Why Don't Unhappy Lawyers Leave?
Many lawyers reportedly are unhappy with their jobs. Only a small percentage actually decide to do something else.
About 3 to 5 percent, in fact, in Monica Parker’s experience, writes the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. A Harvard Law School graduate who is now a career counselor for unhappy attorneys, Parker, 37, has written a book on the subject, The (Un)happy Lawyer, which features a business-suited man doing a handstand on the cover.
Earlier in her own career, she worked at Alston & Bird as a “miserable” intellectual property litigator, she says on her Leaving the Law website. Although she energetically read career manuals and took assessment tests, five years later she was still stuck in a job she didn’t like. At that point she realized she herself was the roadblock to making a career move, she writes: “I was waiting for something to happen, instead of making something happen.”
After that revelation hit, she says, it took her only a few months to exit law practice.
One unusual piece of advice that Parker offers for those thinking about a career change outside the law: don’t hang out with other lawyers. “You make friends in law school, and friends at the firm, and then you congregate,” she points out. “The problem is that, often, those people are just as miserable as you are and they don’t know how to get out. So it’s like the blind leading the blind.”
