How hard is it to move in-house right now?
There’s a common assumption among interim and consulting lawyers that permanent in-house roles get harder to land the longer you spend outside the traditional career track.
The data from early 2026, along with what we’re seeing across our own consultant community, tells a different story.
1. The in-house market in numbers
MRA Search’s Q1 2026 in-house legal market report recorded 242 senior in-house moves and promotions across the UK in the first quarter of the year. That’s a clear recovery from the 159 recorded in Q4 2025, and puts activity roughly back where it was in Q1 2025.
The breakdown matters more than the headline figure. Of those 242 moves, 125 were lateral hires and 117 were internal promotions, a near-even split. Companies aren’t simply promoting from within to avoid the cost of recruitment; they’re genuinely hiring externally too.
There’s also a detail worth flagging for anyone with a consulting or private practice background: moves into in-house roles from private practice rose to 14 in Q1 2026, up from just five the quarter before. Still only around 6% of the total, but the direction is encouraging.
%
increase in in-house moves this quarter vs. last quarter
2. Selective, not closed
The report’s overall picture is a market hiring with more discipline than in recent years, prioritising commercial impact, sector and regulatory expertise, and comfort with AI-assisted legal workflows. That’s a useful thing to sit with if you’ve had a run of rejections. Selective isn’t the same as shrinking. If anything, it tends to favour lawyers with broad, cross-sector, commercially-minded experience, which is exactly what most consultants build up by default.
The market hasn’t stopped hiring—it’s simply become more intentional. Lawyers who can demonstrate commercial thinking, adaptability, and cross-sector experience are exactly the kind of talent employers are looking for today.
3. What we’re seeing at Obelisk
We’re not just reading about this trend from the sidelines. Since the start of the year, a number of our own consultants have gone on to secure permanent in-house roles, from paralegals through to senior commercial counsel, across sectors including FMCG, technology and financial services.
Just as many have taken a different route: keeping one foot in consulting while also holding down an in-house role, rather than treating it as one or the other. It’s a familiar pattern by now — an in-house role a few days a week, with ad hoc or fractional consulting work through Obelisk running alongside it. The old idea of interim work as a stepping stone to a single permanent job only tells half the story these days.
%
increase in in-house moves this quarter vs. last quarter in the private sector
4. A word of balance
None of this is a nudge to leave consulting behind. It also works the other way: some lawyers take a permanent in-house role and later find the hours, environment or working patterns don’t suit them, and move back into consulting as a result. What the data tells us is that the door in-house is open wider than it might feel from the outside, whether you’re after a permanent move or a way to run both at once.
5. Looking ahead
The in-house market is recovering steadily, and what it’s looking for is becoming clearer rather than more restrictive. That’s worth keeping in mind, whichever direction you’re weighing up.
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