Lately, we have been experiencing a great period of movement in attorneys’ careers. The underlying reasons for this are varied but include the fact that high student loans have forced young lawyers to take high-paying but stressful jobs. One day they wake up and figure out how to change their careers to achieve a more appropriate work-life balance.
In my coaching I find that many attorneys become bored or dissatisfied with their jobs after practicing for six to eight years. I call this a wish to morph, which is staying in law-related fields but doing something different. Many are looking for more satisfying work where they can fulfill their dream of service and influence. Sometimes the need to make a huge salary has diminished. To give you some idea of how this works, these are a few of the morphing careers available:
COVID-19 not only has also made a huge impact on the way we work, but it also has given rise to rethinking how and why the workplace should be changed. Hundreds of attorneys who had never worked from home are now doing so and loving it. There is going to be a whole world of lawyers doing their jobs differently if they can swing it.
Then each attorney must decide exactly how to make a dynamic change without harming his or her well-being. To keep your stress at its lowest level, the first step is to make sure you are making the right career transition. Avoid wasting time, energy, and money by picking areas that are not the right fit for you. This is where we first look to retain our mental health while moving toward a different goal in life.
Fortunately, I have some suggestions about this.
Most of the attorneys I work with are attempting to change in some significant way. I have been down the path with them in doing this successfully and not so successfully. Through the pain of not choosing the right morph and increased stress, I have come up with a system that seems to work much better than the way I was previously doing it. It goes something like this:
For examples of what these elements might be, I’ve come up with a few ideas. There are many more you might come up with. Mine are:
If you are contemplating opening a solo law practice, ask yourself the following questions:
If you have decided that the law is not right for you, then your questions might look more like this:
Let me give you an example of how this works.
The attorney is a fifth-year associate in a big firm. He has been unable to get on the partner track because of several factors, including the fact that he lost his sponsor. His billable hours are getting more difficult to meet as he becomes less interested in his area of law (construction defect). He sees that milking the cases has become a part of his job and hates that. He makes a very good salary, although it has not increased after he reached his fourth year. He has a wife and a four-year-old child. He has savings and is living comfortably but still working 60 hours a week.
He would like to change to a more satisfying career but hasn’t a clue what that would be. With my help, we begin his journey. First, we find that his Myers-Briggs temperament is I(introversion) F(feeling) S(sensing) J(judging). An attorney with this temperament, if in the correct field, would do well—perhaps a solo who could control his time. But we don’t stop there. He goes through the elements and finds that he wants a job that is meaningful to him. A job where he is working directly with people in need. He doesn’t mind traveling a reasonable distance. He wants a job that has rules and boundaries.
He becomes less stressed as we narrow down to the specific course he should follow. When we reach a couple of good possibilities, he can relax and visualize what the alternatives might be.
When it becomes obvious what the right direction is for you, the hard work begins of analyzing how to get there. A “Benjamin Franklin Technique” is used to plot the good and not good aspects of your choice side by side. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, put GOOD, and on the other side, NOT GOOD. Then, side by side, fill out the good, bad, and ugly truth about the choice. You can now create a specific strategic plan to test these ideas. Do not decide to actually spend the time and energy on a job choice and search until positive results can be forecast.
Each step of the way, we make sure that the stress factor is as low as possible. We have found a method that works by coming as close as possible to making a big change less onerous. We can forestall some of the obvious challenges as the search progresses by identifying them and planning how to confront them. This will lessen the tension as we start actually moving toward our goals.
What about all the good advice we have received about how to reduce anxiety and stress in our daily lives? This is the time to put that in high gear. Calendar when and how you are spending your time to get necessary tasks done. Prioritize those tasks so that the important ones are maintaining your momentum. Calendar break times, meal times, work time, and family/friends time. Keep up the meditation schedule. All this will reduce your stress and increase your well-being.
Using this technique anytime you are contemplating a substantial change will provide you with a whole new set of options—which will keep you sane and healthy!
