5 Tips for Lawyers Changing Careers
I worked as a patent litigator for 3 years before I decided law firm life wasn’t for me, and that I didn’t even want to be a lawyer anymore. Less than 2 years after leaving, I had job offers from both Facebook and Google. Here are 5 tips that will help with your transition out of a law firm, whether it’s to an in-house role or to an entirely different career.
1. Let go of perfection.
My experience through my law firm years was that everything had to be perfect. In school, not getting an A on a test first meant I might not get into a top law school, and then in law school not getting the right grades meant doors were closing, whether at top firms or at clerkships. And then at a firm mistakes mean getting yelled at, hours of extra work, or worse. Fortunately, most of the rest of the working world isn’t like this. Recruiters and hiring managers likely won’t be scrutinizing your resume for errors. When I was hiring candidates, there was never a “perfect” candidate that fit every line of the job description — everyone had different tradeoffs and so it was just about finding the best fit.
2. Tell a coherent story.
If you can tell a compelling story, you’ll be a compelling candidate. But your story doesn’t even need to be compelling, it just needs to make sense. It should weave your past choices into one coherent narrative. As a job seeker, I obsessed over every area I perceived as a potential weakness. I worried what people would think about why I was leaving law. I worried about the gap in my resume from when I took time off after leaving my firm. And then I learned that, while someone might ask a question about these things, as long as my story made sense they’d quickly move on to the next topic. I saw this again as an interviewer, when I was responsible for hiring people. Even when someone did something against conventional wisdom, like leaving a job after less than a year, as long as they had a reasonable answer, it wasn’t a big deal.
3. Identify your next ideal role based on your strengths.
I’m a big fan of the concept behind StrengthsFinder, which is that strengths are the things that make you feel strong, that energize you. Weaknesses make you feel weak; they leave you drained. So instead of asking “what am I good at?” ask yourself what you enjoy. If you’ve always been told you’re good at something but you hate doing it, you won’t feel very fulfilled if that’s most of what you do at work. If something feels like a growth-area but you love it, though, that can still be a strength as you’ll be motivated to spend the time needed to master it. If you’re not sure what you want to do next, start by paying attention to how different tasks make you feel and try to optimize for your strengths.
4. Identify transferable skills.
When you were in law school, you learned a set of skills such as analytical thinking and issue-spotting. At your law firm, you’ve picked up more skills, not just in drafting/legal-writing, but also in broader areas. Whether you’re going in-house or striking out on a new path, these skills are broad enough to be transferable. Look at what the new job requires, then think about examples of how you’ve demonstrated that in the past. For example, if a role requires organization and project management, you could write about how you demonstrated these when you managed a document review process. If it requires stakeholder management, you can talk about all the skills you gained when you had not one, but five (or however many partners you worked for) bosses.
5. Have your talking points ready.
When you go into an interview, come prepared with 3–5 strengths and at least one example for each. Then if someone asks you about yourself, you can begin going through these strengths, e.g. “I am an excellent writer. I was trusted to take the lead on our X brief, which led to a settlement that saved our client millions.” Your strengths will also give you a compass during the interview, as you can try weaving them into your answers if you’re ever unsure where to go with a question. Just knowing you have these strengths should give your more confidence in your interview.
I worked with a career coach when I left law, and found it very helpful in identifying my strengths and framing them on my resume and for interviews. If you’re interested in coaching, you can sign up for a free consultation with me or learn more here.
