There are two major differences that I see in being an attorney when I worked for 9 years. for a third party administration (TPA) firm and the 9 years, I spent at my law firm.
First, I offer an attorney-client relationship with my clients rather than protecting my employer’s (the TPA) interest.
Second, I can now take credit for correcting errors caused by a TPA. The reason I couldn’t do it before as a TPA attorney was that it was my administrators making the mistakes. It’s hard to take credit for correcting your employer’s errors.