Career Center, Career Files, Lawyers

Help

So many of us sit for long periods of time isolated in our offices, behind a Word document, pushing to complete briefs on our own.

By  
on

associate lawyer sad upset over her bonus needs help

Ask for help. Not because you are weak. But because you want to remain strong.

Les Brown – Motivational speaker, author, and former member of the Ohio House of Representatives

It’s so difficult for us to ask for help

I was speaking with a client last week who I’m helping to leave the law and he said to me at the end of our session, “I’m really happy I put aside my initial apprehension and reached out and asked you for help.”

This comment is so extraordinary in our little part of the Universe because of the simple fact that we attorneys are not inclined to ask for help.

Sure sometimes we can walk down the hall to a colleague in the firm and ask for his or her opinion.

Sponsored

But so many of us sit for long periods of time isolated in our offices, behind a Word document, pushing to complete briefs on our own.

So many of us project an image to the client that we know (or can know) everything.

So many of us work very hard to make sure opposing counsel and the judge think we have the upper hand and that we know what we’re doing.

All along, we sometimes feel like we don’t know what we’re doing, and that we are a fraud. Or we do know what we’re doing, but we’ve lost a sense of purpose, we aren’t happy doing it.

We want change

Sponsored

But we find it so hard to change ourselves. And one way we don’t change is we don’t ask for help.

We don’t want to be seen as vulnerable. We don’t want to be seen as wasting our law school education. We don’t want to be seen as not perfect.

But through it all, we still want to change.

And asking for help is the first, most courageous step to change.

You can ask now. Or later on. But make sure at some point you ask for help. It’s okay. The strongest among us do it.

If you’re serious about changing right now, I am serious about helping.

Casey Berman (University of California, Hastings ’99), a market research consultant, investment banker and former in-house counsel based in San Francisco, is also the founder of Leave Law Behind, a blog and community that focuses on helping unhappy attorneys leave the law. 

Topics

, , , , , ,