A New View On Relocation

When I meet lawyers who have risen through the ranks to General Counsel or other C-level corporate posts, I always try to understand what strategies they've employed throughout their career.  Among several common threads I've seen, one continues to appear:  flexibility on relocation.  Increasingly, the most successful in-house lawyers have been willing to move for a promising opportunity -- sometimes across the country -- sometimes across the globe. 

Relocation for lawyers is a sticky issue--particularly in the United States.  If a lawyer starts his or her career in one state, it may be difficult to simply get up and move to a different location.  A private practice lawyer must be admitted in the jurisdiction where they sit.  The ease of relocating to a new state depends on the state:  the rules governing reciprocity vary widely.  So while it can be quite easy to pass the New York bar and later waive into practice in Texas, moving a few miles east to New Jersey would require becoming licensed all over again.  Because lawyers are licensed state-by-state, a license to practice law is not particularly portable.

None of this is to say that associates and partners don't relocate during their careers at law firms--they do.  While it's possible to move during the course of one's tenure in private practice, it's not generally commonplace.  Generally speaking, we see lawyers relocating for personal reasons--there is generally not a professional or career motivation.  And it's not generally something that's required to push a career to the next step in the private practice context.