Episode #197: How To Spot When It’s Time To Stop Practicing Law

Hey there, everybody. This is Heather Moulder, host of the Life & Law Podcast. Today’s episode is an answer to a listener’s specific question. And that question is:

How do I know when I’m ready to stop practicing law versus needing to just freshen something up through a change in where I practice, switching practice groups or something even a bit less drastic than leaving completely?

First off, great question.

[00:01:37] The only problem is that there isn’t always a clear answer, which is probably why this person asked the question. So I’m going to answer this twofold, meaning I’m going to give you three common scenarios that I see that can mean it’s time to stop practicing law – meaning it’s time to retire, or maybe time to switch careers or jobs entirely.

[00:02:01] So that’s the first fold, right? That’s the first thing. Secondarily, I’m also going to give you some other options to try before abandoning everything. Because, although these things could mean it’s time to hang it up, you might not need something quite that drastic.

3 Common Signs It Might Be Time to Stop Practicing Law

Okay, so let’s first get to the three common signs that might be telling you it’s time to stop practicing law, to leave law behind.

Sign Number 1 It Might Be Time To Stop Practicing Law

[00:02:30] Number one, you’re bored.

And you’ve been bored for a long while. I remember a couple of years ago, I had lunch with a former colleague who is incredibly successful, and he said something that was very surprising to me at the time because of how successful he had been and because of some of the conversations that we had previously had. But those prior conversations had been years past.

[00:02:54] And this is what he said: “Heather, I’m so bored. I’m an expert in this and I’ve been an expert for a long time. So sometimes I feel as if I’m just going through the motions.“

[00:03:08] Now, let us just note, this is a big problem because eventually the money, the prestige or whatever it is that’s keeping you there, oftentimes it’s fear of change. It’s worry about, what does this mean? We don’t even want to go there. It feels so scary.

[00:03:23] It’s going to catch up with you is the problem. Being bored often means you start doing less, you get more lax, which means you might not be doing as good of a job as you think. In fact, you won’t be over time. And here’s the bigger issue. It eats at your soul.

[00:03:42] It leads to feeling less and less and less motivated, which eventually will bleed into other areas of your life. The number of people who I have heard say, you know, I stuck it out because I made good money, I was supposedly on a good career track, all these things, all these check the box reasons to stick with it despite the fact that I was bored or unhappy in my job every time.

Those that continue to go on and on and on with it, they might get away with it for a year or two, or even three, maybe they get away with it for five, but at some point it catches up with them. And every single person says, I wish I’d done something earlier because what’s happened is this has bled into everything. It’s made me less motivated about everything I do. I got lax in my workouts, I got lax about how I ate, I got lax in my parenting, I got lax in my relationships. And everything goes downhill.

When you are that unmotivated about what you do for a living, which is a large piece of what you do during your day-to-day living experience during your working years, it is going to bleed into other things.

It is going to impact who you are because it impacts how you show up. And that impact over time starts to bleed into how you see yourself, which then bleeds into how you treat yourself and, and bleeds into how you treat others. So this is a huge problem. If you are bored and you have been for a while, it’s time to take stock.

Sign Number 2 It’s Time For A Career Change

[00:05:19] Okay, so sign number two that it might be time to leave law behind is that you’ve gotten resentful of your own clients, colleagues, and even your practice as a whole –  your team, what you’re doing, your industry, just in general.

[00:05:37] So I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating. I had a mentor who confided upon his retirement that for the last, oh, 10 or so years of his practice, he would often find himself resentful every time his phone rang and it was a client.

[00:05:54] Even though he was firm management, even though he was busy, even though he enjoyed the leadership and management portion and the development portion of his job, he no longer enjoyed his actual practice.

[00:06:06] He had moved on, but his practice hadn’t. And he admitted to me that this had bled into his daily life as well. So being resentful of your clients, your colleagues, your practice itself is also going to bleed into your daily life. How you show up, how you perceive yourself, which then bleeds into how you see not just you as a person, but how you fit into the world and then how you perceive others and how you treat others. He was really sad at this point, but he had let it go on so long because he could finally step away and see how much it had impacted some of his best relationships with clients, with colleagues, and even family members and friends.

So, resentment of your own clients, your own colleagues, your own practice. And let me just say I’m not talking about feeling resentful about one particular client, which we actually got into last week. Okay, That’s a sign often that it’s time to fire a particular client. If you are resentful of everybody, the whole practice, all your colleagues, the team, like everything is just, ugh, that’s a sign. It’s time to potentially leave.

Sign Number 3 It’s Time For A Change

[00:07:18] Okay, sign number three, you’re no longer curious or all that interested in the outcome.

[00:07:26] Now this sounds kind of like demotivation, and it is related to it, but it’s a little bit different. So we lawyers tend to be pretty curious people.

[00:07:36] And if all of a sudden you realize, eh, it doesn’t matter that much, I’m not that curious anymore, I don’t really care. This is the step that you get into before you get to completely feeling unmotivated.

[00:07:50] So you are this person. If you feel like you’re just going through the motions doing the work because it’s what you do, you’ve always done. It might even still be challenging work. You’re not necessarily bored with it, but you’ve been doing it for so long that it kind of feels ho hum, you might crave a change.

[00:08:07] Now, I will note that it doesn’t mean you have to leave law behind but this is a sign that it might be time. So remember, this is a twofold piece. We’re in the first. We’re talking about the signs that it might be time to hang it up, leave law behind, retire, do something completely new or different.

[00:08:24] But there’s a second piece to it that we will get to in a couple of minutes because it might not mean that, but just note, if you’re in that space, it’s time to listen to it.

What To Do When You Think You’re Meant To Stop Practicing Law (Or Need A Big Change To Your Practice)

So what are the solutions?

[00:08:37] Well, obviously leaving law is one of them, but I get why that’s a really hard thing to contemplate, given we. We invest a lot of time, we invest a lot of money, we invest a lot of energy into going to law school, into getting out there and learning all the things we need to be learning into, you know, building our practices.

A Note To Those Who Never Really Wanted To Practice

Now, I’m going to note something. I am not talking to those of you who’ve never liked practicing law, and you know who you are, who chose law school because you didn’t see another option, and it was just the thing to do and you were good at school, and this really wasn’t a choice made with purpose. Who chose law school because that’s what your family does, or that’s what was expected.

And so you did it, even though it wasn’t really the thing you truly wanted. Maybe there were other things you were interested in or you didn’t even know what you were interested in, and so you just chose it because it seemed easy and you got into it and you’re like, I don’t know that I really like this. Like those people, you know, you’re in those shoes, and you’ve probably gotten to these points as well.

So if you’re in that stage where you’re like, whoa, that was me. Okay, listen. But that piece, that second piece of, well, how do you know? You already know. You know, it is the law itself, and it is time for you to go figure out who. What else can I do? Who else could I be? How else could I do something and serve others, what would be the best use of my gifts? My strengths? My skills? Not as a lawyer.

So those people you pretty much know, but for those of you who have been practicing a while and find yourself in this space, and know, okay, I really did choose this for a reason. This has been a great career. There are no regrets here. That was me, by the way, when I found myself in this place. And I’ll just say I was not resentful, I was not bored, but I was starting and I Think I was going down the path of getting bored. I was no longer as curious or all that interested in the same way that I had been before. And that was my clue of, okay, Heather, something’s off. This feels really different. I’m not as passionate about this anymore. What does that mean?

[00:10:54] And I had to go through kind of some of these things of, okay, well, what else could I do? Is this really the answer? Should I change things up within the practice? Should I change practice groups and do something different? Should I change law firms? Should I start my own practice? I mean, these are all the things I had to go through in order to decide, okay, no, it’s actually time for me to hang it up as a lawyer and go do something else. So here is what you can do to start figuring that out for yourself. And this is what I did.

Number one, reconnect to your values.

Your values are who you are. What you do for a living aren’t who you are. They’re a piece of who you are, but they’re not who you are. And there really is a difference there. But those values, for me, it’s connection, service, family, freedom. Those are big values of mine that I need to align to day in and day out in how I relate to people in what I’m doing on a day to day basis. Those things matter. That’s a big piece of who you are.

[00:12:01] And what happens is when we start practicing and I’ve talked about this before, so if you want more information on understanding your values, identifying what those are, defining them for yourself and figuring out what they really mean for how you interact with the world and for what you’re doing on a day to day basis. I’m going to put a link in the show notes or two. I’ve got several on these. I’ll go back and find them and I will get those episodes in there so that you can go back and listen to them. Even if you’ve listened to them, if you’re in this space, it’s time to go back and listen to them again so that you can kind of discover, okay, what does this mean really for me?

[00:12:41] So what happens to us lawyers is, look, we have egos. I mean, it’s not a surprise. We all have egos. We need to have an ego in order to get through law school and then do our jobs well.

[00:12:54] But that ego is a double-edged sword. There’s good and bad to it, right?

[00:13:00] And part of the bad is we start to compare ourselves to others. We start to worry about what others will Think. We start to get into this place where fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of what others will think starts to guide us a little bit more.

[00:13:22] And that leads us to start identifying as lawyers, not as our values-based selves. We start to see our own identity really as, oh, I’m Heather the lawyer, I’m Greg the lawyer.

[00:13:39] Not as how we show up in the world, not as how we align ourselves to our values, not as the input. It’s more about the output than the input. I’ve talked about this before too.

[00:13:50] And so it’s very difficult to separate yourself from that. You can’t help but think, who am I if I’m not a lawyer? What will others think of me? And your mind can spin out of control. So that is why you want to reconnect to those values. Your values ground you into who you truly are. They help you to see more clearly the input that you want to start doing. Input. I mean actions, decisions, choices, day to day interactions with people, how you show up in the world.

[00:14:24] They start to showcase how you could do a little differently, both within your practice and in other ways. And sometimes what this does is it leads you down a path of, oh, I actually still want to practice, but things have gotten away from me. I’ve followed a path that I didn’t really want. It’s time to step back and revalue my practice and rebuild it in a different way so that I can be happier, so that I can show up as fully me. And some of this gets to what I spoke to last week around making sure you’re aligned within the right industry, the type of work you’re doing, the firm even, and the culture and the clients to your values. So reconnect to your values and identify those gaps and figure out, well, where could I take some small steps now, staying in the practice to close those gaps.

Step two is to identify your strengths.

[00:15:26] So strengths and skills aren’t exactly the same thing. Strengths are a little bit more. Ask yourself, why do people come to me? What is it they come to me for? For actions, for advice, for brainstorming those. Uncover some of your strengths. Where do you naturally shine?

[00:15:45] What are those strengths where you naturally shine?

[00:15:49] Strengths can be skills, but they’re things that you’re really great at, that people come to you for help on and that you really love to help people with because they’re a strength. Strengths are enjoyable to you. They help forge a deeper connection for you to your work, to the people you work with, to those you’re relating To So this is why strengths are so important. And then you need to see, okay, how am I using these strengths currently? And am I?

[00:16:21] So note that your values are only one piece of that purpose puzzle. Using your strengths for the benefit of others also brings purpose and meaning. And so you want to have very clear understanding around your strengths and how you most enjoy using them and your values, because these are your guides for what steps to start taking. This is where you identify your gaps. I said identify your gaps before with your values, where you’re now identifying your gaps and your strengths, and it helps you with next steps.

[00:16:55] What can I start doing to close the gaps now? After you identify your values and the gaps and you identify your strengths and the gaps, and you start to close them by taking some steps, doing some things differently, small ones are fine. It starts to help you figure out, okay, maybe I just need small tweaks, maybe I need a bigger change with industry or practice groups or law firm. But maybe, maybe also there’s something more. This is going to help you figure that out.

Step 3: Ask why you’ve stayed put (so far).

[00:17:29] And then step three is to get really honest with yourself in identifying what is keeping you where you are, doing what you’re currently doing. What’s really going on? Is it that you fear change? Why? What are you actually afraid of? Are you afraid of what others might say or think of you? That was a huge deal to me when I decided to leave the practice of law. It didn’t hold me back ultimately, but there was some mindset stuff I had to work through to get out there and do it. And frankly, there was more mindset stuff I had to do after I started this business several years in to help me keep going and build the business that was best for me.

[00:18:11] Is it not that at all, but that you feel like you’re no longer useful or making a real impact?

[00:18:18] Is it because your identity is so tied up in what you do that you can’t even contemplate a change to what you do? Why is that important to you? What is it that’s so important about your identity? Being a lawyer or this type of lawyer or this position within your law firm or at this particular law firm?

[00:18:40] What feeds that ego? And what else could be useful to know in respect of this?

[00:18:47] Is it the money? You can plan around money?

[00:18:52] The answers that you come up with when you ask these tough questions and answer them honestly are going to uncover some truths that you might not have wanted to know or admit before, but that you need to know in order to work towards an actual resolution. Making a change and what that change should be.

[00:19:13] These are going to help you determine the answer to that question of okay, so how do I know when it’s time to stop practicing law versus I just need a tweak to my practice or to my firm. Now before I let you go, I do want to note something.

Next Steps (When You Know You’re Meant For A Big Change)

[00:19:32] When it comes to taking action, you cannot know for certain what you truly want without trying things out.

[00:19:41] You can’t stay in your head thinking about it, planning for it. Analyzing is not doing y’all, and it’s not gonna give you the answers. This is where we get stuck. We lawyers love to get in that thinking, planning, analyzing zone and we end up stuck and we think we’ve done a lot and we just have no answers and it’s impossible. Well, it’s because you stayed inside of your head. You need to actually get out and try some things. Now. Let me just note, it doesn’t mean that you have to quit practicing completely and try something novel. Your brain is going to want to convince you that that’s the only way.

[00:20:17] Another reason we keep stuck, right? We end up with nothing. I can’t do anything because that’s the only alternative. No, it’s not either or.

[00:20:26] So instead, maybe it’s time to dip your toes into trying something else. Maybe it’s time to start something on the side. I’ve had clients do that.

[00:20:35] The answers for what your next step is for trying is not something I can actually cover here because it’s very individual to you and what you found.

[00:20:46] And it’s based on those answers to the questions we’ve been asking today. But please remember this. You can’t know by staying inside of your head.

[00:20:55] Act, do something, some small next step to see what might interest you, what the potential answers could be, and just start asking yourself. Okay, so what’s that first small step that makes the most sense here, given what I’m finding here, given the answers to the questions above. Do that. See how it goes, see how you feel about it, and then decide whether you’re taking a next step and keep moving from there.

[00:21:25] All right, that is it for today. We will be back next week with a guest. Bye for now.