Hindi Greenberg of Lawyers in Transition recently took some time to answer our questions about career alternatives for lawyers. Hindi was a litigator for ten years before focusing her career on helping other attorneys find fulfillment in their careers. Since 1985, she has helped more than 15,000 lawyers. She will be presenting 300 Things You Can Do with Your Law Degree (live and webcast) on May 7, 2009 (be sure to check out our “new lawyer” discount).
Are you more interested in learning about how to wind your practice down and ease into retirement? She talked with us about that, too, so stay tuned…
1. Are there really 300 things? Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. And if there are 300+ things we can do with a law degree, how can we ever narrow it down to one thing?
There are actually many more than 300 things to do with a law degree, some more closely related to traditional law practice (for example, staff attorney for a court), some much farther a field (psychotherapist), and many in between that draw somewhat on legal training (such as executive director of a non-profit). Narrowing the choices is an individual process, dependent upon an analysis of your own interests, abilities and background. Once you do figure out what your interests and abilities are, and based on your prior experience, you can more easily narrow your focus to perhaps a half dozen possibilities. Obviously, if you don’t like legal research and writing, you wouldn’t even consider the court position. If you don’t like to work intensely with clients, you wouldn’t consider becoming a psychotherapist. And if you don’t like to manage people, you wouldn’t choose the executive director position. So what it takes is finding out about the careers within your range of possibilities and then reducing those by process of elimination.
2. How can a lawyer know for certain that she no longer wants to practice? Is the decision always final, or do you see lawyers returning to practice later in life?
I generally tell lawyers who think they want to leave law practice to think about what they do and don’t like about their practice. If there are ways to mitigate what they consider negatives—if they hate going to court, perhaps they can do more research and less appearances, or if they aren’t given enough responsibility, go to a smaller firm where they can run their own cases—then perhaps that is sufficient. But if the person has tried working in a few different legal jobs with different situations to each and is still unhappy, then maybe they are ready to move. Often, once someone leaves practice for another field, if they like it, they don’t return to practice. However, I do know some lawyers who moved into new fields and then found that “the grass wasn’t greener” and moved back into legal practice. But once you’ve been away from legal practice for some years, it’s more difficult to move back in because other lawyers wonder if your legal knowledge isn’t stale. It isn’t impossible—just ask some of the stay-at-home-moms who successfully come back into legal practice after ten or more years. But it takes a lot more networking, and perhaps taking a first job that isn’t fabulous in order to make your resume more interesting, and proving that you’re current and ready to hit the law running.
3. What are some of the obstacles that await the lawyer who decides to quit practicing? Do you have any tips for surmounting them?
One of the big issues for lawyers seeking to move out of law is that prospective employers can be skeptical about whether the lawyer will be happy in the new job and environment, particularly if the salary is much less. So it’s important for you, as an interviewing lawyer, to overcome that skepticism by explaining that you desire to change focus, move into a field that well-utilizes your skills and that greatly interests you. Give some examples of why you are so interested or what particular skills you bring to the table. Willingness to take a lower salary can be shown by saying that you understand that pay levels are lower when starting out and that you’re willing to accept that in order to become completely proficient at the new field.
4. Law firm life is turbulent right now. We’ve seen a steady stream of layoff announcements and know more are likely around the corner. Should the current state of the economy change the way people look at leaving the practice of law? Does it make the decision to leave law easier or harder? More or less possible?
Obviously, with more lawyers chasing fewer legal jobs, if you are thinking about leaving one firm to go to another, it will be more difficult right now unless you have an outstanding resume. But even if you have a fabulous resume, if you are more than about eight years out of law school and don’t have a book of business or don’t have a specialty to offer, it will be difficult in any market to move to a new firm—unless you have cultivated some solid networking contacts who you can tap. If you plan to leave law completely, this market also makes it more difficult since there are numerous people job-hunting in your new field of interest who have more hands-on, relevant experience. So my advice would be, if you don’t have to change jobs right now (if you haven’t been given notice and you can tolerate your job for another year), to wait until the market picks up a bit and then you will be able to have more options.
5. Even in more stable law firm environments, recent attorneys are often graduating with significant educational debt. Can they afford to leave the practice of law?
Large debt is definitely a problem and often forces young attorneys to take jobs they wouldn’t consider if it didn’t come with a big salary. So my advice would be, if you take the big firm job, to penny pinch while there for two or three years and pay down debt as much as possible, then use that first job as a spring board to something more attractive. However, keep in mind that law isn’t the only well-paying field. There are other fields where, after a few years of climbing the ladder, the income can be good—think about various aspects of real estate or working at a mutual fund or in the tech industry.
6. Once an attorney has made the choice to leave the practice of law, what are her first steps?
If she’s affirmatively decided to leave law, hopefully the decision was made after in-depth self-assessment of her interests, abilities and values so that she can know what kind of work will fit for her and what won’t. If she doesn’t know what new field might interest her, she needs to read a lot and talk to a lot of people about what they do, in order to get exposure to different kinds of jobs. But if she does have a sense of direction, or once she acquires one, she needs to do research on several of the career areas that might be of interest to her—talk to as many people as possible who are already working in those fields to get “reality-check” on what it’s like. Basically, NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK! Join relevant professional associations and attend meetings to meet additional people who work in the new field. Read the publications within the field to learn what the issues are—this also will help give her the appropriate jargon to use when interviewing, so she’ll sound knowledgeable about her new field.
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