Janice Jong left private practice in 2010 to spend a decade abroad with her family – no work permit, no practice, no files. When she came back to Canada, she received two job offers on the same day, both at the same salary. One was a return to private practice; the other was something she had long been curious about but never managed to act on. She chose the in-house path.
The timing of her return, during COVID, also shaped the decision. Rebuilding a client base after a 10-year gap during widespread upheaval felt too steep a climb. Going in-house offered something defined with room to grow.
Jong's legal career began at Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP in Calgary, where she articled, then moved to a small firm and eventually became a partner at Field Law, where her practice centred on wills and estates, corporate law, banking, real estate, and trusts. She also co-taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. When her husband was offered a position abroad, she followed – living in the UAE, the UK, and the United States for over 10 years. She returned to Edmonton in 2020 and took her first in-house role at what was then known as Merit Contractors Association, a health and dental benefits organization that would later rebrand as OpenCircle.
The fit made sense: the organization ran an employee life and health trust, and Jong had deep experience in trust law. What she did not anticipate was how the role would evolve. "I was the first lawyer to ever work there," she says. "The role expanded around what the department became. It's kind of an organic process when you're the first lawyer."
Over nearly five years, her title changed several times – from general counsel to chief legal and risk officer to acting CEO during a leadership transition. OpenCircle is a not-for-profit association whose members are construction companies, and its health and dental plan is designed for seasonal and hourly workers. "The interesting legal work, in my opinion, was the regulatory landscape that makes that all come together," she says. Employment law, compliance, corporate governance, and HR all landed on her desk.
The shift from private practice advice to internal decision-making was a sharp turn. "When you're a lawyer in a firm, you give best practice advice… but once you're internal and you're a part of the decision making and you know the business side of things, it becomes a lot more interesting and a lot more dynamic," she says. "The decisions that you make are not necessarily what you would have recommended as external counsel." Bridging that gap between what is legally ideal and what is operationally workable required a different kind of communication – one focused on explaining trade-offs and helping boards understand not just what was decided but why.
Risk management was another area she deliberately came to. Before joining OpenCircle, she sought specialized training in risk management as internal counsel, including building a system for assessing exposure, reviewing mitigation strategies, and running compliance programs on an annual cycle. "Once you've got a system built, you can tweak it and run it every year," she says.
In 2025, Jong joined the Special Forces Pension Plan. SFPP Corporation is a public agency that is the trustee and administrator of a defined benefit pension plan for police officers in Alberta. An SFPP pension allows officers to retire after 25 years of service regardless of age, and SFPP Corporation is tasked with carefully balancing the fund’s investment strategy with the needs of members, who may pay in over a shorter period but draw benefits for longer due to the elements of the pension’s design that support police officers. Jong's COO responsibilities, effective March 2026, now include oversight of finance and HR – two functions she is still growing into. For example, Jong is using her experience to be the voice urging care regarding the legal and privacy dimensions of AI implementation in the organization. It speaks to applying a legal lens at the operational level and beyond.
Her advice to lawyers considering in-house work is direct: learn the business fast, and stop thinking of yourself as a legal resource and start thinking of yourself as a business team member who happens to be a lawyer. "I try not to stay in the legal box," she says. "I try [to] see where my role can become more dynamic and how I fit overall, not just assuming, 'oh, that's not my problem because it's not legal.'"
When asked who is suited to in-house work, she points to skills that lawyers sometimes undervalue. "Communication skills, patience and listening skills are absolutely top skills to have in-house," she says. "A lot of what I do is hearing, processing and communicating – a lot of listening." Lawyers who do not feel confident in those areas may find private practice a better fit.
Jong says re-entering the profession after a 10-year gap felt daunting, but that her hesitation turned out to be unfounded. "I would not necessarily have thought I could ever go back to a career that I enjoyed," she says, "but I really am, and it wasn't as nearly as bad as I thought." For lawyers facing similar gaps, she would like her story to be a lesson that it can be done.