Here at Above the Law, we regularly cover career alternatives for attorneys. For better or worse, there are not enough jobs in the practice of law to accommodate all holders of law degrees. So it’s helpful and even inspiring to our readers to showcase all the different and creative ways that lawyers are using their legal training in other endeavors.
Luckily for us, and for our readers interested in alternative career paths, our friends over at Bloomberg Law have been conducting wonderful weekly interviews with people they call “stealth lawyers” — individuals who, after either training or practicing as a lawyer, went on to find success in some other field.
Let’s meet a recent profile subject, a Georgetown and Yale law grad who left the practice and teaching of law for a very unique new niche. If you enjoy drinking boxes and boxes a glass of fine wine — and who doesn’t, really? — keep reading….
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Meet Lisa Granik, who is now a Mistress Master of Wine. Here’s her bio from the Masters of Wine website:
Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly a lawyer in private practice, I taught law at Georgetown University and then both at Moscow State University and the Institute of State and Law (Tbilisi, Georgie) as a Fulbright Scholar. Additional time served at Yale Law School, Moscow and St Petersburg resulted in a doctorate in law, after which I decided life was too short to be consigned to a life of vodka, potatoes and litigation. A felicitous change of career to the wine trade resulted in experience both with small importers and large distributors. Along with periodic writing for The World of Fine Wine and Sommelier Journal, I presently run Tastingworks, which offers a broad range of management consulting services to wineries seeking improved access and sales in the US market.
If you’d like to leave the practice of law in order to drink, think, and write about wine for a living, then you should draw hope from the example of Lisa Granik (and others like her, such as Elizabeth Banker, in-house lawyer turned wine bar proprietor).
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How does one become a “Master of Wine”? It’s harder than passing the bar exam, according to Lisa Granik. Learn all about the qualification process, as well as Granik’s fascinating journey from legal practice to legal academia to the wine world, in her interview with Bloomberg’s Spencer Mazyck:
Stealth Lawyer: Lisa Granik, Master of Wine [Bloomberg Law via YouTube]
Earlier: D.C. Attorney Gives Up Law for Her True Passion: Booze