Taking on a client secondment: seven things junior lawyers should know

Entering the world of the in-house lawyer

Ben: I’m so old that I think at the time I was the first-ever person in my firm to have been sent on secondment. They were very rare at the time. We’re talking the late 1990s. I joined the telecoms company, Orange. It was a young, funky brand in the 90s. Initially, I was a bit worried. Although I’d still be working as a litigator, would I fall behind my peers back at base? Would I fail to return?

Jon: I had a bit of imposter syndrome before I took on my secondment at an insurer in mid-2024. It’s funny because I’d advised insurer clients for nine years, but those concerns still popped into my head at the thought of sitting next to clients. Thankfully it all went very well. Moving from Bristol to London for months, I thought, “Am I going to be lonely?” And that turned out to be fine too.

Ben: I think a lot of lawyers feel imposter syndrome at some point.

Jon: It’s a healthy feeling to have in some ways. It keeps you on your toes. So when it was agreed I would go, within a month I was living in Whitechapel. Never again will I get the chance to live opposite Brick Lane.

Ben: You need someone like Jon on secondment, who is going to be an ambassador for the firm. Someone who will think carefully about the opportunities that present themselves, such as occasionally referring work back to the firm, or introducing people that the client might not know.

Jon: I think that’s spot on. You've got to be a bit nosy.

New dynamics

Jon: What struck me is the speed at which things move in-house. In private practice, you go through certain levels of sign-off. In-house, they can make really significant decisions quickly in a single meeting.

Ben: The big thing for me was the insight into the world of an in-house lawyer. I’d only ever been in a private practice setting. And then I went into an environment where my clients were sat around me or in the building somewhere.

You’re going straight into a meeting with somebody to discuss a business problem. You're giving them the legal options and then they're potentially saying, “Well, that option costs too much. There's reputational risk involved in pursuing the other course of action. So actually, I might go for the first approach, even with the cost”. You chat things through and get an outcome within minutes.

That’s very different from private practice – giving formal advice, sending it, waiting a few days, and then getting a decision.

Jon: You are looking for the pinch-points of your clients; what stresses them out and how you can get rid of that. Knowing how the business operates lets you predict where those pinch-points might fall, or when they could arise.

Ben: On secondment you get context for every decision. I had a very useful conversation with one of the lawyers there who said, “Look, what you need to find out every time you talk to our internal clients in the building is ‘How important is this to you?’” It’s here you really gain a lot of your people and communication skills.

Jon: I found it interesting to see how other lawyers on secondment operated. Those that were getting the basics right were the ones that were standing out, rather than those that were coming up with brilliant, convoluted arguments for litigation.

The firms that stood out got the little details right that are so important to clients, such as putting references on things you send, because the people who are dealing with those documents have hundreds of files.

I didn’t come away thinking, “I have to be cleverer”. I came away thinking, “I’ve got to set things out as clearly as possible and be aware of the internal pinch-points of the people I was reporting to”. They have ultimately got to distil your advice and pass it up the chain.

Ben: Something was said to me on my secondment that has stayed with me. I still use it now: “When giving advice to directors, if it involves scrolling down on an email, you've lost them. You need to be able to distil what your advice is and your recommendations on an email that would fit on the screen”.

We all give advice which is more complicated than that, but you need to have some kind of executive summary, which can be copied-and-pasted by an in-house lawyer, so they can say to their stakeholders, “we are going to win this case for the following reasons, or we are going to lose, or it's in the balance, and here's the potential options”. One, two, three, done. 

Fast tracking your development

Ben: At our firm, we have a virtual secondment arrangement in the commercial litigation team. Every year, we roll that on to a newly-qualified solicitor because it gives them really good experience in handling smaller claims – just like the experience I had on my secondment all those years ago. It really helps accelerate their development.

Jon: Secondments are an amazing opportunity for your career. Lots of successful lawyers I know have got there because they've made connections whilst on secondment.

Ben: You can double your contacts, quickly. That's certainly what I experienced and it sounds like that’s what Jon experienced as well. Jon was definitely not ‘out of sight, out of mind’ at the firm. You are — at least, this is how it should be done – constantly liaising with your firm to find out how it's going, discussing opportunities, and your contact level increases.

Jon: You've still got all the resources of the firm and access to all those people to support you and push you forward. And you’ve still got someone who can say, “Don't stay in this specific hotel on this work trip because it's right on a railway line”. I mean, that's invaluable. 

Ben and Jon’s tips for secondment success

1. Meet people in person as soon as possible

Jon: I’ve been reflecting on what I wanted to know, as an anxious pre-secondee. First, the people you work with need to know who you are and what you're there to do. I think you can’t be an ambassador for the firm from behind a screen without meeting people in-person first. Be consistent with your days in the office. On Fridays, I often went for a coffee with people who wanted to talk things through. It worked really well, especially as it was a bit quieter in the city on those days.

2. You don't have to reinvent the wheel

Jon: Just get stuck in and be inquisitive. People appreciate that. You're coming in as a junior lawyer, or in my case, a ‘middling’ lawyer. Ultimately, there will be stuff you don't know, and that's fine – as long as you seek the right support and are there to help the team get better. Go for it.

3. Seek out a mentor within the organisation

Ben: As well as getting as much advice as you can from your firm before you start, if you are able to seek out a potential mentor within the organisation, then that is hugely valuable. Sometimes junior lawyers can be slightly reluctant to ask people. You will be surprised at how willing people are to step into that role. It happened for me and it was really valuable for my career.

4. Don't be arrogant

Jon: It may sound obvious, but it does happen among secondees and it is off-putting for the client. The reason why they’re sending the work out, which for me was litigation, isn't because they can't do it themselves. It's because their role now involves them doing other things – or managing 100 or 200 of those cases themselves.

5. Find out who has the authority to progress things

Jon: In private practice as a junior, everything you do and send out will be looked at. Going on secondment, it's on you to find out when you need to get stuff supervised. That's important to figure out early on: what can I do within my own authority, and if this is outside my authority, who can I go to? It doesn't have to be the person at the top or the person who has brought you in, as long as it’s within the authority of the person you ask. It comes down to keeping things moving.

6. Embrace the opportunity to develop your niche

Ben: As you get further along in your career, you don’t necessarily need to have a niche, but it is quite helpful to have two or three strong areas of expertise that might differentiate you from other people. So for me, it was helpful to identify that I had a particular expertise in telecoms and understanding the role of an in-house lawyer when I was going for promotions. It became a big part of my CV in the early years of my career. 

7. See yourself as a facilitator

Ben: You’re moving to a mindset of giving legal advice to solve problems, but that doesn’t mean you have to solve the problem by yourself. It’s great to be able to bring together a client and a lawyer from your own organisation who has expertise in an area that you don’t. Matchmaking a client who has a problem that you can't solve with somebody who you know can solve it is a skill that you end up using a lot when you're a partner. So you're starting to get practice in that facilitator role, which is something that will serve you later in your career.