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Hi fishes,
I have recently joined Oracle and got a mail from medi-assist for enrollment of dependent under GMC medi coverage. But I have ended up with login issue in medibuddy. Please help me with the further step, the window will be closed on 24th Oct. Amazon Tata Consultancy Infosys Cognizant Oracle Capgemini Wipro HCL Technologies
Can I please get 11 likes for DM
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Specialist in high demand area = job security and good pay. However, if the specialty is too niche, your options will be limited, thus shrinking your opportunity pool. Conversely, generalists are more ubiquitous, thus enlarging the competition pool. But a generalist is needed to be a CLO or GC (it’s literally in the name). So, if senior leadership is your goal, being a generalist while being dangerous in a high-need area is your best bet.
S1, this is me -- started in privacy, now am an AI/tech product counsel. It's a nice path -- I stay heavily involved in our privacy program, so can always fall back on it if for some reason the product counsel stuff dries up. Plus, almost all product counseling at tech companies involves some privacy know-how.
Chief
Depends on your career goals. Not a lot of specialist GCs because you have to expand your skillset to oversee all legal issues in a company. However, not everyone can be a GC and being a specialist at the top of your field in a large company is a pretty solid career goal as well.
Pro
Look up T-Shaped Lawyer. The idea is you are a specialist in one field, which helps you climb the ladder, but develop enough general experience that you can manage lawyers in other fields and make the jump to GC.
And fire the bum who thinks playing “gotcha” with in-house is a clever way to show you how smart they are.
This -- your outside counsel should be your hype man. Maintaining the relationship is part of their job, and if you don't like working with them, you should fire them.
Pro
And as the others said, fire your outside counsel. They don’t need to flatter you (though they usually do as the client) but you’re paying them big money to make your life easier not harder
I’m a specialist focused on a few niches of a niche and it’s always been super easy to find roles so far, but I worry that as I get more specialized it’ll be harder to find suitable roles. I’ve recently been looking at open roles in my industry and a lot are looking for people to solely focus on contracting but who also have some experience in my niche, whereas I absolutely do not want a contract heavy role (despite having past experience with it) and would much prefer a regulatory role supporting different transactional teams like I have now.
I agree with advice above on changing outside counsel. Or giving them a frank dressing down with a warning that if they don’t stop you’ll change to a different firm. That’s literally their job. If you knew all obscure rules, you wouldn’t need an outside counsel, would you?
Re your question- it depends on the company and your level, GC needs to be generalist or T shaped in companies like fintech for example. Lawyers on lower levels can be specialists in larger companies.
However you can still say you have industry specialty as legal issues will be different for each industry, for example commercial lawyer in FMGC, or fintech, or SaaS - you get the idea
Pro
Depends on the company. I’ve never worked at a startup, but I would expect you to be a generalist by necessity there.
At a large company, you need to be a specialist unless you’re already at GC level or thereabout
Started my career as a generalist in smaller legal departments. Have since transitioned to an employment law specialist at a much larger company. Depends on what you want to do and what kind of company you want to work for. Our gc was a market access specialist as that was the need when they were hired.
GCs and many in-house counsel have to be generalists. You hire someone from a law firm for their expertise in a narrow field. If your outside counsel is relating to you that way, find new outside counsel. There are smart specialist attorneys who won't treat you that way. You are handling an ocean of information while they are focused on one sea anemone. Give yourself grace, own what you do know, and get help from outside counsel when things need to go deeper. They should know the obscure rule, while that's not something you should be familiar with.