Step 1: Stop and Self-Assess

The very first thing a lawyer should do when they’re considering leaving law is stop and self-assess. This is not generally the first instinct. Usually, lawyers who are thinking about leaving law are feeling a bit desperate and want to make a move ASAP. (Understandably!)

But in order to make a good career decision, a lawyer needs to figure out why they are where you are, and how they got there. The underlying reasons and motivations that made a lawyer decide upon a legal career and stick with it for however long they have are critical signposts for them going forward. Conducting a useful assessment requires three things:

• Honesty
• Structure
• Time

Lawyers need to pause and ask themselves why they ended up where they are career-wise. This includes questions like:

• Why did they make the career choices they did?
• Do they want to apply the same decision-making matrix to any future moves? If no, why not?
• What do they like about their current job?
• What don’t they like about their current job? Why isn’t their current job working for them?

This is also the point at which lawyers should be making a brainstorming list of anything and everything they’re even a little bit interested in.

Finally, this is the step where lawyers should think about whether they should be looking for a temporary bridge job to get them out of a toxic situation while they’re continuing to explore their long-term options.

Step 2: Identify and Clarify

Lawyers who want to find an alternative career need to identify and get clear on five essential elements: their values, personality, strengths, likes and dislikes, and finally, skills. Cementing a lawyer’s self-knowledge about these things is a critical step in the process of any lawyer identifying an alternative career that’s going to be a fit for them.

Many lawyers assume they can skip or hurry through this step, erroneously thinking that either it’s not that important (it’s arguably the most important), or that they implicitly understand their values, what they’re good at, and what they like. But usually, a lawyer’s perception of these things has been obscured by their experiences in the law and their own blind spots.

Evaluating these five essential elements and getting clear on each of them allows a lawyer to move into the next stage of the process with a clear mental model of who they are and what they need from a prospective career.

Step 3: Explore and Experiment

Remember the brainstorming list mentioned in step 1? In step 3 of the Framework™, lawyers need to start exploring and experimenting, getting information about the options they have on the list to see whether their assumptions about whether they would like those careers are accurate.

It’s important for lawyers to remember in this stage that they don’t know what they don’t know. Especially if a lawyer has only ever practiced law, there are things that they believe about how careers and jobs work that are heavily influenced by their experience in the legal profession, which at times is a very strange beast.

Lawyers need to seek out information about the options that interest them that allows them to form their own opinions about whether a job would work for them. This is a research-heavy step that involves networking and talking to people who work in the types of careers lawyers are interested in and asking them what their day-to-day is like. It also involves comparing the information they glean from these conversations to the mental model of themselves they developed in step 2 to identify options that might be a match for them.

This step can be especially tricky for lawyers because they often struggle to ask questions that they don’t know the answer to, and by definition, this step requires you to ask questions that you don’t know the answer to.

Another objective in this step is to take the mental model of themselves that they developed in step 2 and brainstorm additional career or job options that they haven’t considered before but would be a match for the strengths, personality, likes and dislikes, and values they’ve identified.

What are some mistakes, pitfalls, and myths that lawyers encounter at this step?

• Thinking they can get the information they need without having conversations with people.
• Finding people to talk to in their fields of interest.
• Knowing where to start (often the brainstorming list is a bit overwhelming).

Step 4: Refine and Iterate

Once lawyers have reached the point where they are identifying specific options and talking with people about them, the process isn’t over. Lawyers need to continue to refine and iterate based on the information they learn during the step 3.

This can include things like eliminating options that don’t feel like a fit, pivoting to similar options that contain some of the things they liked about an option but don’t include some of the things they disliked, going back to the drawing board to brainstorm new ideas if the options they originally explored don’t feel like the right fit, being open to conversations with people in related fields or roles that might provide new and helpful data, and most importantly, doing their best not to prematurely close their option set.

Over time, lawyers narrow down the things that they might be interested in pursuing until they land on an option or two that feel like good fits.

This is also the stage where having a good therapist can really make a difference in a lawyer’s progress, because inevitably lawyers experience resistance during this stage that is best addressed in therapy.

What are some mistakes, pitfalls, and myths that lawyers encounter at this step?

• Expecting a straight line.
• Thinking having an existential crisis means they’re doing it wrong.
• Not being willing to refine and iterate, and assuming a dead end means the process is over.
• Resisting new information instead of welcoming it.

Step 5: Strategize and Execute

Step 5 is about finding and landing the next right job. It is usually the stage that most lawyers think of first when they’re thinking about leaving law—but it’s actually the very last step of the process.

Once a lawyer has identified the job that they want to make a move to, it’s time to get down to the nuts and bolts of creating a job search plan, revising their resumé, writing a compelling cover letter, revising their LinkedIn profile, and prepping for interviews.

Doing all of these things is infinitely easier with the information gleaned in steps 2 through 4 of the process.