New York Lawyer
February 26, 2002

Q:
How does a person fresh out of law school start on an alternative career path? I'm finding many non-law employers are suspicious of my motives.

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A:
Well, they should be. You have just spent a gazillion dollars and suffered huge amounts of pain and agony to acquire a sophisticated set of technical credentials. Now you're telling the world you don't think you want to use them.

Potential employers are understandably reacting like a tongue-clucking Jewish mother: "What, Mr. Smartguy (or Smartgal)? You�re throwing away your education! Think of all the people who would die to have what you got, and you�re just going, �Psssht� with it all.� Prepare yourself: People are not only going to be bewildered by your decision, but many are actually going to be angry with you.

In point of fact, I really empathize with your situation. Having found absolutely nothing in law school that moved or engaged me and a lot that bored or terrified me, I passed the Massachusetts bar (just to prove I could -- and to show I wasn�t seeking greener pastures because I was an idiot) and then went to the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where I got a Master�s in Communications. If you ask me what in God�s name I was thinking of, I would have said I wanted to be chief writer for Sesame Street. But Big Bird never called, and the urge to avoid starvation compelled me to seek legal employment.

Boy, did potential employers ever beat me up about Annenberg! They asked a lot of unpleasant questions about focus, maturity, self-awareness and sanity. I lied my way through a bunch of rationalizations, tried the practice of law for a decade, and realized that I had been right all along. At that point, I could say, �Hey, I gave it a good try! It�s just not for me.� No matter: Potential employers still greeted me with skepticism, and I clearly had the �burden of persuasion� about my career choices.

So the first thing you have to do is prepare a credible explanation for your motives. And articulate your objectives. And defend yourself against negative inferences about your judgment, maturity, commitment and courage. No matter the stage of your career, you�ll find that � although we�re living in an era of pandemic employment changes � the job market does not like change. It prefers nice, linear career paths; it wants people to continue doing what they�ve been doing. This is particularly true when one has indicated the intention to enter a profession, like law or medicine. Professions supposedly are �higher callings� which, like marriage, are not to be entered into lightly. So your decision not to use your freshly-minted legal training makes you look like The Runaway Bride.

Fortunately, the inference that you are crazy or weak-willed is rebuttable. A lot of people attend law school by default. Ask �em why they chose that road and they�ll say, �Well, we have a lot of lawyers in our family.� Or, �I once saw Melvin Belli close to a jury, and from that day on . . . � Or, �I thought it would teach me better analytical and communication skills.� Or the classic ugly rationale: �They said it would never hurt me.� None of these is a sound basis on which to pin an entire working life.

As personally sympathetic as I am to your dilemma, even I am curious: Why are you thinking immediately about a non-legal career after working hard to acquire legal credentials?

Perhaps you feel that your law school experience was a template for what life as a lawyer would be like, you found nothing to love, so to hell with it. Frankly, whether you loved law school or hated every moment of it, the law school experience � akin to going to a sophisticated trade school � does not necessarily tell you much about what it�s like to be a lawyer. �Law� is an extraordinarily large country, with a lot of different provinces: in firms, in-house, in government, in not-for-profit advocacy, in detailed-oriented work, in people-oriented work, in drafting laws and in enforcing them, in structuring sophisticated deals and in helping Dad and Mom pass the family business to the next generation. There are legal roles that are fundamentally competitive (litigation) and those that are fundamentally collaborative (deals, agreements, trusts & estates).

This much is true: law is more the province of the individual contributor (�I do it myself�) than the collaborative/affiliative type, law is fundamentally repetitive, law emphasizes spotting risk more than opportunity, and those who love to draw outside the lines frequently find law frustrating.

So in your case � what was not to like? Or, put more positively, what kinds of satisfactions or incentives entice your more than whatever rewards law might hold? Those who enter law because they wanted membership in a profession they think is secure, stable, collegial and respectable are getting a rude surprise these days. The practice of law is moving away from stability and headlong towards being competitive, specialized and adversarial � often even with one�s own colleagues. The risk/reward equation is shifting: big paydays also mean big risks. Those who somehow got the idea that law is either intellectually stimulating or creative are disappointed more often than not. Law does have opportunities for intellectuals � but not all that many. Ergo, you are not alone in questioning whether you should engineer an immediate change of venue.

Here�s the good news, employment-wise: Law school may not be the most cost-effective way to acquire analytical thinking ability and good written and oral communication skills, but by virtue of having completed law school, the working world will assume you have acquired those qualities � which enhance anyone�s marketability in almost any situation.

Second, you may be able to make the argument that your career choice reflects the acquisition of maturity, not the lack thereof: �My law school experience made it absolutely clear to me that law is not the direction in which I want to build my career, and it�s better to have learned that at the get-go than after a decade or so of frustration or dissatisfaction.�

The job market wants to see evidence that you are running toward something, not away from something. If you cannot articulate your career objectives � and the qualities you possess that make them appropriate � you must first undertake some rigorous and objective self-assessment. Otherwise, your initial career choice may look like a hit-or-miss proposition and your decision to eschew law a sign of weakness, not of strength.

Sincerely,
Douglas B. Richardson
President, The Richardson Group