Has anyone here been a company’s first in house hire, or been involved in the decision to make a first legal hire? One of my outside counsel clients (high growth start up ~4 years in) has reached out to me about hiring a GC and it potentially being me. I haven’t seen a client through this transition and setting aside the question of if I want to make the move, I wonder whether they’re actually at the point where they really need someone in house. Interested in hearing perspectives on this.

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Yes, could be a great opportunity to stretch yourself and grow. ACC has good guides for the first GC and Sterling Miller's ten things blog is helpful (but he's kind of pedantic). Barker Gilmore has absolutely fantastic resources on becoming a GC but their fi us is larger companies.

Make sure you are brought in as a member of the senior management team--you need to be in the room when decisions are made to assess risk. You should report to the CEO and nit a CFO or similar. Develop relationships with the board. Understand what their vision is for Legal fir headcount and budget. Outside counsel spend will likely go up, not down.

Steal aaaaaaaaall the precedents. Living without a firmful of imanage is sad.

Understand there can be ethical challenges--they are nit used to having a legal voice. The challenges at my first company were severe.

Join the New to In House Network at ACC and TechGC if it's a tech company.

likesmart

This is so helpful, thank you! Agree that it could be a great opportunity but concerned the risks outweigh that, i.e. it really is too much for me at this point in my career.

I am about to go and be my co’s first GC. What would you like to know?

I would take them at their word - in my experience, co’s typically leave it too late (rather than too early) to get someone in and it is almost always pretty easy to at least save them the cost of hiring you very quickly.

What’s the concern?

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My company is tiny - it’s a fund, actually. Late VC, around for about 8years, 1B under management, 10ppl or so. I’ll be sole GC; am 10yr.

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I was in this exact same position, but there's a good chance I wasn't even in as good a position (experience-wise) than you because I was moving from a niche big law practice that outside of specific industries don't generally become GCs.

I moved to a high growth tech company (that was a client) as the first legal hire. I can assure you that a high growth company will have enough work to keep you busy. Plus, your experience can be helpful in other business areas.

I would have definitely made partner at my big law firm and never thought I'd leave. But, I am happy that I made the jump. I've really enjoyed the exposure to other areas of law. I've learned so much and stretched in ways that I would never have gotten to do in big law.

For me, a big reason I jumped to in-house is because I thought I'd always have a "what if" if I didn't make the jump. I feel you can always go in-house, but I had the opportunity to go in-house to a great company and as the first legal hire doesn't come around often.

Happy to chat live, if you direct message me.

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