Inside In-House Podcast Episode 3: Employment Law Space
In our final episode of the Inside In-house Podcast for 2020, Tyrilly interviewed three employment lawyers with private practice and in-house experience to understand their career journeys to becoming employment law specialists. The panel also tackled the important role employment lawyers play in managing end of year festivities for the organisations they support.
Katrina and Sophie are dedicated lawyer writers for Practical Law's employment module and shared their experience in legal practice with special in-house counsel guest, Kym Korbel. Have a listen to the legal podcast below and scroll down for the episode features.
Podcast show notes
Finding the employment law calling
Kym is Head of Employee Relations and Policy at Metcash. Interestingly, law is Kym’s second career, having trained and worked as a medical scientist for a number of years before making the decision to change careers. When Kym completed law school, she landed a private practice role in an IP team. Over a period of eight years, Kym was sent on a number of secondments.
“Spending that time working directly within the business made me realise that that's what I wanted to do.”
Once Kym became a mother, the timing was perfect to move into a part time in-house position. Her first toe in the water was as a general commercial lawyer for a food manufacturing company.
“When I started, there was no one there who specialised in employment law, and the HR team briefed people brief lawyers directly. The General Counsel wanted to get a better understanding of how much money they were spending on legal fees, what types of questions they're asking, and how often they might be asking the same questions.”
Kym put her hand up to act as a “post-box” for HR legal queries, and the rest as they say, is history.
“With the support of the General Counsel and the HR Director, I decided to focus on employment law from that point on, and I don't think I could go back. While I'm certainly not an in-house lawyer by design, I really feel like I've landed in the best place and found the right area for me.”
Key differences between roles
During the interview, Tyrilly asked Kym to outline some of the key differences between being an in-house lawyer to an in-house employment lawyer. Kym replied:
“When I was a general commercial in-house lawyer, I felt like I was more a jack of all trades. Now as an employment lawyer, the work is still varied, but certainly much more focused in one area.”
“As the employment lawyer, when I've sat in the legal team, there is much less fiddly cross-collaboration with me to the point that in a previous organisation, the General Counsel said that he knew the HR team liked me and needed me, but he'd much rather have my head count as another commercial lawyer.”.
Tyrilly observed that it was more common nowadays to see employment lawyers sitting apart from the main legal team, and instead having a functional role within the HR team itself. Kym noted:
“That makes a lot more sense for this role. We're still involved with the legal team, though sit within the team that directly utilise us and provide advice. It's a welcoming and collaborative environment.
Tyrilly added her observation’s to Kym’s commentary, noting that in-house lawyers are best utilised when they are engaged early on in transactional work.
“Certainly, we can do the most for our clients when we are part of that collaborative process,” she said.
Sophie, Senior Employment Law Writer at Practical Law, agreed with Kym’s comments, recalling her personal experiences in the in-house employment law space being a much more collaborative...
