Why the Move From In-House Back to the Law Firm Was Right For Me

“I’m shocked. Why would you want to go back to a firm?” a female lawyer friend recently asked me.

Cue my memories of Big Law, where I billed 2,400+ hours and worked many weekends. Why would I want to return to that life, particularly now that I’m married and am a mother of a tween and a teenager?

“Good question,” I responded. “How much time do you have?”

This all started last year when, after surviving a few rounds of layoffs at my company, I finally got the dreaded phone call myself. Call me an eternal optimist (or blindly naive), but I didn’t see it coming.

What made it especially painful was that I loved the company and deeply believed in its mission. I also respected and admired my colleagues, who are some of the smartest people I know. Every day, I felt inspired and learned something new.

Reentering the job market at this stage of my career felt different. For the first time in my career, I felt lost. With more than 20 years of legal experience under my belt—including roles in the legal departments of some of the biggest brands, both public and private, from corporate counsel to general counsel—I was supposed to know exactly what I wanted to do next. The problem was that I had no clue.

Instead, questions swirled around in my head: Should I be looking for a job with enough runway where I can see myself retiring, or should it be just another stop in my career? Should I work at a big company where I may be siloed—or at a smaller one where I’m the Jill of all trades, pulled in a million directions?

Did I need to work in a “sexy” industry, or would I be happy working for a company that made widgets? There were too many questions and too few answers.

I knew I had to do some serious self-reflection to figure out what mattered to me and what would make me happy. Here is what I came up with.

First, I wanted to work with smart and creative people because I feed off their energy, inspiring me to bring my best self to work.

Second, I realized I enjoyed working at emerging companies—making strategic decisions to grow and scale, recruiting and inspiring new team members, building infrastructure, developing a company vision, and fostering culture.

Stepping into a mature company, where everything is already built and processes are cemented like rules of law, doesn’t excite me. I want to be part of a team building something new and shiny.

Third, I missed being an actual lawyer. I never thought I’d admit this. My last role leaned more into operations, and I missed using my legal skills. I missed doing legal research.

I also missed writing and debating the nuances of law. Sparring with my kids over screen time and piles of dirty dishes wasn’t an adequate substitute, particularly because I would sometimes lose.

Finally—and probably most importantly—I wanted to feel excited about the next opportunity. Unfortunately, at this stage of my career, feeling excited is harder than you’d think.

And excitement can be conflated with fear, which people naturally feel when they are doing something completely different and out of their comfort zone. There is a saying that “if you’re not scared, then you’re not pushing yourself.” I’ve always taken this advice to heart by accepting projects and roles that challenged and stretched me professionally.

So when my law school classmate and former Quinn Emanuel colleague Will Delgado approached me about joining his boutique law firm, DTO Law, I immediately declined because it sounded “scary.” I never imagined myself going back to a law firm.

But Will offered me a unique opportunity to be general counsel of the firm and help foster a supportive, open culture. I would build a tech stack that leveraged technology for efficiency and flexibility. And I would develop a law practice delivering top-notch legal services to clients and be the outside counsel that I always valued when I was in-house.

Will ended our conversation with what I interpreted as a “mic drop” of a statement: Don’t you want to have control over your own career?

Having been laid off recently, I absolutely wanted more control over my career. I wanted a say in what I worked on and who I worked with. As the firm’s general counsel, I would have more flexibility on how I spend my work hours and on what projects I worked on. Finally, in contrast to the big firm, I wanted to be the final decision-maker on how I allocated time between my job and family life.

I realized that Will’s offer checked all my boxes, and I’d be so far out of my comfort zone I was practically reinventing myself. Butterflies started forming in my stomach as the excitement built. Joining DTO Law as its first general counsel and a partner was the right next chapter for me.

A few months into the job, I can confirm to my friend that I’m not crazy for returning to private practice. I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing work that excites me—collaborating with colleagues who motivate me, building something that I truly believe in, and pushing myself to grow in ways I never imagined—all while taking control of my own career.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Ellen Yang is a partner and the general counsel at DTO Law and was previously in-house at various companies for 17 years.

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