Consulting Lawyers Who Find No Life in Law

Lawyer Career Consulting DC helps lawyers who are fundamentally alienated from the profession of law and who wish to pursue a new line of work that they will find more satisfying and meaningful.

Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you confront your mistake in entering law.

Contributing factors to your "big mistake" may be that:

• Your genuine interests in life were set aside, as impractical when you chose law as a career.
• A school advisor warned that you would not get a job in a field you preferred.
• Powerful "family messages" influenced you to choose law as a profession.
• Law school was not interesting, but once you started, you decided to complete it out of duty and in order to pay off law school debts.

You may be compounding your "mistake" if you continue to practice law:

Your productivity and efficiency may have declined and could decline further, jeopardizing your job security.

• Your anxiety about your ability to support yourself and your family will be reinforced if you continue to do work that is ill-suited to you.
• Your anxiety and lack of passionfor your work could cause you to get depressed.
• You may suffer painful physical symptoms, or become seriously ill, if you continue to ignore your dissatisfaction and stress in law practice.

In the public domain, few resources are available specifically to help lawyers clarify their intentions and, if necessary, plan their escape from the field:

• Struggling alone: Until now, you may have struggled with this issue on your own, consulting informally with colleagues (especially the unhappy ones), family, friends, therapists, and anyone else who will listen.
• Ineffectual Advice: Career counselors not deeply familiar with law may have limited ability to help you assess your suitability for law practice, the options for lateral moves, obstacles to your departure from the profession, and your alternatives.
• Books of Limited Utility: Many books and authorities propose highly structured exercises and formulas to force reflection on this issue. But many written sources offer little more than abstract guidelines or fantasies. Too many factors must be considered, and the issue is too subjective, to be addressed in a formal or highly structured analytical way.
• Some Useful Written Resources Are Available: Though it is somewhat outdated, the best written source for lawyers undertaking a career change is by Deborah Arron, What Can You Do With A Law Degree?, published by DecisionBooks (5thed., 2004)

Even if you are highly "successful," you may know -- if you are honest with yourself -- that law is a "big mistake" for you. If you must leave the law to be happy professionally, you are not alone. Most law graduates eventually leave the practice of law. Over the past twenty years, hundreds of lawyers have consulted with Lawyer Career Consulting DC to contend with the loss of their career, and to start a new one.