is a great start. But I think, you know, along those lines, we probably need to do more in raising that awareness and also being clear about the different types of skills that are required for in-house practice,” she said.

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One challenge to shifting this perception, according to Berggren, is the entrenched view that junior lawyers receive more comprehensive training within private practice firms, with in-house roles typically pursued later through secondments or career transitions.

“There’s perhaps an over-reliance on using private practice firms to train lawyers, and then, by default, you go on secondment to one of the clients of your private practice firm and end up realising there’s a whole other world out there,” she said.

“That’s what happened to me, and I think that’s what happens to most people now coming in-house. So, again, it is that awareness training, but it’s also just understanding that it’s, in some respects, a quasi-legal role because being in the business, there are so many other things that are expected of you in your role as a lawyer.”

However, with the rapid advancement of legal technology and a new generation of tech-savvy law graduates, Berggren believes many of the old justifications for starting out in private practice are beginning to fade.

“With the advance of technology, the reasons that we have previously relied on private practice should be diminishing. We relied on private practice to teach you how to do legal research, legal drafting, a lot of those skills now,” she said.

“Younger people are much more technology-savvy than I ever was and probably will be. That should give you a head start in that training that we have originally thought belongs in the private practice realm.”

As the legal landscape continues to evolve, Berggren emphasised that in-house legal teams now have both an opportunity and a responsibility to actively invest in the training and development of the next generation of legal talent.

“There are getting to be fewer excuses for the in-house teams not to step up and offer that training, and I appreciate that it takes time, it takes effort and investment, but, I think, for the bigger teams, there is some obligation on us to put time and effort aside,” she said.

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