Starting Over at 31
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Anonymous
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Has anyone done it?
What did you do? Did you have kids? |
Anonymous
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Depends what you mean. Plenty of people switch careers, but for a related field, and don't necessarily need to move or go back to school. My husband switched careers several times: practicing doctor, medical research, bio-informatics... It required international moves and additional degrees and learning new subjects. We had kids before and during his last career change. |
Anonymous
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I'm a lawyer. I can't stand it. But the idea of going back to school again...I'm still paying off law school.
I just feel like a failure and I hate my life. |
Anonymous
Easy solution. Don't go back to school. You can lateral into a new career in a more creative fashion. |
Anonymous
| If it's easy, then how? Please share. |
Anonymous
If you're in D.C., there are plenty of jobs where the would love to have a person with a law degree - the problem is that most lawyers won't take those jobs because they don't pay like a legal job. Your goal should be to highlight everything else you can do BESIDES being a lawyer. Too many people with law degrees define themselves as lawyers, rather than as people who have such a degree. In other words, don't let your degree dictate who you will be. |
Anonymous
| Started law school at age 30. Started working as a lawyer at age 33. It's worked out well for me. |
Anonymous
I think this assumption is part of what is hurting me. I am willing to take a steep pay cut, but people look at the JD and think I must not really be looking for that type of job. |
Anonymous
| I've gotten a lot of applications from lawyers to work at my non profit. I'd need to see in your cover letter that you really understand what we do (which does not involve practicing law at all) to interview you. Many of the cover letters highlight how having a lawyer on staff would help us out, which is sweet, but it's very clear that they don't understand what we do. Even the one that do understand better are a lot less psyched when they compare their law school debt against a potential $40,000 annual salary. |
Anonymous
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tip - starting tomorrow start living on what your target salary will be. Every other dollar you need to but into an account to either pay off debt OR save - you can not use it for day to day living.
Now start thinking what you want to do. When you pick u the newspaper what section do you read first? When you volunteer what types of organizations do you work with and what do you do? Network with others you know who are not practicing law but have law degrees to see how they made the transition. |
Anonymous
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I'm contemplating doing this at 32 with kids and no partner or co-parent.
So far my plan is to save a lot at my current job, which is more than I have ever made (I'm not a lawyer), and to start testing out other things part time until I figure out what I really want. I'm thinking about a class. Started doing some writing (writer is among the things I think I might enjoy). Don't know if it works, but that is my plan thus far. I'm not jumping ship and going broke. |
Anonymous
I'm not the PP and I wouldn't say it's easy ... but ... do you have any technical skills or would you be interested in developing them? That might involve some targeted coursework but could be something short of going back to school. I work for an FFRDC (kinda like technical consulting, but a bit more embedded with the gov't and no commercial interests) and find former lawyers to be fantastic team members. I only need them to be technical enough (generally light programming, or even power users with Excel) to interface with systems and software engineers. Aspects of the legal through process -- particularly thinking through interactions and identifying ambiguities in text (and their possible interpretations) -- is a really useful skill. Do you have any focus to your legal work -- such as a regulatory domain, or contracts, or healthcare / privacy? If the domain still holds any interest (and what I describe above sounds even vaguely enticing), I'd start by identifying what organizations provide engineering and consulting support to the gov't in your domain. Browse job openings at those orgs and search for contacts. [I did a career change from bench science to this line of work, in about the same scenario. It came together pretty easily once I found something specific I was interested in, rather than just wanting anything out of the lab.] |
Anonymous
you sound like the pretty girl at a party no one wants to dance with because they're "intimidated". You have to show you want, and can do, a job. If you sound in a resume or interview like this, you won't get anything. Figure out what they want. A law degree isn't hurting you. Words like "willing" are.....you are "willing" to do a job? You mean you would lower yourself so far?! I'm not being mean. I'm trying to show you what you may be doing unwittingly. |
Anonymous
What don't you like about it? I started out in litigation and hated it. I moved to the fed and now write policy and regulations, and love it. Not all law is the same. |
Anonymous
+1000. Another lawyer who hated private practice, but loves working for the federal government (also regulatory work). Interesting, challenging, low stress, telework with kids, decent pay for a set 40 hour workweek, actually help people, etc. There are lots of things you can do with a law degree in DC. |