Career Alternatives, Job Searches

alt.legal: How Melrose Place Gave Me The Courage To Leave Law

Columnist Leigh McMullan Abramson describes her journey from lawyer to writer.

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I’m a big believer in signs. When I was practicing law, I looked everywhere for divine inspiration that I should quit and do something else (you can catch up on my previous columns on trying to extract myself from the legal profession before finally quitting to be a writer here and here).

When my subway stalled between stations on my way to work, I wondered if the spirits were telling me to stay away from my office – forever. When a yoga teacher told me that I “looked like a healer,” I Googled, “healer job openings.”

Being a writer was an idea that I’d been batting around in my brain for years, maybe even decades. I’d written for my high school literary magazine and my college newspaper, and long kept a Word folder of rough drafts of essays and stories I hoped I might someday find the time and stamina to finish.

Despite the fact that my own mother is a successful children’s book author, writing as a profession seemed laughably far-fetched, like wanting to be a pop star or an astronaut. And I was unsure about entering my parents’ domain (my father is an artist and writer himself). I’d spent so much energy building an identity based on a rejection of their more bohemian choices, insisting that I was different and that I wanted a structured, reliable corporate job where I got to wear suits and high-heels.

Nevertheless, I kept finding time to write. But I continued looking for corporate jobs I deemed more appropriate.

As a gift for my 31st birthday, my mother framed a chart I’d made when I was 13 of all the characters on the TV Show, Melrose Place. I’d sketched Billy, Alison, Jake and the beautiful Amanda in colored pencil and written a short summary of each character below. (e.g., “Sydney: Jane’s sister. She is the madam of booming hooker agency. Has just divorced Michael after blackmailing him to marry her.”) I connected the characters with differing types of lines deciphered in a legend at the top. Straight meant “existing relationship,” squiggly was “lingering feelings?” Jagged peaks meant “enemies.”

Why did I make this chart, you ask? The answer is (i) I’m an only child and this is the kind of thing you do to amuse yourself when you grow up sans siblings and (ii) Melrose Place is awesome.

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When my mother produced my gift, I hadn’t seen the chart in nearly twenty years, but looking at my handiwork I realized that I was prouder of it than almost anything I’d accomplished as a lawyer.

Though crudely rendered, silly and riddled with spelling errors, it spoke to a creative impulse that I had repressed in favor of some ill-conceived corporate lawyer rebellion, an impulse that still woke me up at 6 a.m. to write and kept me inside at my computer on sunny weekends.

I had my sign.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly a straight line from the Melrose chart to a whole new career, but it marked the turning point when I began to take steps towards a writing-centered life. I’d been telling myself that I wasn’t actually trying to be a writer, but the most honest part of me did dare to hope that writing could be more than an off-hours hobby.

I started writing with a new sense of purpose, I began submitting pieces, a very small percentage of them got accepted, and little by little I finally felt secure enough to leave law altogether.

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(The moral of the story is obviously that you can never watch enough junky television. I’m convinced that in due time my binge watching of Vanderpump Rules and The Bachelor will lead to similar life-altering epiphanies.)

For a long while, I thought that there would be an event, that something definitive would happen, and I would get my sign that I had become a “real writer” and not just a lawyer posing as one. I assumed that this moment would have much to do with getting published. And while seeing my name in print does lend a sense of authority to my endeavor, tying my entire professional identity to an often fluky process is a dangerous business.

I’ve learned – especially as I wrestle with writing a novel, a task that requires a level of optimism bordering on psychotic, and publication is a distant and uncertain gratification – to see myself as a writer because I do it every day, even when I really don’t feel like it. Unless I’d done something similarly structured and institutionalized, any career after law would likely feel aspirational and undefined. I’ve had to make peace with delayed external markers of success and find legitimacy in my own resolve and discipline.

So, every morning I head to my office, where my Melrose chart hangs on the wall, sit down at my desk, open my computer, and under the watchful eye of Michael Mancini, start writing.

Next time, I’ll talk more about how I went from the Melrose moment to a full-time writing career. Also coming up, my colleagues and I tackle the money question. Can we live without our law firm salaries?

And we want to hear from you – if you have a story about how you financed your post-law life, please send us an email.

Leigh McMullan Abramson is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Town & Country, Real Simple, and Tablet Magazine. She attended Penn Law before working for several years in Biglaw and clerking in the Southern District of New York. Leigh is currently toiling away on a novel set in — you guessed it — a law firm. She can be reached at [email protected].

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