What does a staff attorney do?

Some common duties of a staff attorney include providing legal advice and guidance to the organization's management, staff, and clients, drafting and negotiating contracts and other legal documents, conducting legal research and analysis. The other tasks depends on the size of the legal department and the kind of the services provide.

In my experience, a large part of a staff attorney's work involves drafting and negotiating contracts with customers, vendors and alliance partners, and resolving disputes. Staff attorneys also advise the business on strategy, transformations, submissions, prepare templates and playbooks, advise on regulatory compliance, employment law, privacy law, tax law, advertising law, intellectual property protection, etc. Depending upon the size of the legal department, attorneys may have specialized expertise or be more general practitioners. They also help identify and mitigate risk, communicate with regulators, external legal counsel, auditors, working groups and committees.

Ser un abogado de planta es tener a cargo la gran responsabilidad de soportar la carga legal de toda una organización; desde mi experiencia como abogado interno de la empresa de hidrocarburo más grande México, ha sido realmente satisfactorio poder combinar todas las habilidades y conocimientos jurídicos para brindar las asesorías y defensas legales a nuestros clientes, tanto en el ámbito laboral como en el ámbito operativo. Hay que enfatizar el hecho de que hoy en día se ha perdido mucho esa parte0 de vocación de servicio, la cual a mi criterio, es necesaria para tener una gran conexión con los clientes.

A staff attorney works for a law firm or another organization. Staff attorneys are associates with law degrees who have passed the Bar Exam in their states. They research, analyze, and write about complex legal issues

“Staff Attorney” is a catch-all phrase describing lawyers who dedicate their services to a specific organization. This may include a corporation, government entity, academic institution, or not-for-profit. They use their legal expertise to help deal with day-to-day legal issues with which their organization needs regular assistance. A Staff Attorney’s duties include research, analysis and writing about complex legal issues. Given the wide range of potential employers, the day-to-day duties of a Staff Attorney employed by a legislative body, for example, may vary considerably from the responsibilities of a Staff Attorney at a corporation down the street. It all depends on what legal services the organization needs on an ongoing basis

In addition to practical legal skills, dedication to achieve the organization's and customers' goals, respect for leadership, integrity, professionalism, technical competency, continuous learning, being open minded and enjoying what you do, are keys to success. Soft skills such as being flexible, innovative, a good team player, collaborative, emotional and cultural intelligence, are important.

I highly suggest staff attorneys or personnel within the in-house legal department obtain a degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, especially if the staff member works more in associate relations. Understanding the organizational psychological dynamics coupled with their legal background would amplify the impact on internal employment issues and mitigate any potential litigation that could arise from those issues.

Certainly one needs to be able to manage multiple transactions and legal matters simultaneously, which can add to stress. It is important to respect customer and business deadlines, quarterly sales targets, and competing stakeholder interests. Building a good team, having caring and supportive leadership, being able to independently prioritize work, creating efficiencies in legal department processes and ensuring attorneys get vacation time off to recharge, all help to prevent burnout.

As a staff attorney you have one client, your employer. I have had the best experiences and learning in my career as a staff attorney. I truly enjoy the complexity of the work, solving problems, and being valuable to the business, sharing in the company's wins and growth, and being proactive in identifying key legal and regulatory risks as well has helping prevent and mitigate same. It has also broadened my relationship skills when working with multiple internal and external stakeholders.

Depending on the nature of your employer’s business, the variety of work could be pretty amazing. But because you are not “charging” your internal clients by the hour or per piece of work, sometimes they tend to ask you to review the most mundane materials that involve no legal issues at all; one of my former bosses used to say (facetiously) that anything that has writing on it is Legal’s business; it is therefore important from the outset to set some boundaries as to what the legal department should and should not be expected to do: things like proofreading, correcting badly written English, or fact checking do not really need legal skills, and could be done by someone else.

Staff attorneys must contribute to the stakeholders as part of the solution, not part of the problem. We must be seen as a reliable support in all processes of the company.

Trabajar como abogado en planta me ayudó a crecer en las diferentes ramas del derecho y a enriquecerme día a día con los diferentes clientes internos con los que interactúe.

Depending on the nature of your employer’s business, the variety of work could be pretty amazing. But because you are not “charging” your internal clients by the hour or per piece of work, sometimes they tend to ask you to review the most mundane materials that involve no legal issues at all; one of my former bosses used to say (facetiously) that anything that has writing on it is Legal’s business; it is therefore important from the outset to set some boundaries as to what the legal department should and should not be expected to do: things like proofreading, correcting badly written English, organizing documents in a logical manner, or fact checking do not really need legal skills, and could be done by someone else.