TO LEAVE LAW OR NOT TO LEAVE: WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS?
Welcome to the Moretolaw blog. It’s by an anonymous City lawyer (“MTL Blogger”) who is thinking about his/her legal career - and the alternatives to it. Below is an introduction and over the coming weeks you can read about his/her investigations into other career options and where they lead. We hope you’ll find it fun, interesting and useful. You can contact the author with your thoughts and comments by emailing
2 April 2009:
My decision to seriously consider leaving my job as an assistant solicitor occurred on an unremarkable day, apart from it being the monthly “billing cut off“ day. As I reviewed the work I had done in the past month, broken down into six minute units of “reviewing”, “drafting” and “considering”, it struck me that I had not enjoyed many of those six minutes, and that I did not want the rest of my career to continue in the same vein. Speaking to a partner later that day, a man so stressed that his health was suffering and who had not taken even a day’s holiday since I joined the firm, I thought “I don’t want your life to be my future”.
Since I started my job as an assistant solicitor in the corporate department of a City firm, my reasons for choosing this career have become hazier, and the only part which seems clear is that I should leave, before the hours, the culture and the salary become ingrained in me and leaving becomes impossible.
I know I am lucky to have a job in the current economic climate and I am aware how unfair it is that lots of solicitors have been made redundant from jobs they loved and were very good at. However, in my research, I came across a survey which stated that 25% of lawyers are unhappy in their chosen career. I was surprised the number was so low! In writing this blog I want to explore alternative careers for myself and share them with readers who are disillusioned with their legal careers and are edging towards making a decision to leave law. I will do the legwork looking for career alternatives and write about my thoughts and experiences along the way. I intend to look in more detail at a variety of alternatives, from the good to the bad and at those that are just too good to be true.
So let me introduce myself: I am a corporate solicitor working at a top 20 firm. I am one of the many arts students who drifted into a legal career after finding that my degree didn’t lead to a natural career path. I was certainly influenced by the salary and prestige of a legal career, as well as the look of relief on my parents’ faces when I informed them that I would not be living at home forever and working as I had been so far post-university, in a book shop in my home town. Before that, weekly flirtations with the Media Guardian jobs section had only seemed to yield endless adverts for not very appealing media sales jobs. My vague notions of being a journalist, in PR or advertising were being pursued much more vigorously by friends and I started filling out training contract application forms concentrating on the skills of logic and analysis and the requisite “commercial awareness”, rather than my creativity, ability to communicate effectively and enjoyment of dealing with a variety of people.
I was very lucky in finding a commercial training contract, then I passed the GDL and LPC and found myself starting as a trainee all in a two year period. The momentum was so fast that I never stopped to think whether this was the right choice for me. I did the usual commercial and corporate seats and qualified into a corporate department because it seemed like a department where I could work on big, interesting deals, have a good level of client contact and also travel and work abroad.
However, the combination of not enjoying corporate work; not wanting to come to work on a morning and dreading the end of the weekend; timesheets; billing; antisocial hours; stress over too much work; stress over too little work; feeling deskbound and not seeing an alternative to my office for months on end; interacting with a very limited number and type of people; envying all my friends’ jobs; in fact envying most other people’s jobs, has made me realise that I am definitely not in the right career. I know the cliché about the grass being greener, but really, this goes much deeper than green grass!
That is how I got to this point and this blog will chronicle where I go next and perhaps where I will ultimately end up. I am still practicing law, and I am fully prepared to keen an open mind: I may even decide that law, perhaps in another area, is actually right for me.
I would love to hear thoughts, comments and ideas, and will update soon with my first steps.
To contact the MTL blogger, email