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Articles
Allienated Lawyers Seeking And Getting
Counsel In Making The Transition To Other Careers.
By David Margolick
At The Bar, reprinted from The New York Times
Fidel Castro
did it. Francis Scott Key and Tony LaRussa did it. Paul Robeson
and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky did it. Even Cole Porter did
it. Let's do it. Let's leave the law.
It's a song many seem to be singing these days. And Celia
Paul, a 44 year-old career counselor to disaffected
lawyers, is leading the chorus.
There is no doubt that many lawyers, particularly
young ones, are alienated labor. Whatever prompted them to enter
the profession - idealism, status, intellectual curiosity, skills
training, the lack of a clear alternative - many are appalled by
what they've found. As many people are now abandoning the law annually
- roughly 40,000 - as entering it. |
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More than anyone else, Ms. Paul guides such lawyers
along the underground railroad to other careers. She has discovered
that not only is disillusionment widespread, but also it is lucrative.
In the last year, she advised nearly 1,000 disgruntled lawyers,
many of whom paid her $1,200 for her wisdom.
This week, nearly 100 of them attended her "Lawyers in Transition"
workshops in New Jersey, Long Island and New York. They had seen
her advertisement in were finally facing up to the reckoning so
many of them had put off for so long.
The phenomenon is not confined to New York. Foundering,
floundering lawyers have established self-help grounds in San Francisco
and Seattle. The founder of the Seattle program, Deborah Arron,
lapsed lawyer, author of "Running from the Law: Why Good Lawyers
Are Getting Out of the Legal System," soon to be published, said
10 percent of the local bar had participated in her seminars and
workshops.
Ms. Paul, who first taught a course called "Lawyers, You're
Not Stuck" at the Learning Annex five years ago, will soon
take her show to Tampa, Miami and Albuquerque. She is even registering
the phrase "Lawyers in Transition" with the United States Patents
and Trademarks Office, giving it the same protections as "Put a
Tiger in Your Tank."
As they field into the Princeton Club Wednesday
night, Ms Paul's latest crop of clients were somber and tense, befitting
people coming from jobs they could not abide. But like anyone trying
to shed a noxious habit, they quickly discovered the cathartic power
of communal confession.
As they introduced themselves, first names only,
they talked of professional stagnation, personal stultification,
pressure to bill long hours, tedium, sexism, degradation, infantilization
and gamesmanship.
"Quite honestly, I feel guilty charging clients
$185 an hour," Tom said. "Half of what I do is very silly. I get
to the point of saying 'lawyers are ridiculous,' and then I realize
I'm one of them." Nancy Lamented about how she was "just making
rich people richer."
They then filled out forms, listing their skills,
values and job preferences. "Write several metaphors that express
your feelings about law," one exercise directs. "Example: Working
in law is like a nightmare: you'd like to get out of it but you
need the sleep."
Most of the lawyers had been out of school only
a few years. Few were from very top firms, were unhappy associates
usually fend for themselves. The most agitated were the litigators
- some of whom, Ms. Paul says, throw up nearly every morning before
coming to work - while bored corporate lawyers were more prevalent.
More than half were women. All have other loves.
"People ask me: 'How can you work with lawyers
all day? They're so boring,'" Ms. Paul said. "But my clients are
into a lot of different things."
Next month, the lawyers will hear from others
who have already made the transition, like Craig Davidson, who directs
the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation; Martin Stone, an
originator of television's "Howdy Doody"; and Andrea Lachman, co-owner
of Mike's American Bar & Grill in Manhattan.
Ms. Lachman endured seven years at three law firms,
including one of Ms. Paul's most fertile spawning grounds, New York's
Rosen-man & Colin. Now she spends her days serving up "killer-hot
chili" and "arugula and cucumber salad with frizzled corn tortillas."
"A month after I stopped practicing law, I realize
I'd had a knot in my stomach all those years, and that it had suddenly
gone," she said, as Patsy Cline crooned "I Go to Pieces" in background.
"Financially I'm not as well off now, but emotionally
I'm far ahead," she continued. "I got married and had a child. And
I felt tremendous professional satisfaction. Everything just fell
into place." Patsy Cline was still on the jukebox. Only now she
was singing "Sweet Dreams."
Enrollment in Ms. Paul's workshops has doubled in the past
five years. Increasingly, participating lawyers tend to older and,
as the employment market has tightened, driven less by existential
angst than economic necessity: that is, having been told to leave,
they're being forced to find something
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