New York Lawyer
September 11, 2001

Q:
I hate the law. How do I get a job in another field when I have no contacts other than in the law? I also have a Ph.D. in English, but all my Ph.D. friends are unemployed.

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A:
I hate to sound like a law professor here, but your complaint fails to state a cause of action on which relief could be granted. Too vague. Too broad. What do you mean, �hate?� What do you mean, �law?� Since I don�t know what you�re doing, where you�re doing it or for how long, it�s hard to use your career unrest as a compass needle to point to callings that might be more satisfying.

In order to make a credible case to an employer in a new area, you have to be able to explain why you �hated the law� and why your new calling would avoid any and all vocational irritants. If you can�t do that, the potential employer is entitled to wonder if you�re a misfit, malcontent, chronic whiner or incapable of handling the stress of demanding jobs.

In framing new, realistic, attractive career objectives, it�s important not to �fix things that ain�t broke.� Exactly where is your pain? Do you find the content of law boring and daunting (and is this all law in all substantive disciplines)? Do you find the setting in which you do your law thing intolerable? Is it the nature of your role�or your colleagues, your compensation, your prospects, your values, your life balance, your long term career goals? Is it the time demands, the workload, the repetition, the competition? How about the lack of individuality or creativity? See? Lots of things, singly or in concert, can be what�s frying your bacon.

To better diagnose your malaise, on a scale from 1-10, rank your present level of satisfaction concerning the following work related factors:

The type of organization I work in	___
The size or complexity of the organization I work in	___
My work setting ("culture, norms, institutional values, physical surroundings, collegiality, relationships, etc.)	___
Resources I need to do my work	___
The type of work I do (including variety factors)	___
The amount of work I am expected to do	___
The challenge or intellectual stimulation I get out of work	___
The way in which work is assigned, scheduled or prioritized	___
Poor performance standards or performance evaluations	___
My present level of compensation	___
My anticipated level of compensation within 3 years	___
My personal relationships with colleagues and superiors	___
Client relationships or interactions	___
My role or prospects in this organization	___
The recognition I receive or visibility I�m getting	___
The balance I strike among work, family and personal priorities	___
Opportunity to participate in professional or volunteer activity	___
Geographic considerations (commute, part of country, etc.)	___
The process by which I made earlier career choices	___
My sense of personal control and direction in my life	___

DON�T add up your total score. The point of this exercise is to itemize, not generalize. Items you scored 8-10 rank as strong satisfiers, as nutritional food groups you should strive to feed in your next job. Items scoring 4-7 probably are not instrumental in your pleasure or dissatisfaction. Take �em or leave �em. At the 1-3 end of the scale, you�re looking at active irritants, alarms or turn-offs. For each of them, ask, �What�s really the issue here?� Write down your answers. Paste those answers to your bathroom mirror under the heading: �I will do all I can to eliminate these issues from my professional diet.�

So, friend, where are things really going wrong? Not enough autonomy? Not enough affiliation or collaboration? Content of your job dull and repetitive? Tired of being regarded as some sort of �super-technician� whose uniqueness and creativity go unrecognized? Never seeing your kids because of those 2,400 annual billable hours? Try to really drill down here; don�t settle for superficial gripes. Run a relentless cost/benefit and risk/reward analysis � recognizing that nothing is permanent unless you allow it to be.

As for your Ph.D., I suggest you look at it as an enabling credential, rather than a defining credential. Sure, most English professors are Ph.D.s, but that doesn�t mean all Ph.D.�s have to be English professors or sit around reading Chaucer all day. Think of what your Ph.D. credential says to potential employers about your cognitive style and ability: it says you are strongly motivated to (and adequately capable of) parsing out the meaning of things. To discern patterns, concepts, precepts. To integrate diverse information and discern fundamental mechanisms of cause-and-effect. You�ve been taught to analyze, synthesize, prioritize, interpret and articulate. To see the big picture. To strategize, imagine, conceive, solve puzzles and explain why things happen.

Those characteristics are marketable. Add to them the risk-recognition, situation analysis and influencing skills you supposedly learned in law school, and you�ve got the makings of a powerful persuader. You�re a natural policy guy (all the word �policy� really means is: �We should,� as in �We should make more guns than butter, and I can explain why�). Lawyer-Ph.D�s can be (and are) policy wonks, lobbyists, government relations experts, think-tankers, ombudsmen, textbook writers, advocates, critics and poets. A majority of them probably are �individual contributors� (they do it themselves), but there�s no reason why they can not manage, lead, inspire, motivate, collaborate with and build alliances with others.

Ph.D.s have been trained to ask, �Why?� So start there. Ask yourself exactly why you are unhappy. Then think of the tale of the sculptor whose magnificent granite rendition of a charging bull elephant sparked the art student�s awe-struck question: �How do you do that?� �Simple,� says the artist. �Just find yourself a big hunk of rock and cut off everything that doesn�t look like an elephant."

Sincerely,
Douglas B. Richardson
President, The Richardson Group