What is legal career development? Explaining the types of career paths and skills needed.

The need for legal personnel in companies is increasing as compliance and governance are required to be strengthened these days. For those who wish to enhance their career as a corporate lawyer or are beginning to consider a career path as a legal professional, this session will explain the typical career paths and necessary skills for corporate legal professionals.

Career Development as a Legal Professional

Knowledge of the law is not the only way to develop a career as a corporate lawyer. Legal work is broad and requires a variety of skills. The skills required will vary depending on what career path you wish to pursue.

Legal Career Paths

The following is an explanation of the "specialist" and "generalist" career paths that are generally considered to be possible in the legal profession.

Legal Specialist

One path is to become a legal specialist who specializes in a particular field of work. With a high level of skill and a wealth of knowledge, they have many opportunities to play an active role and can be very important in the workplace. The main areas of legal work include contract law, intellectual property law, and institutional law. Contract law requires a deep understanding of handling English-language contracts and specific industries, while intellectual property requires expertise and qualifications in copyrights and patents. For institutional legal affairs, the candidate must understand legal procedures and company-specific customs in order to perform administrative duties for shareholder meetings and board of directors meetings.

Legal Generalist

A legal generalist has extensive knowledge and experience in management departments such as corporate planning, general affairs, and human resources, and works in a position closer to management. They may have a career plan to become a CLO (Chief Legal Officer). While it is easy to feel that your work is tied to the company's growth and business promotion, the career path varies depending on the company you work for, so you need to be discerning.

Typical Career Steps in Legal

The following is a description of typical career steps in corporate legal affairs.

Become a manager or administrator in the legal department

One of the career steps in corporate legal affairs is to become a manager or administrator. To achieve this, expertise and practical experience in contracts, compliance, and dispute resolution are essential. Generally, it takes about 10 years to move up to a managerial position, but the number of positions is limited, so it is necessary to form a career plan with an eye to changing jobs. If you move to a company that is establishing a new legal department, you can expect to gain valuable experience in setting up the organization.

Changing jobs to the legal department of a large or foreign company

Although a high level of English proficiency and knowledge of the laws of the countries involved is required, changing to a position with a large or foreign-affiliated company that has a global presence is an effective career move. In addition to gaining experience in international legal affairs, which is not available at Japanese companies that cater to the domestic market, the salary level is high, and you may be able to expect an increase in your annual salary.

Changing jobs to a law firm that handles corporate legal affairs

If you can qualify as an attorney or a judicial scrivener while working in corporate legal affairs, you may be able to consider a career change to a law firm. Both of these qualifications are difficult to obtain, but they are very useful for building a career in corporate legal affairs.

Changing careers to a legal consulting firm

Another career path is to move to a legal consulting firm that offers a wide range of services, including consultation on corporate management, risk research, and participation in board of directors meetings.

Become a legal advisor

If you are qualified as an attorney, you can also develop a career as a corporate lawyer, a partner who supports a company from the legal aspect. They are responsible for drafting and checking contracts, preparing documents such as content-certified mail, and providing legal advice and handling lawsuits. In general, they are independent from the company, but in recent years, an increasing number of in-house attorneys have taken on the role of corporate counsel.

Skills Required of Legal Department Members

This section describes the skills and qualities that are particularly important in pursuing a career as a corporate lawyer.

Legal expertise

Legal expertise is essential because legal affairs is a job that manages all aspects of legal affairs. In addition, an in-depth understanding of the laws governing the industry in which the company operates is an important skill for a corporate lawyer.

Communication Skills

Legal professionals also need good communication skills. As an in-house legal consultant, you must be able to obtain the necessary information from others in order to provide accurate advice, and you must be able to negotiate flexibly with other companies in the event of legal disputes.

Investigative Skills

Because there are so many laws and regulations related to corporate activities, the ability to read and understand the law and knowledge of the underlying laws are prerequisites, of course, but it is also necessary to have research skills to find out the laws and precedents that are appropriate to the problem at hand.

Willingness to grow

Legal knowledge does not end when you learn it. You will need to change your work in response to newly enacted laws and frequent amendments. One of the most important qualities is the desire to keep learning, to constantly update the knowledge you have acquired and brush up on your work.

Career development in the legal sector is all about defining a career path and honing your skills.

Thus, in order to develop a career in corporate legal affairs, it is necessary to continue to hone the high level of skills required for both specialists and generalists. For those who are beginning to consider a career as a corporate lawyer, I recommend the FRONTEO Legal Link Portal (FLLP), which is operated by FRONTEO.

Launched in June 2020, the FRONTEO Legal Link Portal is one of the largest platforms in Japan that connects corporate legal, intellectual property, administrative, and information systems departments in charge of corporate contingency planning with lawyers and experts in Japan and abroad. You can watch a large number of videos on a variety of topics useful in practice, including litigation response, fraud investigation, misconduct response, M&A, crisis management, intellectual property rights, competition law, and personal information protection law. And it is completely free.

The lecturers are lawyers and experts with a wide range of knowledge and extensive experience, including from five major law firms. The videos cover a wide range of topics, from the basics to recent cases, and can be used as a venue for in-house legal training.

In addition to watching the videos posted on the site at your favorite time, you can also ask questions directly to the lecturers through a number of free online seminars. You can also use the site as a place to meet new lawyers.

Tailor-made study sessions tailored to your concerns and issues are also available! We also offer free individual study sessions for corporate legal and intellectual property staff interested in digital forensics and international litigation.