Lawyer2006,
I feel for you, and recall once reading the following:
Quote:
No amount of money can adequately compensate a man for doing something for a living that he doesn't enjoy.
That said, I must ask you whether you are married, and if so do you have a family that is depending upon you to take care of them? How you answer those questions will heavily factor into the course I'd recommend to you. A wife, kids and mortgage may all come before your happiness, I'm sorry to say.
In my case, after spending about 1-1/2 years doing transactional work in one of the large downtown Houston legal factories, I realized that there was no way I could do that for another 40+ years. Make no mistake, the people were good to me and they financially compensated me very well, but at the end of the day, I lacked job satisfaction because it seemed all I did to earn my salary was generate large stacks of paper and do the paperwork (much of it never looked at) on other folks' deals.
Those services need to be done, no doubt, but it just wasn't for me.
So, another restless soul and I located an insolvent manufacturing company that we could buy on the cheap, provided we assumed the sizeable debt that the business had run up, most of which came from gross mismanagement. I gave 2 weeks notice, told everyone goodbye, and that was it.
We bought that company, and I converted an old storeroom in the back of the place to an 'apartment' with a third world shower and I 'lived' there. I spent the next 3 years working my tail off and never drew a dime. Everything we made went to paying off debt.
What did I know about manufacturing? Not a damn thing, but I found it interesting, and that's all the incentive I needed to learn it. If you can learn something as complex, boring and convoluted as 'the law', you can learn almost anything else too, although I'm not sure I'd test that statement in one of the cutting edge high-tech fields.
I was young, single, and could scrape by on Taco Bell bean burritos. Your situation may be very different from that, and so you need to consider those who it will affect.
Had I been married I would never have been able to go for 3 years without a check, or to put all my time and effort into my new 'career'.
Hence, the reason for my question to you.
You don't have to make a complete break like I did.
Some refugees from the law change their practice specialty. And enjoy it more.
Some change to a smaller firm or go solo. And enjoy it more.
Some find work with companies doing 'in-house' legal. And enjoy it more.
Some go into public administration. And enjoy it more.
Some go into real estate or banking, where they can use some of the legal skills they learned. And enjoy it more.
With the foregoing moves, you may need to take a pay cut, but at least you'll keep working. Still, you need to consider whether your new salary will support your current lifestyle. If you are married, you may have a wife who doesn't mind 'cutting back'. Most wives, including my own, do mind however.
They mind a lot, and you'll hear about it I guarantee.I realize that what I did was fairly risky, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it to most folks. That first 3 years was really rough, and we could have failed in a big way. As it turned out, I rode that horse for over 30 years and enjoyed myself doing it. Manufacturing has good years, fair years, and bad years, and I realize that the guys I started practicing law with in downtown Houston are partners now and have banked far more money that I have. Still, I don't regret it. Not at all.
Strangely, now that I've gotten some years on me, I am less restless and I find myself looking for something to do that will be a challenge, so I'm thinking about getting back into the law game. I promised my parents that I'd keep my law license up, and have done so for over 30 years, so I'm good to go, right? After all, Texas only has 100,000 lawyers! I'm sure they need me. ;-)
Anyway, good luck to you, and if you do leave the law entirely, have another paying job lined up unless you're independently wealthy. And don't be worried about not 'knowing' anything else other than the law. If you find something that interests you - you WILL learn it. You CAN learn it.
You're young, and so my closing reference here may mean nothing to you, but I still recall a lyric from a 1980 Merle Haggard song:
Quote:
Wish I enjoyed what makes my living,
Did what I do with a willing hand.
You're not alone.
