Lawyers and the CareerBuilder SuperBowl Ad

Admit it–if you’re thinking about leaving the law, you have felt EXACTLY like CareerBuilder’s brilliantly subversive commercial from the SuperBowl: “If you make loads of money, but hate going to work every day, your coworkers don’t respect you, you always wish you were somewhere else, you cry constantly, you daydream of punching small animals, and [...]

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What do you get when leaving law?

When I was thinking about leaving law, I focused a lot on all the things I would lose:

Money
Status
Long hours
Working weekends regularly
Achingly boring work
Colleagues who were anything but collegial
A known career [...]

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Do Law Firm Layoffs Have to Happen? Part 1

So Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal axed 37 attorneys not long ago. Plus another 90 or so support staff. If you are one of those people and reading this, my condolences to you. Getting laid off sucks, no matter how bad the job.
[Aside: Don't miss this funkalicious article in the WaPo written by a guy who [...]

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The Blinders You Rode in With

When I accepted that first job that wasn’t practicing law, I got a lot of questions. A big one was: Well, what can you do if it doesn’t work out? Isn’t that kind of a dead-end job?
(For those of you who have not committed my CV to memory, my first post-law job was as a [...]

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Goldilocks and the Legal Career Coach

You may have heard that you shouldn’t sell therapy short just because the first therapist you chose wasn’t a good fit. The same goes for legal career counselors—the first one, or two, may not be right for you.
You know I’m a fan of career counselors and therapists. But I’ll bet you didn’t know that I [...]

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Friday Files: Lawyers and Carolyn Hax

Here’s another one of my guilty addictions: Carolyn Hax’s Tell Me About It columns and online chat. I’ve been reading her since her very first column appeared in the Washington Post. Strictly coincidentally, her column started about a year before I left law. I remember reading the column in the firm library on Fridays. Good [...]

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Finding a Career Coach

Some of the best money I ever spent was on a career coach who helped me actually get out of law. I’d been wanting to find that miraculous alternative legal career, but I kept getting in my own way. Having someone who could help me sort out what was fact (I’m highly creative) from fiction [...]

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Friday Files: Wouldn’t Wanna Be Ya

Sometimes, you just feel for people. Even though you know that most BigLaw partners are huge pains in the tookus, when one screws up so majorly and publicly, you feel something. Gratitude, if nothing else, that it wasn’t you who did it.
It’s the worst nightmare of every attorney: an email goes astray to a reporter. [...]

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Dress Codes: Been There, Done That

I completely cracked up at the Jan. 31 WSJ article on how unprofessionally Millenial lawyers dress. Seems the Boomers are up in arms over Ugg boots and an appalling lack of suits. The usual wringing of hands over those clueless youngsters.
Ah, dress codes. Many lawyers just love ‘em. Because dress codes are yet another rule [...]

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Some of My Best Friends Are Lawyers

So looking back on my posts, one might reasonably conclude that I don’t like lawyers. Not so! Some of my dearest, closest friends are lawyers. Most of them are practicing law, even. Just not in BigLaw. Were they in BigLaw, or even MediumLaw, I daresay they wouldn’t have time to be a friend.
Back in law’s [...]

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