Legal News

What Holds Unhappy Lawyers Back From Leaving?

By Dan Slater

Unhappiness in the law has, unfortunately, become a distinct sub-genre of LB coverage. To such an extent, in fact, that the storyline of lawyer wretchedness has become somewhat of a cliché: Wayward liberal-arts student, law school, indebtedness, dashed career hopes, inertia, misery.

But what happens next? Is there a way out? Monica Parker (pictured) thinks unhappy lawyers can be coached out of law, and back to happiness. After stints as a producer at Spike Lee’s film company and a manager at a Winn-Dixie grocery store, Parker, a Harvard grad, returned to Cambridge for law school. “‘I should have a larger income, I should have something with more prestige and status,’” she thought to herself.

“Being the true law school type, I decided on law school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she told the Law Blog in a recent interview. “You hear it opens doors.”

After graduation, Parker, 37, went to Alston & Bird in Atlanta to do IP litigation. “But I still thought, did I love it? Not really. But are you supposed to love what you do? Maybe not.” Parker says she was either bored with the work or terrified because there was too much to do. So she left law to teach negotiation skills, but then returned to practice at a small firm. While there, she launched a Web site called Leaving the Law. That led to counseling lawyer-clients on how to explore other careers. After three years in business, Parker says she’s worked with a total of about 50 clients. About 3% to 5% have actually made changes, she says.

The business also led to a book, “The Unhappy Lawyer,” to be published next month.

“A lot of us went to law school by default,” said Parker, when we asked her why she thinks lawyer-happiness is in such short supply. “We’re people who don’t quite know what we want to do, but think law school will create opportunities. So we get sucked into a funnel of going into a law firm, and then, there you are! You’re miserable. You’re miserable because you didn’t choose this career. It pretty much chose you. You were never taught how to select a career, think about the possibilities, how to experiment, how to learn about what’s important to you.”

In Parker’s book, there’s one particularly provocative chapter entitled, “Ditch your friends who are lawyers.” We asked Parker to expand on that concept. “Lawyers tend to surround themselves with other lawyers,” she said. “You make friends in law school, and friends at the firm, and then you congregate. 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.”

Is a guidance counselor really necessary? Can’t people figure out themselves? “They feel like they should be able to figure it out on their own,” Parker explained. “But it’s almost impossible to figure it out on your own unless you’re determined to make a change. When people tell me I can figure it out on my own, I say, great, feel free to call me in three months from now when you still haven’t made a change.”

LB’ers: Please, let us hear your thoughts.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).