General counsel should encourage law students to consider careers in-house

In a profile of the chief responsibility and ethics officer for MillerCoors,Diversity & The Bar, Sept.-Oct. 2009 at 35, describes a practice followed by Richard Deusenberg, the now-retired general counsel of Monsanto. “For one week every year, he ran his company’s legal department on our [Valparaiso University, Indiana] campus. During the course of the day, he maintained an open-door policy for curious students…”

Those campus campouts encouraged law students to consider in-house practice. Instead of the lockstep tramp to law firms, some law school graduates might step into a legal department. Many general counsel could look for ways to raise such consciousness.