Biglaw

Ex-Biglaw Partner Trades Litigation For Lashes

You too can take Biglaw and shove it.

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Ever want to just shove your Biglaw job and follow your heart’s desire? A former Kirkland & Ellis partner, Timothy Duffy, has done just that — leaving the drudgery of Biglaw for a life of entrepreneurship.

After more than 20 years at K&E, he got bitten by the business bug when he helped a friend out with the creation of CeresNexus LLC, a startup that simplifies buying food products from vendors. According to a profile at Law.com, once the idea of leaving Biglaw took hold, it was tough to resist:

“As soon as you start thinking about doing something new it’s like, ‘Oh gee, well my normal job is kind of boring,’” he joked.

Duffy hasn’t totally abandoned the law; when he left Biglaw, he hung out his own shingle, and he continues to work on some matters for K&E clients. But he’s also a small business owner now. Duffy and his wife Bette Ann own an eyelash extension franchise called Deka Lash.

Not that transitioning to the world of eyelash extensions was the most obvious career path for Duffy, but he knows a good opportunity when he sees it:

“Like most guys I had no idea you even did this or this was a thing,” said Timothy Duffy of his new enterprise in the Windy City suburb of Glenview, Illinois. “But when [my wife] told me she was going to a salon and spending about $500 a month on eyelashes and she couldn’t get an appointment because the place was so booked up, I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s something to this.’”

The Duffys are opening a second location next month, and plans for two more locations are in the works.

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Now that Duffy’s put Biglaw life behind him, he has some thoughts about so many that let themselves get trapped in a job they don’t really like:

“You have a lot of smart people putting a lot of effort into making their third and fourth million dollars, and if that’s what you want to do that’s fantastic, but I think a lot of people end up doing that even though that’s not really what they want to do,” said Duffy, adding that such pressure often has less to do with dollar figures than a feeling of not measuring up to colleagues. “And I really think it leads to good smart people [being] trapped by their own ambition in a way they never really expected.”

Remember only you can force yourself to continue at a job that makes you miserable. Eyelashes may not be your thing, but there’s something out there you’re bound to enjoy.

From Big Law to Fake Lashes, Ex-Kirkland Partner Tries Hand at New Biz [Law.com]

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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