How to approach your first 30 days in-house

I wish I'd had a roadmap for my first weeks on secondment. There was a lot that private practice didn't prepare me for. There's no barrier between you and the clients, and no polished orientation plan, because the work is so varied. Instead of being eased into matters with a partner's supervision net, there's a lot you'll need to figure out yourself. You build your own picture of how the business works, how decisions get made, and who you're there to help.

This guide is the 30-day plan I'd hand my past self. It works whether you're joining as a permanent in-house lawyer or arriving on secondment from a firm. To get the real picture, I've partnered with Mel Storey, who has spent more than fifteen years in-house, leading legal teams across global organisations up to Head of Legal for the Asia-Pacific region. Between my secondment experience and her know-how, you're getting both views of the same journey.

One thing before we start: this roadmap is meant to break the learning down in a more structured way. It isn't meant to set deadlines. If it takes you 45+ days instead of 30, that's completely fine.

Week 1: Build your map of the business

As a new joiner, you have a grace period to ask questions and introduce yourself to everyone. Nobody expects a new starter to know everything, which makes week one the warmest asking window you'll ever get. This week is about spending that window well.

The settling-in meeting

The most useful thing I did in my first few days was book a 45–60 minute meeting with my manager and bring every settling-in question to it at once. One well-structured meeting can set the foundation for the next few months, and it's easier for your manager to answer things in a dedicated session than drip-fed on the fly.

Sending the list beforehand helps a lot. It lets your manager pull up the right documents, and it shows you're organised before you've done a single piece of legal work.

The question list

Here's the list I'd bring. Adjust it for your organisation, but try to cover every topic — each one sets up a later week of this guide.

Understand the scope of your role

This one deserves its own heading, because it's the part of going in-house that's most surprising. In-house, you'll rarely be confined to your specialty. I'm a construction lawyer, and on secondment I fielded questions on employment, privacy, consumer law and IP in the same week.

The good thing is, we're not expected to know every area of law. We're expected to spot the issue and know where it goes. Once that clicks, the question stops being "can I answer this?" and becomes "who answers this — and is it me?". You can turn your manager's answers into a simple boundary/escalation table and keep it at your desk:

Your first version of this table will be wrong in a few spots, and that's okay. It's a working document that builds over time as you get more familiar with how everything operates.

The operating picture note

As the week goes on, build a one-page note. Mine covered:

• what the business does and how it makes money;
• the business units and what each one cares about;
• the two or three live deals I'd been pointed to;
• how work reaches legal;
• where everything lives; and
• a team map with escalation points.

It takes maybe twenty minutes a day to maintain, and I found it really helpful during my secondment.

Week 2: Learn the machinery — approvals and risk appetite

Week one is about setting up the map. Week two is about the machinery: how this organisation approves things, and what risks it will and won't wear. With these two things, we start moving from a private practice lawyer to an in-house one. Our advice starts arriving at the right moment, in the right format, and tailored to the risks the business actually cares about instead of just "market standard".

The approval process

Every organisation has a decision-making system: delegations of authority, approval gates, investment committees, sign-off chains. When we get familiar with that system, our advice starts to actually drive business decisions.

Then apply it by picking a real transaction and tracing it through:

And get yourself into the room. Gate reviews run on their own cycle (monthly, or per project milestone), so it doesn't matter if one doesn't fall in your first fortnight. Just try to get invited to the next one:

Watching one gate review teaches you more about how to write for the business than a month of reading old risk reviews. You'll see which sections get discussed, which get skimmed, and what a good risk analysis sounds like when it's being defended in the room.

The risk profile

What will this organisation actually accept? Private practice trains you to flag all the points that might matter. In-house, the business has usually already decided which points matter, and to what extent. Once you know that list, negotiating gets a lot more targeted and effective.

That list is usually written down somewhere — a contract risk matrix, a negotiation playbook, standard positions:

If there's no playbook — and often there isn't — it's helpful to start building one. As a head start, pull three recently signed contracts of the type you'll work on and record where each landed on the points that matter:

• Liability caps — amount, carve-outs, and what got excluded
• Indemnities — what was given, what was refused
• IP ownership and licensing positions
• Insurance requirements
• Termination rights and consequences

Capture it in playbook form and you can accelerate your own learning while building something that helps the team:

Templates and precedents

A short checklist to round out the week: find the standard contracts and documents (the templates the business actually sends out or receives); learn which clauses are locked and which are negotiable; and note who owns updates. If you spot a gap, make a note for yourself.

Also this week: start to meet the broader team (not just legal)

The meetings happen in Week 3, but the requests go out now. Busy commercial people book out one to two weeks ahead, so asking your manager for the introductions this week (the script is in Week 3) means the meetings land next week rather than next month.

Week 3: Meet the stakeholders

In private practice your client is on the other end of an email. In-house, your clients sit on the same floor — and the relationships you build with them decide how much good your advice can do.

Identify your stakeholders

Three questions to help you find your key stakeholders:

• Who sends legal the most work? Check the intake system or ask the team — the top requesters are your day-to-day clients.
• Who owns the approval gates? Your Week 2 approval map names them — the people whose decisions your advice feeds.
• Who feels it most when legal is slow? Usually procurement, finance, commercial or project teams waiting on contracts to move. Meet them early and you become the person who unblocked them.

Common answers: procurement, finance, commercial or business development, project directors, and the company secretary. Your Week 1 list from your manager should overlap heavily.

Get the introductions

Asking your manager (send in Week 2):

Reaching out directly, where there's no warm introduction:

People say yes to this far more often than you'd expect. Being asked "how can the legal team work better for you?" is rare enough that most stakeholders remember the person who asked.

Run the meetings: a 20-minute agenda

Keep it to 20-ish minutes and four questions. You're there to listen — the less you talk, the better it goes.

Keep a stakeholder note

After each meeting, spend five minutes recording: name, role, what they care about, how they like to communicate (call vs email vs drop-by), and any follow-ups you promised. Then do the follow-ups. The fastest way to build trust in a new organisation is beautifully simple: be the person who does what they said they'd do. That reputation is entirely within your control, and you can earn it inside a month.

Week 4: Add value and close the loop

This is the payoff week. You have the map, the machinery and the relationships — now you get to use them, visibly.

Run real work through the machinery

Take your first contract review and run it against the playbook positions rather than your firm instincts. Draft your first approval paper in the format the gate actually requires, shaped by what you saw in the room. It won't be perfect, and it doesn't need to be — what the business notices is that the time you spent learning their system is already paying them back.

Find one quick win

Somewhere in your first three weeks, you'll have noticed something small that could work better. Good candidates:

• A missing template the business keeps asking for (an NDA variant, a standard letter).
• A question that gets asked repeatedly — turn the answer into a one-pager or FAQ.
• A slow handoff — e.g. contracts sitting in an inbox because nobody knows whose turn it is.

Pick one, and keep it small enough to finish inside a week. Then offer:

One small finished thing early on builds more trust than an ambitious project that's still in flight at day 60. There'll be plenty of time for the big projects — month one is for showing you can land something.

The 30-day check-in

Book 30 minutes with your manager around day 30 and send this agenda beforehand:

• What's going well / what I've picked up so far.
• What I should adjust.
• Scope check: anything I should be picking up that I'm not? Anything I'm doing that belongs elsewhere?
• Priorities for the next 60 days.

The scope check is the key item on the list. Managers usually rate new starters who ask for this kind of feedback more highly.

If you're on secondment

Three extras for secondees, all of which make the secondment work better for you. Agree with your firm how and how often you'll report back — a short monthly note usually works better than ad hoc calls, and it keeps you visible at the firm while you're away. Be conscious of the dual relationship: you serve the client's interests while you're there, and confidentiality runs in both directions. And keep a running note of what you're learning about how the client thinks — that note makes you a noticeably better adviser the day you return. A good secondment builds your career at both ends.

Extra tips

A few extra points that didn't fit the structure above but are still important.

Secondees: your firm is still your team

Being on secondment doesn't mean going it alone. When a question lands outside your depth, you have a resource most in-house teams would love: a full-service firm one email away. Use it, and frame it as the feature it is:

This can even grow into referral work for your firm. The client gets a fast answer from people who already know their business, your firm gets work it values, and you become the connection point between the two. Two habits keep it clean: be transparent with the client about when something becomes billable work rather than a quick view, and let the referral be the natural next step rather than pushing it.

Say "I don't know" like a professional

The phrase that builds credibility fastest in-house isn't a clever answer — it's:

Then come back by that time. In-house, credibility comes from reliability.

Match the register

Watch how the business communicates and meet them there. If decisions get made on three-line emails and five-minute calls, that's your format too — and learning to compress advice is a skill that'll help for the rest of your career. Set the answer up front. Use executive summaries. Edit aggressively.

Keep a surprise log

Keep a running note of everything that surprises you in month one — a process nobody explained, an acronym you've never heard, the thing that works differently from your firm. You only get to see the organisation with fresh eyes once. By day 30, the log becomes your handover note, your secondment report, or the induction guide for whoever starts after you.

Find out what the business is afraid of

Every organisation has a scar — an old dispute, a regulator that came knocking, a customer that nearly walked, a project that went badly enough that people still lower their voices about it. None of this will be in your induction pack. Ask a long-serving colleague what the worst thing that ever happened here was, and you'll learn more about the real risk appetite in ten minutes than a month of reading the matrix will teach you. Advice pitched at the scar gets heard. Advice that ignores it gets politely filed.

Ask what growth looks like here while you're still new

Month one is the cheapest time to ask an awkward question, because you're allowed not to know yet. Ask your manager what the path looks like from your role, how the team has developed people before, and what the review cycle actually is. In-house teams are usually flat, which means progression tends to be negotiated rather than automatic — and the people who get it are the ones who raised it early rather than waiting to be noticed. You're not being pushy. You're collecting information you'll need in eighteen months.

Closing: the 30-day checklist

Everything above, on one page. Work through it at your own pace, and remember: it's a sequence, not a deadline.

If you keep only one line from this guide, make it this: your first 30 days in-house are about learning how the business decides — not proving how much law you know.

About Mel Storey

Big thanks to Mel Storey for co-writing this guide — her "take" on each stage of the first 30 days runs throughout it. Mel is a lawyer, mentor and content creator who has built her career at the intersection of law, leadership and modern career design. She is also the founder of Counsel Media.

She has worked across private practice and corporate sectors, most recently as Head of Legal for the Asia-Pacific region at a global technology marketplace. Over more than fifteen years in the profession, Mel has led teams, advised executives and built high-trust partnerships across complex global organisations.

Check out her website and socials (@careerbigsis on TikTok and Instagram) for her podcast, resources and career clarity sessions.