I am able to experience what transpires during the performance of the
works that are tasked on each parties (project owners, architects,
other engineers and of course the contractors) throughout the
construction cycle (tender, award of contract to contractor, design,
construction stage contract administration and finally the completion
the project).
Working in-house presents a different set of challenges from that of
working in a law firm. A lot of law firms, especially the big ones, tend to
specialize and as a result you become a specialist or a master of one.
Working in-house however requires you to be equipped with the
ability and skill to advise on all areas of law. In AECOM for example,
one minute you are tending to a variation claim dispute in a project,
the next minute you will have to attend to an issue relating to
employment law and the next minute you would have to deal with
loan-equity conversion. You would also be expected to be more
pragmatic by offering instant and practical –business friendly solution
rather than merely academic application of the law. The response time
in-house is also instantaneous as compared to a law firm where you
are normally given considerable time to prepare a lengthy opinion to
set out your advice.
Also, in a law firm, as a lawyer representing your clients, the main
person that you are safeguarding and accountable to is your client. In a
company, as a legal counsel, you are at all times safeguarding and
protecting everyone in the company.
Your colleagues are not lawyers
You will also be surrounded with peers who are not from the legal
fraternity and moving from working in a house full of lawyers to an in-
house of none, you may often forget that you are not dealing with
lawyers and very few understand any legal principles even the
simplest, for example, separate legal entity principle. Remember, they
may be simple concepts to us but it is as alien a concept to them as it
was to us when we first heard it. As a legal counsel, it works to your
benefit if you are able to mold the basic legal principles to the
employees of the company so that at least things are being operated in
a legally permissible way.
Skills of a law student
As a law student, the nature of the study of law compels us to be
trained to be analytical, to think of the worst case scenario, to be
persuasive and accurate in our words both when speaking and writing
which are all helpful traits in producing the type of work that we do as
legal advisers.