Working as a corporate lawyer can be a very rewarding and lucrative career path. You have to study for many years, so be prepared for hard work and sacrifice. You will need to get qualified, gain experience, and then continue your professional development and study for your specialism in corporate law.

Corporate law is a comparatively new field and the growth and career options are ample. Today, corporate lawyers are employed in a lot of topnotch organisations and hence this field of the legal profession is opening up a lot of options in careers and professions for young law aspirants.

As this is a specialisation of the legal profession that focuses on corporates and companies, a corporate lawyer would be representing their entities of all kinds. These include corporations, associations, joint ventures, sole proprietorship and even partnerships. It focuses on how the corporate and companies interact externally through commercial transactions and internally through corporate governance.

Corporate lawyers are tasked with safeguarding the legality of commercial transactions, representing corporations and advising corporate employees on their legal duties and responsibilities. Because corporate law covers a broad range of topics, corporate lawyers often specialise in one or more areas that include tax law, bankruptcy, intellectual property, zoning or securities.

Most corporate lawyers work for a corporation, but some are self-employed or work for a law firm.

What a corporate lawyer does: Corporate lawyers serve only one client – the corporation they work for. As a corporate lawyer, you will be called upon to handle a variety of legal tasks including corporate taxes, mergers and acquisitions, corporate structure issues, employment law, and government reporting. They will generally need to be knowledgeable in a wide range of legal fields and will need to be able to handle a large number of issues.
Some corporations will hire multiple lawyers and each will be a specialist in one or two areas of corporate law.

Skills required: If you want to become a successful corporate lawyer then you must have good communication skills, numerical ability, business awareness, responsibility, analytical thinking, researching skills, and confidentiality.

Educational qualification: To be eligible for becoming a corporate lawyer the aspiring candidate should be a graduate in any discipline for joining three years LLB course or 10+2 for joining an integrated course of five years of BA = LLB. After getting a Bachelor’s of law degree, the aspiring candidate can go for specialised qualification in Corporate Law or enroll themselves for a master’s degree like LLM.

Career prospects: After the globalisation of trade and economy, the corporate law has become one of the most sought- after career option for today’s youth both in-house counsel and in law firms. Corporate lawyers are in demand, be it the corporate governance or business consulting firms. With foreign law firms’ moving in India the scope for them has increased many folds.

Remuneration: Salary of a corporate lawyer in Government enterprises is fairly good and it keeps on increasing with time and experience as and when the government pay commission is revised. However, the financial success of a corporate lawyer working in the private sector depends upon his experience and knowledge of the field. A corporate lawyer working in the Large private corporate house can expect anything near about Rs.1,00,000 per month to start with.