Making The Jump Plans Tentative Recovery
Sometimes, life can throw some unexpected twists at us that change our plans. For me, it’s a year (well, over a year now) of big changes in my life that have caused me to rethink my life’s goals and direction. Actually, if I really think about it, its been four years of big changes in my life:
- a divorce,
- 2 moves,
- graduating from law school and beginning my career, first as a law clerk, and then private practice,
- rethinking my career direction and deciding to jump back into working in the child welfare system (a big reason I went to law school in the first place);
- taking a nontraditional part-time job with the Department of Social Services coordinating an advisory board that reviews cases and recommends policy changes and developing some projects related to that board;
- getting remarried last August; and now
- having my first child, due August 12th.
So for awhile now, I’ve been making significant “jumps” that have changed most of the major parts of my life. While some of these changes have been stressful, and some of these changes are still somewhat stressful, overall my life is moving in the direction that I want it to go (although sometimes not fast enough for my liking).
When I started Making the Jump back in December, I contemplated creating a narrowly focused website for lawyers contemplating a career change out of the legal profession. But frankly, I wasn’t having any fun with it. So I stopped writing — and the longer I went without writing, the harder it became to pick it up again, mostly because I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what I really wanted to do with this blog.
After spending a few months thinking, my tentative recovery plan for Making the Jump is to expand it a bit to focus more on all of the interesting jumps, turns and unexpected twists involved in the journey of life. I plan to still include items that are relevant to career choices for lawyers, but I also plan to include other things that I have found highly relevant to the career and life change choices that I’ve made - things like personal finance, learning to be frugal, finding better work/life balance, maintaining a relationship with my spouse, and finding purpose and meaning to why I’m here on this big planet. I suspect I’ll also add stuff as time goes on about the next big “jump” in my life — becoming a parent.
I hope you’ll stick with me as I begin this “blog recovery” project.
Online Career Tools: Career Values Activity for Lawyers Considering Career Change
The corporate placement firm, Stewart, Cooper & Coon has an online version of Richard Knowdell’s Career Values Card Sort. The Career Values Card Sort involves sorting a set of cards with 54 defined values into five categories ranging from “always valued” to “never valued.” Once you prioritize your values, you may use the values you ranked the highest to help you evaluate career decisions that are under consideration. This online version includes a worksheet where you list a single career decision, list your eight highest-ranked values, and then write about how that value is applicable to your career decision. Then, you examine which values are in conflict with your career decision and brainstorm how to resolve those value conflicts. A sample worksheet, along with blank downloadable worksheets, may be found here.
I did this exercise about a year ago during a workshop that I attended about Career Values. (You can buy the cards and workbook at careertrainer.com.) At the time, I listed these values as my top eight:
- Work-Life Balance
- Location
- Family
- Fun & Humor
- Creativity
- Change & Variety
- Honesty & Integrity
- Creative Expression
Values can change over time, so it is probably time for me to do this exercise again. Looking at this now, I’m not really sure why I ranked Fun & Humor so highly. Although I definitely like having fun, I’m not sure that it makes my top eight “always valued” values. On the other hand, my top three values - Work-Life Balance, Location and Family - would all likely continue to be in my top eight values today.
Overall, I found this exercise helpful, although the online version I’ve linked to here is somewhat more limited than the paper-based Career Values workbook that I used in the workshop I attended. The workbook includes several supplementary activities about your highest career values, including activities reflecting on times in the past when you have been able to exercise your highest career values freely, how your career values have changed over time, and how “in charge” you feel of building your highest career values into your life.
What do you think of the Career Values Card Sort activity? Is it a useful tool in helping to define your career change choices?
Lawyer Depression: Part 2 - How Depression Can Affect Our Career Choices
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the high rate of depression among lawyers. As I noted in my earlier post, the article cites “escalating billable hour quotas, . . . ceaseless deadlines and [the] adversarial nature of [lawyers'] work” as some reasons for why lawyers are so depressed.
Others have noted that lawyers are extremely pessimistic. As psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman notes, people with a “pessimistic explanatory style” tend to see “bad events as pervasive, permanent, and uncontrollable.” While people with a pessimistic outlook tend to fair worse in many situations (e.g. sales, athletics), pessimists actually fair better in law. Pessimists tend to see many more potential problems in any given situation than optimists do — a skill that the legal profession rewards. As Seligman notes:
The ability to anticipate the whole range of problems and betrayals that non-lawyers are blind to is highly adaptive for the practicing lawyer who can, by so doing, help his clients defend against these far-fetched eventualities. If you don’t have this prudence to begin with, law school will seek to teach it to you. Unfortunately, though, a trait that makes you good at your profession does not always make you a happy human being.
Unfortunately, the pessimism which makes some lawyers miserable in their careers can impact attempts to change careers as well. In 2001, career counselor Robert C. Chope wrote an article (abstract, full article pdf) identifying several pessimistic messages that career changers sometimes tell themselves, and his advice for overcoming them. While his advice is geared toward how career counselors can help clients overcomes these messages, much of the advice is directly applicable to career changers themselves.
The messages and Chope’s advice:
- “My career is a hopeless, oppressive endeavor.” Advice: Learn how you developed this mind set. What is the evidence that your circumstances are hopeless? What are the arguments against hopelessness?
- “I’m helpless, who would hire me?” Advice: Do one positive search activity a day and keep a record of the activities. Also, try activities that are unrelated to career search (e.g. improved eating habits, exercise, volunteering) to confront helplessness.
- “I can’t start at the bottom again.” Advice: Focus on what you will contribute, not where you will start.
- “I’ll never get work.” Advice: Evaluate the search process, instead of looking at a career search as a win or lose game.
- “I need to be certain about my search techniques.” Advice: “[R]ecognize that there are no certainties in the career change process.”
- “I feel as if I failed.” Advice: Recognize that failure “is simply part of moving forward.” Break down the career search into controllable activities.
- “I feel worthless.” Advice: Don’t evaluate self worth with other types of worth. Take an inventory of yourself which may include attributes that you may not have considered.
I know that I’m generally a pessimist and also a perfectionist (another trait which makes lawyers prone to depression). I also know that I’ve thought (and sometimes said aloud) some of the messages listed in Chope’s article. The two which I’m most prone to are “I feel as if I’ve failed,” and “I’m helpless, who would hire me?”
With regard to the first, I tell myself sometimes that I must be a failure — after all, I’m choosing to possibly leave a career which thousands of new graduates clamor to enter each year; one that I entered myself only recently. I also tell myself that I’m a failure because I haven’t figured out what I want to do next. I know both of these messages aren’t accurate — there are hundreds of other lawyers who have left the profession, and they aren’t failures — strong evidence that I’m probably not one either. Also, career change takes time — logically I know it , but emotionally I sometimes forget it.
With regard to the second, I’m not sure why I feel like employers wouldn’t hire me. If I think logically about it, I know there is no evidence supporting that. I’ve been fairly successful in the jobs I’ve had, and a legal career provides plenty of transferable skills. At this point, this message probably comes from not having developed a new career direction — I’m right that I won’t be hired (in fact, I’m not even able to really search effectively) if I don’t know what I want to do! At this point, my “who would hire me” message to myself is really putting the cart before the horse!
Now you know that pessimist messages I tell myself. What messages do you tell yourself that keeps you from moving ahead in your career?
Career Fun: The Career of Santa Claus
With Christmas only one day away, I haven’t had the time (or the concentration) needed to put together a serious post this week. So tonight, for a little holiday fun, here are some articles that describe what Santa does . . . and what he may be worth:
Salary Christmas Story: Santa Claus. Payscale tracked down the real Santa and asked him about his job. Here’s what Santa likes most about his job:
Most of all, I enjoy visiting with the children before Christmas, hearing how they are getting along, if they are doing well in school, if they are listening to their parents, and if they are treating others with respect.
Santa Claus Worth $4 Million. Back in 2000, Vault evaluated Santa’s possible worth. How could a toymaker like Santa be worth $4 million? Vault cites his “physics-defying” flying technology. The article notes:
“he’s got a North Pole hanger with enough advanced technology to put Area 51 to shame.” If Santa revealed the secrets behind his mastery of space, time, and technology, physicist Julien notes, he “would become famous and would be rewarded for his efforts.”
Forbes also has a profile of Santa that notes his infinite wealth and love of arctic wildlife.
Although Santa says he really likes his job, some people think his job is downright terrible:
Four (or Five!) Reasons Why . . . Santa Claus Has a Terrible Job. The author cites living at the North Pole with “a bunch of dirty, Rudolph-hating reindeer,” and going up and down chimneys all night long as two of the reasons that Santa’s job is just no fun.
Santa Claus Is A Risky Guy! I’m guessing a bunch of lawyers work at the worker’s compensation firm Lynch Ryan, where they think that “Santa is an underwriter’s nightmare.” Workers’ Comp Insider cites Santa’s bad habits and his working conditions, noting, “He is sneezed or coughed on up to ten times a day, and he has been “wet on” in 34% of his mall stops, poor guy! And sometimes, he is even attacked and mauled by his reindeer!”
Santa has some new problems this year as well. He can’t say “Ho, Ho, Ho!” anymore, and one of his adult visitors assaulted him at a local shopping mall!
Do all these problems make Santa grouchy, particularly after a long night of delivering presents? Some folks at MIT think so.
Whether you think Santa has a sweet job or a terrible one, I’m pretty sure Santa Claus is not looking for a replacement, so for those of you who like what Santa does, here are some consolation prizes:
- Work as Santa’s helper as a mall Santa (a beginning Santa can make $100 per hour - not bad!); or
- Find a job in Santa Claus, Georgia.
Lawyer Depression: Part 1 — The Roundup
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the alarming rate of depression among lawyers. The Journal cites the statistic that “19% of lawyers suffer depression at any given time, compared with 6.7% of the population as a whole.” Ever-increasing billable hour quotas, “ceaseless deadlines” and the adversarial nature of lawyers’ work are among the reasons are cited as reasons for the high rate of depression.
This article struck a chord with legal bloggers: there are now about a dozen blog posts which reference the Journal article:
- Correlation and Causation in Lawyer Depression at Concurring Opinions and Legal Profession Blog (cross-posted). He asks, “But do lawyers become depressed, or do people with a biochemical predisposition to depression become lawyers?”
- WSJ: Why Are So Many Lawyers So Depressed? at TaxProf Blog.
- Even Lawyers Get the Blues: Opening Up About Depression (within the Legal Profession) at Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog.
We work in a stressful profession. People bring us their problems and expect us to fix them. We search for the truth in adversarial courtroom settings. We often deal with important and significant high-stakes situations. Your law practice tip today is to be alert for your own mood changes and to take care of yourself this holiday season.
- Depression Confession: Help for Lawyers Who Suffer at Blawgletter.
- Why Are So Many Lawyers Depressed? at Inhouse Blog.
- Lawyers with depression at Novalawcity. She links to a podcast that Daniel T. Lukasik, founder of lawyerswithdepression.com, did last year.
- Why Are So Many Lawyers So Depressed? at the WSJ Law Blog.
- Retirement and Pre-retirement Depression at Practice Development Counsel’s Next Generation Next Destination. Mentions the depression older lawyers sometimes face which is “frequently attributed to the loss of professional identity, especially if they have made their practice the dominant component of their life.”
- Lawyer Depression Comes Out of the Closet at ABA Journal.
- Lawyer Depression at Lawsagna. “Many lawyers hide such conditions for fear of losing their practices.”
- Is Blogging an Antidote to Lawyer Depression? by Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch.
- Some Disparate Thoughts on Empowerment and Creating Opportunities Through Blogging by Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle. She provides a few extra thoughts building on her post at Legal Blog Watch, noting: “But blogging goes beyond personal empowerment; it can create huge, life changing opportunities.”
We suspect that people with great creative gifts — a group that includes the best lawyers — feel the pain of birthing innovative ideas. Imagine, therefore, the agony of rejection — a common experience for lawyers. Which experience in many cases may lead to the dullness of depression.
The ABA and other bar groups are questioning the emphasis on billable hours (PDF) that drives lawyers to exhaustion, while some law schools are helping students and alumni evaluate whether they have chosen the right field. Individual lawyers are also stepping up to discuss their depression on websites or as visiting lecturers.
For lawyers who aren’t necessarily clinically depressed (which is a serious illness requiring medical intervention and professional help), but feeling angst or lingering malaise, one possible antidote (and by far, not the only one) is… blogging. Whereas law practice enslaves lawyers, blogging empowers, giving lawyers a unique voice in a world where they usually serve as a mouthpiece for others, giving them control over a domain, even if it’s just a tiny little piece of the Internet. Most importantly, blogging builds connections and conversation with others, and eradicates the sense of loneliness and isolation that serve as a breeding ground for depression.
Depression can be a big issue when contemplating a career change. Perhaps escaping depression is one of the reasons to consider changing careers. Or maybe depression is one of the obstacles hampering a career change. How we feel about ourselves plays a huge role in how we figure out our career direction.
In my next post, I will explore how depression and feelings play a role in career change.
Update - Another Article that I missed:
- Why Are Lawyers So Damned Depressed? Well, You’re A Lawyer. You Figure It Out at Build a Solo Practice, LLC. She cites another reason lawyers may be more prone to depression:
I would like to proffer another perspective on challenges facing all lawyers which are unique to our profession. I see it quite often with my clients and we address it. It’s not depression but my guess is it can cause depression. It is the knowledge that we have chosen a profession which turns problem-solving into an art form in order to be professionally and financially successful. This very same problem-solving skill which is highly regarded makes you a magnet for EVERYONE’s problems, not just paying clients.
Career Quick Links Side Blog
If you visit my blog, you will notice a new mini-blog in the side bar. Career Quick Links is a collection of links on careers, career change and the law. I plan to regularly update it with articles of interest that I do not have time to blog about extensively, but are relevant to the topic of career change for lawyers. You may subscribe to the Career Quick Links as a separate feed. The Career Quick Links will not show up in the main Making the Jump feed.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — I saw a good example of a link blog on Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs, and I set out to create something similar on my blog. If you’re a blogger, setting up a link blog is fairly easy to do. Feel free to email me about how I set my link blog up, or google link blog to get started. Also, thanks to Kevin for including Making the Jump in his link blog.
Personal Finance and Career Change
Personal finance is one of the major obstacles that can keep lawyers from changing careers, or even taking a different job within the legal profession. A recent article in the ABA’s Student Lawyer magazine states that the “average 2005 graduate of a private law school carried over $78,000 in debt from law school alone.” Add in the average undergraduate debt of $19,000, and many law school graduates start their legal careers with over $100,000 in debt.
Consider these examples:
A recent law school graduate has $250,000 in student loan debt, with a minimum student loan payment of $900 per month. He lives and works in the Washington, D.C. metro area, making about $150,000 a year as a contract attorney. He wants to move into a permanent law firm job, but he cannot afford to make less than $100,000 a year. His academic credentials are not spectacular, so it is likely that any permanent position that he takes will be for less money. As the colleague who told me the story said, “He makes six figures, but he never has any money because everything he earns goes to bills.”
Chuck Westbrook of I Hate Your Job writes about his friend’s desire to change jobs, and the financial circumstances that stand in the way:
My friend David is in a job that he absolutely loathes. David is a smart, young guy who landed a pretty lucrative first job, yet now that he’s been working there for a year, he’s realized that he’s made some poor choices when it comes to his career and his finances, and he’s miserable.
. . . .
He wants to make a change, but you’ll recall above where I mentioned that David had become aware of some mistakes that he’s made. For one thing, when trying to pick out a job for himself, he had his eyes on the $$$ and not much else. He didn’t care that he didn’t find insurance all that interesting, and didn’t take the time to process what a 60 hour workweek would feel like.
He made some questionable budgeting decisions as well. David drives a relatively new Lexus and lives in an apartment in one of the nicest parts of Chicago. He also is without a rainy-day fund and has moths in his 401k. He’s driven his monthly expenses up too high for the next couple of years and has no savings. So now, though he wants to work in marketing, he’s obligated to maintain his income by something that makes him miserable.
As Westbrook notes, keeping your expenses under control is vital. In a recent post, JD Bliss Blog discusses a Wall Street Journal article by Terri Cullen about two sisters who left higher paying jobs, where they were miserable, for lower paying jobs that better fit their career goals. As Cullen notes, “Lots of people stay in jobs they hate solely because it pays the bills — ask any newly minted lawyer slogging away at a corporate job to service $100,000 in student-loan debt. My sister and I weren’t that deep in the hole, but we still felt trapped by debt.”
Cullen notes several moves that you can take to ease the financial burden of a career change, prior to leaving your miserable job:
- Focus on reducing debt.
- Build up your savings.
- Try making your career situation less miserable by improving your current situation within your company. Cullen includes new positions with your current company, flexible work hour arrangements, and urging your employer to make some changes to your current position as possible ways to stay with your current employer. (Of course, as JDBliss Blog notes, these types of changes are more feasible for some lawyers (e.g., in-house counsel) than for others (e.g., partner-track associate).
- Investigate the job market to determine your employability. Cullen notes, “[n]etworking is the best way for people in high-paying fields to find jobs in alternative careers.”
- Upgrade your skills: review job postings to see what skills employers seek and then take classes to fill in the gaps.
Of course, if you’ve already left your job, or you’ve been laid-off or fired, your ability to implement some of these measures may be limited. One tactic which is usually possible, however, is limiting your expenses by (as one of my favorite financial gurus would say) “amputating your lifestyle.” If David is serious about changing careers, he can lose the Lexus and move to a cheaper apartment. These steps alone would help him to free up the cash he needs to pay down other debt and establish an emergency fund. It is a matter of priorities: does David like his car and apartment more than the prospect of having a job that makes him happy? Is he willing to make the lifestyle sacrifices will help him attain his career goals?
My first example is a bit harsher, particularly since it appears the young lawyer is using his income primarily to pay off student loan debt, rather than live the high life. A few things do strike me, however. First, Washington, D.C. is an expensive city. Would moving to a cheaper city help this lawyer cut his expenses in a way that would help him pay down the debt faster? Second, what was this lawyer doing during law school? $250,000 in student loan debt strikes me as extremely high, even if he paid full tuition at a top law school. This lawyer may have been able to avoid some of his current misery by keeping his expenses under better control during law school. Again, he could have accomplished this by amputating his lifestyle. (For a good example of a student who is actively amputating his lifestyle, see The Frugal Law Student).
Personally, I have taken several steps to “amputate my lifestyle” since I began my career change. I no longer buy things that don’t fit with my career change goals. Restaurant meals, trips to the bar with friends, new clothes, and decorations for my house are all luxuries that are now rare in my life. In addition, I am much more conscious about small expenditures (like coffee from the local donut shop) than I used to be. While sometimes I kick myself for my lack of frugality prior to my decision to change careers (think of all the money I could have saved), I know that the steps I am taking now are the only reason I am able to work part-time, explore career options, and still pay my bills. While my financial situation is not improving, my career change choice is not making it worse either.
Career change does not need to be financially disastrous for lawyers. Planning ahead to mitigate the financial burdens associated with career changes, and taking steps to reduce your expenses both before and during a career change can help you realize your dreams by removing one of the major obstacles to change.
Technical Aspects of Blogging
For someone who is interested in Internet technology, like me, the technical aspects of blogging can be as interesting as writing the content, at least when you are using a regular domain host and Wordpress. Unfortunately, it can also be frustrating too. Last night, to my dismay, one of my very first visitors, Stephanie West Allen, was unable to contact me.
It turns out that the problem was a badly-behaving Wordpress plugin known as Bad Behavior. Bad Behavior is a plugin designed to prevent link spam from known spammers and “splogs.” Apparently, Bad Behavior runs on a blacklist which refers back to the developer’s server. The developer migrated his websites to a new server, decommissioned the blacklist, and every site with Bad Behavior installed experienced lock outs (including site administrators - even I had trouble getting into my own site). There is a new version of the plugin which should solve that problem.
Another interesting thing I noticed is a usability issue: the Wordpress theme I was using didn’t have a trackback link for my entries. I found a solution to add it to my current theme, which makes the theme much more usable.
Renaissance Souls and Career Change
As part of my research prior to starting this blog, I started reading some law blogs that I had not read before. One that has particularly inspired me is Stephanie West Allen’s idealawg. I was sifting through some of her archives when I came across her very first post about Renaissance Souls by Margaret Lobenstine.
In the first chapter of her book (PDF offered free on her website), author Margaret Lobenstine states:
Renaissance Souls, then, are people whose preference is for variety over concentration; whose process involves widening their options rather than narrowing their choices as they go with their energy flow, and whose success involves moving on to something different rather than going on and doing more of the same. Renaissance Souls are not required to be geniuses, do not necessarily have disorders such as ADD, and are not doomed to a life of poverty or economic insecurity.
My clients and workshop participants always smile knowingly when we get to this summary. They easily relate to the three characteristics identified. They are also relieved that the way they naturally go through life is healthy, not dysfunctional, and does not require them to be geniuses to be successful.
I can see why Renaissance souls do not do well in the law. Traditional law practice seems to require associates to pick a practice area and steadily move up the ladder toward partnership. Also, the way law itself is designed, specialists are rewarded over generalists. Stephanie West Allen does identify some Renaissance Souls who have stuck with the law - it would be interesting to see how they’ve managed to succeed at this. I honestly can’t imagine a Renaissance soul sticking with the law for very long.
By the way, I took the quiz, and answered “yes” to all eight of the questions - I’m a classic Renaissance soul I guess. The book is going on my Christmas list (if I can wait that long to start reading it).
Lawyers and Career Change: How I Hope to Help Through This Blog
When I began the slow process of career change about a year ago, I didn’t think that I had anything useful to say to lawyers contemplating career change. For the most part, I felt disillusioned, frustrated and alone. Some days, I still feel that way, especially since I have not completely identified my next steps. But, after a year of significant change in my life, including a new marriage and a new transitional job, I hope that my personal experiences will help me to produce content that will both help and inspire other lawyers who are contemplating or in the midst of a career change.
There are numerous resources out there for lawyers frustrated with their current career paths. Indeed, it sometimes seems like an entire industry of career coaches, counselors, and career-focused authors exist to help lawyers exit the practice of law. I hold no expectation for adding myself to their ranks, at least professionally. Instead, I hope to simply add to the conversation regarding the other career opportunities available to lawyers, and to meet other lawyers who have traveled the path I am now taking. Along the way, I hope to discover and clarify my own path and to gain confidence in my choices.