Asked what she enjoys most about working in-house for one of the world’s largest industrial conglomerates, Allison Despard is refreshingly blunt. “In private practice, you do some training with clients, you do some policy stuff, but, most of the time, clients come to you with massive problems and say, ‘I got sued. Fix it.’ But working in-house you really have the opportunity to avoid those problems. A lot of my time is spent working to avoid lawsuits before they begin.”