Episode 19: Plan B: How to find a great career when plan A didn’t work. An interview with Kelley Shields

Are you burned out and trying to find your way to a more lucrative and life-giving career path after your “Plan A” career stopped feeling right for you?

We’re especially talking to you in this episode of The Career Clarity Show with Kelley Shields.

As a career change coach, I get to hear people’s deepest, darkest (career) secrets.

One that might shock people? That attorneys are one of the most frustrated populations of employees.

If you’re not one, it might be hard to believe that lawyers could be that unhappy, given the incredibly prestigious letters behind their name, the impactfulness of their daily work, and, a salary dripping with zeroes.

But if you’re a lawyer, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You invested a ton of time (and money) into your job upfront: we’re talking four years of undergrad, plus three years of law school — and that’s if you’re a full-time student taking the traditional path.

You graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt and a less-than-crystal-clear understanding of all the possible practice areas (especially which ones hit that sweet spot of being lucrative -and- fulfilling).

You were encouraged to do that by well-meaning family, friends, and teachers based on an assumption that the investment in law school will inevitably pay for itself within a matter of years, because lawyers were supposed to have a guarantee of a cushy paycheck for life.

We now know how flawed that assumption was: in 2015, the New York Times wrote that the law field was facing a major crisis: too many law students, too few legal jobs. (And, those trends have only continued.)

So, you graduated with huge debt into a shrinking job field, and all of a sudden, whether or not you *like* being a lawyer becomes irrelevant, because you feel pressured to get one of these high paying entry level law jobs…or else you’re going to be stuck with huge loans and a less-than-huge paycheck.

Once you land the job, you hoped you’d be able to exhale. But instead of feeling “safe,” the cutthroat energy from law school feels like it’s only become more amplified.

You’re now surrounded by coworkers perpetuating the belief that you’re lucky to even have this job. (There’s a new cohort of law school grads who’d happily snap your job up in an instant.) You’re told that your stress and overwork should be worn as badges of honor, covertly communicating to people that “I’m so important that I can’t turn my phone off when I leave the office at night.”

This leads to feeling like you need to keep up with everybody else at the office — and should at least enjoy the financial fruits of your labors — so you might’ve started buying Louboutins, custom suits, and BMWs. (If you’re going to feel this stressed and frazzled, you might as well treat yourself to something that can make it feel at least a little bit better.) 

Or, you might not get to see your spouse or kids as much as you want, so you feel like you want to spend a little extra on date nights, daycare, or private school to make up for it.

If any of this sounds like you, you might be feeling paralyzed and stuck from shackling yourself to this lifestyle with golden handcuffs…AND also feeling guilty, because who the hell am I to feel unhappy given all the things my lifestyle affords me?!

This feeling was all too familiar for Kelley Shields, an externally “successful” DC attorney who secretly felt incredibly unfulfilled. When we sat down to talk, she described this exact feeling as “gratitude shaming,” a term we’ve become famous for coining here at Career Clarity.

Kelley said:

“You look around and feel like you should be happy. Are you wanting too much? I remember having someone say to me: ‘You have a job, shouldn’t that be enough?’ No, that’s not enough! You can be grateful to be employed and have a job, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right job for you.”

Read that again — Kelley’s taking us all to church! You can absolutely be grateful for what you have…and also allow yourself to crave something fundamentally different.

This sentiment is one that dozens of attorneys have confided in us. I can’t tell you how many externally impressive people confess something like: “You know, I knew I didn’t really want to be a lawyer the summer after 1L. I felt it in my gut. But I’d already invested so much. I secretly hoped that once I got out into the working world, things would get better.”

Very smart people fall into very persuasive (and problematic) thinking traps like this. And, because you lawyers are such smarties, it can be really hard to get out of an internal logical fallacy by yourself.

This one’s called “I’ve come too far” (whether it’s after 1L, graduating, or even halfway through your career), also known as the sunk cost fallacy. It’s the conflation that the investment already made into a project or opportunity justifies staying, even if the opportunity is the wrong one. It makes our good time, energy, and money chase the bad down the drain for years — and leaves us another day older and even deeper in debt.

But Kelley’s right when she says:

“It’s not failing. You haven’t done anything wrong. It not that you’re not smart enough or not good enough; it’s that this just isn’t the right fit. You don’t want this. And that’s okay.”

At this point, you might be thinking: “I’m doing a job I hate in a shrinking field and I have oppressive student loan debt. I want to give myself permission to look at something else, but I feel like I’ll never be able to escape this pit of despair. What can I do?”

Even though it might feel like the only path to financial solvency is to suck it up and suffer through your practice for a decade or two until you’ve paid off your loans and made partner, I am here to tell you: there is another way.

To start, take this piece of advice I recently shared with readers of InHerSight to heart: “Just because you became a doctor…doesn’t mean that’s the only thing you can do! Many medical doctors go on to become managers, entrepreneurs, public health experts, advocates, policymakers, consultants, and more. The same goes for lawyers: many will become scholars, federal employees, thought leaders, professors, and more.”

While attorneys have a ton of possibilities for Life After Law, people in the law field often hold a subscious belief that goes something like this: “I thought I’d be hot stuff because I got my JD. I’d thought my degree would help me get a top salary, and that everyone was going to want to employ me. I thought I could ride the degree (and it alone) to whatever next job I want.” (And, this belief was persuasive because it used to be true. Back in the day, when your dad got his JD, there was a oft-told story that, if you got a JD or an MBA, you had a lot of agility and mobility in your career path and would always stay in the same echelon of pay.)

But when law suddenly doesn’t feel quite right for you, there’s a new limiting story that crops up: “Because I specialized so much when I got my JD, I’m incredibly limited. I don’t have the qualifications or experience to do anything else. I don’t even know what other jobs are out there, and nobody will be willing to take a chance on me because I’m so niche and highly paid, so I’m going to be trapped in law forever.”

This story is even scarier, because it can often come true. Attorneys are susceptible to the exact same hiring challenges as every other industry but with a twist: they have to prove to future employers that they’re running TOWARD the new work, instead of just running away from law. So, if you let it, a JD can absolutely become more of a liability than an asset in the job hunt.

But, remember: you’re an attorney. You’re super fucking smart. You can absolutely successfully transition into a new, good paying career after law…if you re-calibrate the way you’re thinking.

Which, paradoxically, might mean thinking less with your brain…and more with your heart and gut.

Hear me out.

There was a reason you sought out a law degree (even if it’s hard to immediately remember exactly what it was).

Maybe you were a great debater and wanted to put those argument skills to good use. Maybe you wanted to put bad guys behind bars. Maybe you felt compelled to advocate for those who need protection. Maybe you wanted to influence policy and lawmaking — or even run for office. (Or, hey, maybe you were clear you wanted to make asspiles of money. We’re all about achieving your financial goals!)

Behind the rationality in those reasons, there’s also heart in those reasons. Purpose. A sense of mission.

(Yes, even behind wanting to make an asspile of money! Because we can dive into the WHY of why you thought you needed a Scrooge McDuck-style bathtub full of gold coins to understand your deeper desires and fears.)

And that heart-led direction can inform your next steps.

Frankly, there are a HUGE number of possible paths lawyers can take to find fulfillment, both within law and outside of it.

And in the interview, Kelley talks about what she personally did to find her own pathway to a life and career full of joy.

But here’s the catch: you have to figure out the ideal path for YOU (so you don’t end up living out your fears of trading bad for worse or having to declare bankruptcy).

Especially coming from such a specialized field, it can be easy to fall victim to the popular belief that everybody has the same definition of success: making partner, getting the corner office, having the firm named after you, and never having to worry about money ever again.

But, if you have the courage to define success on YOUR terms instead of theirs, it can open up a gigantic number of new possibilities for the intersection of joy, impact, and money in your work.

As an attorney, you’re incredibly smart and capable, but you also didn’t get to where you are completely on your own. You invested hundreds of thousands of dollars (and at least 3 years of your life) to be taught how to think, how to research, how to argue, and how to get shit done. So if you’re expecting to magically map out your next move on your own overnight without any help, you may have a very, very long road ahead.

If you’re interested in talking to someone outside your own head to help you sort out your thoughts — and someone who’s seen lots of people escape their jobs to move into something better who can help you make your own plan — career and life coaches can be an incredible asset for you.

To learn more about Kelley and her coaching practice, check out her full bio here.

And, if you want to learn about the other thinking traps that keep good people stuck in bad jobs, download this free eBook on The Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career to understand the strategies behind career satisfaction and how you can use them to get the life-giving career you deserve.

SHOW NOTES:

• Read Kelley’s writing on Medium
• Follow Kelley on Instagram at @careercoachkelley
• Read the Roadmap to Career Fulfillment eBook!
• Take the assessment on your top pillar of fulfillment here!

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