Making the Most of your University Years to Boost your In-house Career
University goes fast. One moment you are sitting in your first lecture, slightly overwhelmed and surviving on instant noodles and Dolmio’s pasta sauce, questioning whether to attempt to figure out the shared washing machines in halls, or just ask your mum to do it…again.
Blink, and you’re staring down the barrel of graduation with a sudden urgency to have everything figured out. It’s terrifying and bewildering - and we’ve all been there. So, how do you make the most of this time before the sands run out?
If you already know that an in-house legal career is where you want to end up, the good news is that your undergraduate years offer far more preparation opportunities than most students realise. You just need to know where to look. Your university years are not simply about collecting achievement points for your CV. They are an opportunity to understand yourself professionally, explore different working environments and begin building the skills that will actually matter in your long-term career. If you are interested in working in-house one day, this period of exploration becomes even more important because in-house careers value far more than academic performance alone.
Start with curiosity, not a checklist
One of the most common mistakes undergraduates make is treating career preparation as a box-ticking exercise. They chase the most recognisable names on their CVs, apply for opportunities because their peers are applying (#fomotakeover) and build a version of themselves they think employers want to see rather than one that genuinely reflects who they are.
In-house legal teams are not looking for carbon copies of each other. They are looking for commercially curious people who understand how businesses function, communicate well across different teams and can translate complex legal risk into clear practical advice. They relish uniqueness and differences because that’s where creativity and new ideas form.
None of those qualities come from blindly following a prescribed list of activities. They come from genuine engagement with the world around you. So, rather than starting with "what should I be doing?", try starting with "what actually interests me?" The two may just overlap more than you expect.
Wait…what do in-house lawyers actually do?
It’s no surprise that a lot of undergraduate students only have a fairly vague sense of what in-house legal work looks like in practice. Law school naturally focuses on legal principles and private practice often dominates careers conversations at school and university. In-house careers tend to receive far less airtime despite being a huge and growing part of the profession.
An in-house lawyer sits within a business rather than advising clients from the outside. They work alongside commercial teams, finance departments, senior leadership and operational functions on a day-to-day basis. They become deeply embedded in how their organisation thinks and makes decisions. Legal advice is always given with one eye on business reality rather than purely on legal risk in isolation.
That context changes everything. It means that understanding how a business operates is just as important as understanding the law itself. The earlier you grasp that, the more purposefully you can use your university years to build the right foundations.
Develop genuine commercial awareness
Commercial awareness is one of those phrases that gets repeated so often it starts to lose meaning. But for in-house careers, it is not just a buzzword to drop into an application form or an interview. It is genuinely central to the work.
Commercial awareness simply means understanding how businesses create value, manage risk and make decisions. During your undergraduate years, you can develop this in more ways than you might think.
Read widely. Follow industries that interest you. Pay attention to how companies in different sectors talk about the challenges they face. Listen to business podcasts. Engage with financial news even if it feels unfamiliar (or slightly boring) at first. Over time, patterns start to emerge and you will begin to connect legal developments to real business consequences in a way that will genuinely set you apart. You don’t have to become an expert in business or an entrepreneur overnight, but one thing university does teach you is how to make the most of your resources to gather information about a new subject. Apply that same logic and effort to your career research, and voila, you will understand commercial awareness before you realise it’s happened.
You should also think carefully about the experiences you are already having. A part-time job in retail teaches you about customer relationships and operational pressures. Running a university society develops communication, leadership and organisational skills. A placement with a start-up exposes you to fast-moving commercial decision-making in a way that a traditional law firm environment rarely does at an early stage. These experiences are not second-best alternatives to legal internships. For in-house careers specifically, they can be just as valuable (if not more so).
Seek out specific in-house experiences
That said, direct exposure to in-house environments during your undergraduate years is absolutely worth pursuing, if you can find it. It is simply not as widely advertised as private practice opportunities, which means you have to be more proactive and look harder.
Some larger companies offer legal work experience placements or vacation schemes within their internal legal teams. Others have legal apprenticeship programmes worth exploring. Legal operations and contract management roles are also growing areas within businesses that can provide excellent insight into how in-house teams function.
Beyond formal placements, look for opportunities to attend events focused on in-house practice. Follow professional bodies that run events and webinars that are genuinely accessible to students. Panels hosted by law schools, student societies and legal networks often feature in-house practitioners who are happy to share their career journeys with the next generation.
Network with intention
Networking can feel uncomfortable, particularly at undergraduate level when you may feel you have little to offer in a professional conversation. That instinct is understandable, but try to push past it and don’t let imposter syndrome win!
In-house career paths are far less standardised than the structured training contract routes offered by large law firms. This makes networking an even more powerful tool because personal conversations and genuine relationships can open doors that job boards simply cannot. You will also quickly discover through these conversations that very few in-house lawyers followed identical paths to where they are today. That is enormously reassuring when you are still figuring out your own direction.
When you reach out to in-house lawyers, be genuine and specific. Ask about their career journey, what surprised them about working in-house and what they wish they had known at university. Most people are willing to share their experiences when approached thoughtfully. You are not asking for a job, you are asking for insight, and that is a very different conversation.
LinkedIn and Instagram are useful tools here when used well. Follow in-house lawyers across the industries that interest you. Engage with what they share. Use it as a window into how different sectors and legal teams think about their work, rather than as a platform to curate your own highlight reel for others.
Is it “legal enough”?
There is a temptation to evaluate every experience on your CV purely through the lens of whether it looks very legal on paper. Think instead about what each experience has taught you about how organisations work. When asked in an interview, can you talk about a time you had to balance competing priorities under pressure? Can you describe a moment in which you communicated something complex to people with very different levels of knowledge and seniority? What about delivering advice or information that isn’t what the listener wanted to hear?
These are the conversations that in-house hiring teams want to have. They are looking for people who understand the business world as well as the legal one who they can place their confidence in to gel with this alternative mould.
Stay open as you grow
Your interests will change during your undergraduate years. That is not a sign that you lack direction, it is a sign that you are paying attention and embracing new things. The in-house legal world is broad enough to accommodate a huge range of interests, from technology and intellectual property to sport, media, financial services and beyond.
Use your time at university to explore those interests rather than forcing yourself into a fixed lane too early. Take modules that challenge your thinking and put yourself in the uncomfortable “stretch zone”. We’re not talking about a campus yoga class - purposefully steer yourself towards areas outside law. Read about industries that fascinate you, even if the connection to your legal future is not immediately obvious. The dots tend to connect themselves in retrospect far more than they do in advance.
Over to you..
Your university years are not just a waiting room before your legal career begins. They are part of the journey - and funnily enough, like a waiting room, you may just meet some very interesting people along the way!
The commercial awareness you build, the relationships you develop and the experiences you gather during this time of growth, experimentation and taking risks will shape the kind of in-house lawyer you become far more than any single internship or application ever could.
Stay open to unexpected routes. Resist the pressure to shape your career around what looks good to others rather than what genuinely interests you. In-house legal careers are as varied and individual as the lawyers who pursue them. Yours should reflect who you are, not who you think you are supposed to be.