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The One Thing People Do To Successfully Leave The Law

For us unhappy lawyers, leaving the practice of law to find an alternative career is not actually hard. Gaining the initial courage to face the fear of leaving the law is.

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For us unhappy lawyers, leaving the practice of law to find an alternative career is not actually hard.

Gaining the initial courage to face the fear of leaving the law is.

And one major obstacle to growing this courage is that we unhappy lawyers don’t know where to start in order to leave. We get stuck, almost from the outset.

We don’t know realistically what should be our first step.  We can’t identify the moves we should make.  We can’t carve out any time to meaningfully begin leaving the law because we are so swamped at work.

Or we have familial obligations.  Or we don’t know how to speak to our spouse or family about our desires to shift career focus.

We feel overwhelmed.  We lack confidence.  We are confused.

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So we end up not moving, not leaving.

The baby step 

Luckily, we have a very useful tool to help us leave the law. It’s not sexy, it’s not famous, and it doesn’t solve everything for us.

But it does a great job of getting us started.

It’s called the baby step … a small, incremental, confidence-building, risk-mitigating, forward movement we unhappy lawyers can take to leave the law.

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All you need is to do one small babystep . . . and then another step . . . and then another . . . and one more (seemingly) innocuous, unimportant, inconsequential, slight, trivial, minor, negligible, insignificant step after that.

And they need not all be successful steps, or steps that lead somewhere or produce something. The simple act of taking them is often good enough in the beginning. But just make sure you take that one small step.

And for your convenience, here are 9 easy-to-do babysteps to begin your journey of leaving law behind.

  1.  Determine if you really need to leave the law:  When you think about your current unhappiness or dissatisfaction as a lawyer, take a second and really assess whether these can be attributed to your practice of the law.  Are you unfairly scapegoating the law? Are you just in a bad space? Is there something else going on?  Before you begin to consider leaving the law, critically assess whether you just need to refresh your practice.
  1.  Begin working on and exploring your Unique Genius:  If you do really want to leave, your Unique Genius are those skills, talents and enjoyments you are so good at, which comes so naturally to you, that you don’t even consider them strengths, you don’t even consider them work to do.

Ask your friends and family What am I good at? What have I always excelled at? What am I known for? What do I enjoy doing? Let these inform your next steps.

Organize all of these traits and sub-traits into a manageable 3-5 buckets, with main strengths (“Insightful”, “Interpersonal”, “Dependable” and so one) and sub traits for each (“Creative problem solver” and “Very good listener” and “Meets deadlines”). Let this form your narrative. Then explore which jobs align with your most prevailing strengths.

  1.  Subscribe to and read thoughtful and cutting edge bloggers blogs for inspiration:  Realize that there is a large community of like-minded people out there: Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, Copyblogger, Ramit Sethi, Live Your Legend.
  1.  Drink coffee:  Get coffee (or tea) with friends or colleagues who have left the law, or left the firm life and practice in a different way, or work in areas that you might find interesting (business development, compliance, sales, product management).  Pick their brain.
  1.  Write a manifesto:  This is a document that sets forth your principals, your goals, what’s important to you, and what you want to attain. You may already think of these things throughout the day, but now take some time to put them onto paper and have them stare back at you.  Some questions to consider:  What do you like about your current life?  What do you not like?  What makes your sense of self-worth grow?  What makes you feel inferior?  What business ideas (no matter how far-fetched) would you like to begin?  How do you want to spend a normal work day?  (Advanced baby step:  email the draft manifesto to a friend and invite comments.)
  1.  Reserve a URL:  If the entrepreneurial bug is growing inside of you, go to www.godaddy.com and reserve a URL for a new, potential business.  Anything. Your name. A cool business idea. It’s just $15 a year (and it is a great babystep that shows immediate results.)
  1.  Confide in one other person you are unhappy as an attorney:  Speak to some trustworthy friends and colleagues that you are looking to (gradually) leave the law, or leave how you are currently practicing it, and to keep you in mind for opportunities. Purposely keep your goals vague and high level, as they will develop and mature as you go through the process.  Just get the ball rolling. Get your wishes out there. Begin to create opportunities.
  1.  Do not lead with the money:  As you envision and explore different life and professional plans, do not make money your guiding priority.  Lead with other things – what you are good at, what you enjoy, how you envision a work/life balance, how you want your daily routine to unfold.  Follow what you enjoy and where you add value, and the money will follow (really, it’s true).
  1.  Don’t worry about the “how”: We all have goals and dreams.  Short term (win the motion) and long term (become financially independent).

However, when you are only focused on the specifics of “how” these goals and dreams will come about, you can lose focus on the ultimate desired result.  When these goals don’t happen exactly as we had planned or in the time frame we had scheduled or with the people we now know, this makes us anxious.  We get bummed out.  We re-think our plan.  We doubt.  We second guess.  We lose concentration, motivation.  We get bogged down.

To leave the law, don’t worry if the next baby step you take is going to bear tangible fruits.  Don’t be on the constant lookout for immediate results.  You will get to where you want to get – it may be through an alternate channel or on a different schedule or with the help of someone you have yet to meet.  And over this time, this goal may change and ultimately look completely different than you had originally envisioned.

When you don’t worry about the details of the “how”, you get to focus on living the dream.  And that’s oftentimes more fun anyway.

Someone once told me you can think of babysteps like a runway versus a launchpad. Baby steps are that runway which implies proactive, gradual momentum, speed and motion which only grows with lift-off.

Unfortunately so many of us dissatisfied attorneys sit idle on the Launchpad, passively waiting for any opportunity to come along.

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.

 

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