Do you Love Your Job or Just Labor at it?

This is Labor Day weekend, so what better time to think about your labor? Unless, of course, doing so would ruin your weekend. Or you have to work and can only think about the files on your desk. “Save me a burger, honey, I’ll be done soon. I promise … Honey?”

While this will be the last hurrah for the summer, and a time for beach visits and barbeques, it should also be a time for reflection about your life and career choices.

Do you love your job? Like it enough? Don’t really enjoy it anymore? Hate it? Do you look forward to going to work in the morning or do you dread it? At the end of the day, are you feeling fulfilled about what you accomplished or was it just work? All serious questions to consider this weekend.

You made the choice to become a lawyer X years ago. Why? Was it for good reasons or bad?

I have been a career transition coach for lawyers for decades and have talked with 20,000+ attorneys about their career choices. Only a handful entered the profession out of a passion for the law or justice. Many more went to law school because they liked to read and write, took the LSATs on a lark, got good scores, so went to law school because it seemed like a decent career path.

There are many good reasons for wanting a career in law, but there are many bad ones. Among the bad: a quest for money, the panache of being a lawyer, pleasing your parents, blowing med school because of a poor grade in organic chemistry, and one of my favorites, not knowing what else to do after college.

The truth is that the money in law is good but not great — unless you excel at both law and sales. To really score the big bucks you have to bring in big clients … and that means you have sell. As attorneys have told me many times, “I didn’t go to law school to become a salesman!”
Most of my clients are in mid-life, with many earning in the $150,000 to $400,000 range– which is very good money by most measures, but it doesn’t make you wealthy. These folks can bring in enough business to keep going, but it is not something they enjoy or at which they excel. Most of them dread having to sell themselves.

The panache of being a lawyer has become a myth, no thanks to the lack of conscience shown by so many attorneys in the upper levels of the Executive Branch these days. The  reality is that the bloom started falling off the rose with the O.J. Simpson trial, if not before.

I have talked with many lawyers who chose their career to satisfy their parents or live up to the expectations of others. Law is not what they really wanted to do, but they did not have any better alternatives. And I can say for sure that we would not have a physician shortage in this country today – and we would have a lot fewer lawyers! – were it not for the need to do well organic or inorganic chemistry.

There are many myths about legal career change that need to be debunked – two of the big ones are that you will make less money and that you will have to start toward the bottom. Both are untrue. Our experience is that lawyers can make as much money or more in a new career than in their law firms. We also see them going into senior-level and even C-suite business and/or legal positions.

A legal career can be excellent and satisfying. I am even encouraging my younger son to give it serious consideration — but if your work is not your passion, or if it was but isn’t any longer, then find something that is! You owe it to yourself and your family. There is a way out if you want to find it.