New York Lawyer
May 8, 2001

Q:
Which books and web sites do you recommend for a lawyer looking to leave the practice of law?

Submit Your Question

Find More Answers

A:
Your reading list and Net surfing will depend on how dramatic a change you're thinking of making. If you are exiting the profession altogether and do not plan on exploring law-related disciplines (such as human resources, compliance, government relations or lobbying), generic books on self-assessment and job search preparation may suffice.

In my view, however, two items of reading are almost essential for retread lawyers. Deborah Arron's "What Can You Do With a Law Degree?" (Niche Press, ISBN 0-940675-41-2) is a logical guided tour through evaluating your own motives, incentives and miseries; assessing both your capabilities and your motivational hot-buttons; objective-setting and job search preparation. It is in the form of a workbook, and if one tends to like the people one agrees with, I'm in love with Deborah Arron. This book has been through numerous editions, each better than the last.

Equally powerful, but more generic, is "Do What You Are," by Paul D. Tieger and Barabara Barron-Tieger (Little, Brown, ISBN 0-316-84522-1). The book is based on a well-respected personality profiling instrument called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but is not a product of that instrument's owners/publishers, Consulting Psychologists Press (CCP). It is a comprehensive and thoughtful guide to identifying the kinds of satisfactions one most derives from work, keyed to the components of one's individual temperament.

Speaking of CCP, their parent publishing company, Davies-Black Publishing, publishes a broad variety of self-assessment and career planning instruments and materials. Many of these are tailored to -- and can only be used by -- certified career consultants. But some are for the lay user, and I recommend a prowl through their catalogue. Their website is www.daviesblack.com.

The Net is exploding with resources -- self-assessment surveys, career sites, bulletin boards, etc. A broadly-cast search will result in scores, if not hundreds, of sites. I cannot begin to keep up with them. Browse your brains out anyway, and pursue links down less-travelled paths. No one, and I mean NO ONE, has the single super-secret or a demonstrably better site. Given how disorganized it is "out there," understand that there is no such thing as an efficient job search. The best you can hope for is an effective job search -- which means gathering information and getting market visibility however you can.

One problem with job openings posted online: the only thing an ad -- whether in a newspaper or on the Web -- really can screen for is technical skills and competencies (any couch potato can claim to be a "bottom-line oriented go-getter," but evidence of "hard" credentials is pretty cut-and-dried). Yet what many people leaving the law are doing is LEAVING a repertoire of technical competencies.

So what do they have to sell? These people are selling the traits and qualities that people encounter when they meet face to face -- not the credentials that ads and postings call for. Ergo, you are likely to get screened out of a lot of non-lawyer postings -- even if you know you could do the job well. So find a good book on networking. Getting a lot of market visibility is always your best tactic, regardless of your job search and career objectives.

Sincerely,
Douglas B. Richardson
President, The Richardson Group