Helping Lawyers Find a Different Job in Law

Lawyer Career Consulting DC helps lawyers sustain and advance their legal careers by finding work in a different practice area, niche or setting.

Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you salvage your legal career by finding a different and more satisfying position in the field of law.

Lawyer Career Consulting DC works with many lawyers who report:

• "I like practicing law, but I don’t like the firm where I’m doing it."
• "My clients are anxious and ungrateful. They frequently call me at night."
• "I live in terror that my partners will decide I’m unprofitable and ask me to leave."
• "The work is interesting, but the hours are too long."
• "Other partners in my firm are underperforming. I could earn much more on my own."
• "I’m well-paid, but the practice niche is wrong for me."
• "My practice area is dying. I need to develop a different specialty before I lose my job."
• "The partner I work for is a micromanager and a workaholic."
• "At 6 PM on Friday, I always have this feeling of dread that I’ll be called. . ."
• "Private practice is too stressful. I’d rather work 9-5 for the government, and earn less."
• "In private practice, my work seems meaningless. I want to do something useful."
• "In my government office, the paralegals and support staff are lazy and incompetent."
• "There’s too much travel, and I never see my kids."
• "There is no room for professional growth in my agency."
• "I’m underpaid for my government work. I could earn much more at a firm."
• "I love politics, but I’m poorly paid and overworked on the Hill, and I can’t stand working with six others in the same room."
• "I don’t want to start over, but I need a fresh start somewhere else."

If you’re unhappy with your job, but not with law as a profession, Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you:

• Consider Other Practice Areas: If you are a new lawyer, you may be unfamiliar with practice areas that might suit you best. You may have no basis to make an informed decision, even if given the choice. Lawyer Career Consulting DC can advise you on your options.
• Clarify Your Preference: You may find yourself in a substantive practice area by "chance," or by assignment within a firm, without regard to your preference. Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you clarify the practice area most suited to you.
• Identify A More Sustainable Niche: Sometimes a practice area will shrink, either for economic reasons or because partners in a particular section may retire or depart. Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you move toward a more profitable and sustainable practice niche.
• Match Your Abilities with Needs: If you (or your firm) decides that you are ill-suited to your practice area, or client needs are greater elsewhere, Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you adapt your practice.

Contend with Political Tides:

• If you are a lawyer on Capitol Hill, your Member of Congress may lose reelection, or a Committee’s leadership may change.
• If you have a political position in the Executive Branch, the Administration may change.
• If you work in the non-profit sector, funding may disappear for your organization.
• If you work in the lobbying sector, your policy issues or political contacts may no longer be in demand.
• Ed has worked in each of these sectors in Washington, D.C., and he can help you plan your next steps.
• Manage A Crisis if You Are Forced to Leave: As a law firm associate, you may not "make the cut" for partnership. If you are a partner, your billable hours may be too low. A forced departure is traumatic and painful, especially if on short notice. Lawyer Career Consulting DC has been working with forced departures of lawyers for many years. Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you cope with the loss and take effective action to reposition yourself in the field, or in a new one.

Whether voluntary or forced, "lateral moves" within law are common, especially for younger lawyers not yet deeply settled in a practice niche or setting. Lawyer Career Consulting DCcan advise you on different types of "lateral moves":

from one specialty area or practice group to another, within the same firm;

• from a large firm to a smaller one;
• froma private firm to an in-house corporate office, or to the government;
• from the legislative to the executive branch;
• between the legislative and lobbying worlds; or
• from one agency of government, or agency division, to another.

You may also desire to make a geographic move for personal or family reasons.

Lawyer Career Consulting DC can advise you on trade-offs involved in a lateral move:

• If you are deeply dissatisfied in law, a lateral move may provide only an expedient, short-term solution, rather than a long-term solution.
• A lateral move may "buy time" for you in law, while you consider other alternatives and deeper preferences.
• A lateral move may also distract you from the more difficult but essential process of deciding what you really want to do.
• Avoidance of difficult career decisions within law can become a chronic pattern that leaves you deeply unhappy.

Lawyer Career Consulting DC can help you decide:

• whether or not you can satisfy yourself by making a lateral move;
• if you can, what kind of move to make;
• how to make a lateral move strategically, in full awareness of your skills, interests and motivations, and in view of the trade-offs; and
• whether to make such a move only on an interim basis, while you continue to clarify long-term career objectives, or to undertake a more fundamental change immediately.

Ed has also helped many lawyers successfully launch a private practice.