There’s also the question of fitting in with the client. Another issue both De Angelis and McFarlane suggest raising before going on secondment is who will you actually be working with. Like moving to any new job, it’s important to get a sense of where you’re going and whether you think it’s a place you’ll be happy working. Making expectations clear is also very helpful.

This goes back to whether it fits into your overall career plan. De Angelis had been working mostly with small businesses before going to Value Creation Inc.; after her arrival there, she was working on deals that involved investment bankers and, as she puts it, “big business.” From her perspective, it expanded her range, making her more attractive to future clients.

The third big consideration is your career within the law firm. Wright suggests a frank discussion with the business manager or managing partner asking, “How will the secondment affect my access to internal sources when I come back?”

In De Angelis’ case, she was already a fourth-year associate with a number of her own clients. She says the transition had to be handled carefully. “When I went on secondment, I had to transition to a new office, which meant wrapping up my business, making arrangements for ongoing files, and contacting my key clients. Because of the length of the secondment, I had to give up my practice.”

And once you’re on secondment, it can take time to settle in. Kilby has specific advice for anyone starting out a placement. “Be patient,” she says. “It can take a while for the work to build up. And keep an open mind. You’ll be asked to do a variety of things — some you’re not used to.” De Angelis found in her experience that the first part of her work involved learning everything she could about the company. Like McFarlane, she found it took time for people to notice she was there and available to offer legal advice.

At some point, every secondment comes to an end. While it might seem that stepping out of the firm for a few months could take you out of the loop, that doesn’t seem to be the reality. For Kilby, returning to Ogilvy Renault was “fairly seamless,” and McFarlane didn’t run into any problems when he went back to Stewart McKelvey either. But those were both relatively short secondments.

With De Angelis close to two years into her secondment, she does have some concerns. “I am worried I’m becoming too narrow too soon,” she says. “I do see the potential for this work to lead to great things, but I don’t have a broad enough experience to be a general counsel.” But at the end of her secondment, she’s hoping the contacts she built up in industry will allow her to rapidly rebuild her practice.

That’s the experience of David Henley, a partner at Stewart McKelvey who did two secondments while still a junior associate. Once he returned to the firm, he says, he had “a substantial volume of work from outside the firm.”

In fact, Henley believes his secondments played an important role in fast-tracking him to partner. “The work is more comprehensive,” he says. “In a firm, junior [associates] only handle small pieces of the pie, but on secondment you handle the entire transaction entirely on your own.” This “accelerated” his development and now he has work from these clients on a regular basis. While most associates at Stewart McKelvey take seven years to become partners, for Henley it was only five. “The partners recognized I had a little more experience."

De Angelis is hoping her two years with Value Creation will have a similar effect. “I don’t want to blow my own horn,” she says, “but [compared to other associates] I really blow them out of the water. As an associate, you get shuffled into a practice group, but you don’t get to know about offline negotiations.” Her experience with all the other aspects of business will, she believes, increase her value to the firm when she goes back.

Secondments can help with career development even if partnership isn’t your goal. “I didn’t have to quit [the firm] to find out about an in-house gig,” says De Angelis. And it makes contacts that could become useful down the road. “An interesting thing,” says Peggy Dowdall-Logie, the executive director of the OSC, “is that two of our vice chairs and three or four of our directors are former seconds. These are people who were seconded as long as 20 years ago, but now they’re back.”

Lawyers who’ve been on secondment seem to be universally positive. “It’s been a tremendous experience,” says De Angelis.

“If it’s the right fit,” says McFarlane, “absolutely do it!” Wright has no regrets. “It’s met my expectations and beyond,” he says.

So, as Christine Kilby puts it, “have fun, and take every opportunity that you can!” If it’s planned well, a secondment can be a great addition to a legal career.