If you hate being a lawyer, you'll find a lot of support among your colleagues. A 2012 survey of the Washington state bar showed that 32 percent of its members.
You spent three years in law school, suffered through the bar exam, secured a job as a lawyer…only to find that you’re miserable and hate being a lawyer. What now? Given the level of law school debt, it’s unlikely that most unhappy attorneys can simply walk away with nothing else lined up. But there are steps you can take, starting today, to put yourself on a path to greater career satisfaction.
Remember the Time Before You Went to Law School
Law school, and working as a lawyer, are so all-consuming that it’s easy to forget that you also used to be an accomplished, competent person with marketable skills. For whatever reason, unhappy lawyers tend to be convinced they’ve got nothing to offer outside of the legal profession. But someone would have hired you to do something before you ever went to law school! Think back to the things you were rewarded for before law school. It’s likely one of these skills or traits will be part of your post-law career path.
Get Serious About Your Finances
Lawyers also tend to catastrophize and fear they’ll end up living under a bridge if they quit their current job. While it’s important to be realistic about your finances, it’s also important not to be overly dramatic about the amount of money you truly need in order to live comfortably.
If you’re a highly-paid attorney working in a large law firm, it’s likely that you’ve adopted habits that aren’t actually contributing to your overall happiness. Although it seems like you’d be far less happy in a smaller house or with a less expensive car, studies suggest this isn’t actually true. And, notably, the most satisfied lawyers tend to be the ones who make the least money!
Give Yourself Permission to Explore Your Options
It can be tough to admit to yourself and others that law isn’t the right profession for you. But you don’t have to make that statement right away (and it might not be true anyway). Rather than taking drastic action, just give yourself permission to look around and explore some options. What would it be like to work as a different type of attorney? Why not set up some informational interviews and find out? What would it be like to be a writer? Why not start a blog and find out? Let your curiosity guide you, and see where it leads.
Considering Getting Support
There are lots of ex-lawyers in the world, and there are lots of lawyers who shifted direction in their careers. Many of these people would probably be happy to talk with you about your career and would be a great sounding board for new ideas (and potentially new connections). There are several excellent “leaving the law” blogs you can check out. For example, Leave Law Behind and Leaving the Law. Just knowing others have struggled with these same issues and emerged on the other side can help!
The good news is that your legal training prepared you in many ways for this new challenge. For example, you know how to do research, you know how to work hard, and you know how to make an argument. Sure, your legal training taught you to make legal arguments, but you can use those skills on your own behalf, too, and make the case why you’re the perfect candidate for your next dream job!
Posted by2 years ago
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I've casually browsed Reddit for years, ever since my first job after law school in the Los Angeles office of a Boston-based firm. This is my first post. I write it in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and dreading the fact that tomorrow (technically, today as it is after midnight) is yet another Monday at the office.
I hate being a lawyer. A lot. Frankly, I'm not even sure what the point of this post is other than to just...get it off my chest I suppose. I have not shared this fact with anyone, and I imagine that most people I associate with don't have any idea. I guess that relative anonymity of Reddit is helpful in that regard.
So, why make this post now? On some level, I have just had enough. I couldn't sleep tonight due to extraordinary anxiety about my caseload of what I estimate to be hundreds of ongoing, complex cases. Yes, I have associates, paralegals, and support staff helping but at the end of the day, the proverbial 'buck stops here.' I took my increasingly regular daily does of Xanax to try to sleep tonight, but it didn't help. As sad as it may sound, the only thing that seems to help is literally doing more legal work. Sick, right?
Anyway, on one level I just feel trapped. I become a lawyer about 6 years ago. I miss the lifestyle I had before I did so; renting a room in Somerville (a suburb of Boston); driving an old Toyota when I wasn't riding on the T; having no real bills (other than law school loans, of course); and just enjoying life. I was responsible for nobody other than myself. Things have changed. I have a wife and a daughter; a mortgage; my wife and I each drive luxury cars, save for our daughter's college fund, and live a relatively expensive lifestyle. Sometimes when days get really bad I've casually looked around for other careers paths, but nothing even comes close to what I'm earning now (Base of $300k per year).
Anyway, like I said, this post doesn't really have much of a point to it. I just felt a need to vent I guess. I work god damn near eighty hours per week 6-7 days per week, for fucking rude, demeaning, pain-in-the-ass clients; deal with ungrateful, incompetent staff; and, maybe worse yet, have to put up with quite often condescending and entirely unimpressive judicial officers. The level of anxiety I feel these days is off the fucking charts.
Please, for whoever reads this, do not go to law school. If you are there, leave. Now. Run, and run fast. Even if you finish and join a decent firm, you will become a slave to a lockstep system that will literally own you. It's terrible, but you will build a lifestyle around it. And then, there you are. Stuck, litigating with asshole lawyers over minutiae, only because you know that fill-in-the-blank bill needs to be paid.
Fuck this profession. Oh my god, just fuck it. I want out. I went in to this profession for the money, and not any other reason. I think that is typical of many lawyers. Even putting aside the fact that law generally pays shit outside of Biglaw and some specialized midlaw, once you 'succeed' in getting into one of these firms you become addicted to the money. It simply does not fix it anymore.
Man, it's just so shitty. I want out so badly. Has anyone out there successfully done so?
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