Seventy seven percent of in-house lawyers in the private sector and 49 percent of government lawyers started their careers in private practice, a new report has found.

The NSW Law Society study Inside In-house Legal Teams was based on a survey completed by 775 of the Society’s members and studied career aspirations, mentoring and flexible work arrangements among other things.

The study confirms that in-house roles are perceived to offer more variety of work and work/ life balance than private practice; 55 percent of government lawyers nominated quality of work as their reason for moving in-house while about 49 percent nominated work/life balance. Quality of work was also important for corporate in-house lawyers, with 63 percent  nominating this as their reason for moving in-house. While government lawyers of both genders expressed a similar level of interest in work/ life balance, there was a more pronounced gender split in the corporate sector: flexible work practices were nominated by 49 percent of women as a reason for moving in-house, compared to 27 percent for men.

Respondents generally responded favourably when asked to comment on the availability of flexible work arrangements: 91 percent of government lawyers said that such arrangements were “very of fairly” accessible in their organisation while the corresponding figure was 80 percent for corporate respondents.

When asked to rate career progression opportunities in their organisation, 39 percent of government respondents rated such opportunities as “very or fairly accessible” while the corresponding figure for the corporates was 45 percent.