For many years, I regretted attending law school – in the mid 90’s I went to University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and as a result, drove me to a career as an unfulfilled attorney, and caused me to miss out on applying for jobs at Yahoo, Google and other legendary Silicon Valley companies.
Thinking this way served as a channel for my frustration, but also always led me to being angry and disappointed.
So I changed my approach. In the below video, I wanted to share some real life tips I have used on how I shifted my mindset to appreciate my law school experience as a positive driver to help me build an alternative, “non-law” career.
I hope you enjoy.
If you haven’t done so already, if you want help or to learn more about how to shift your mindset, please enter your name and email on the box on this page or go to https://leavelawbehind.com to download our free e-book “Your Path Out†and a special free video mentoring series.
And if you’re ready to leave the law now, join us in the Leave Law Behind Career Coaching Program. Go to https://leavelawbehind.com/dream-career to learn more and sign up.
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And if you’d rather read, you can digest the full transcript of the entire video further below:
How To Not Regret Your Decision of Going to Law School (Even if You Now Want to Leave the Law)
Hi. Casey Berman, founder of Leave Law Behind, a blog and community, where we help unhappy attorneys like yourself to leave the law, to leave you legal practice behind. To find an alternative non-law career that’s a better fit for you.
I’m shooting this video from my home office here in San Francisco and you know, I was thinking recently about law school and I was thinking about how I went to law school and really, I wish I hadn’t. I’ve thought this before. I’ve thought this many times and I wonder how many people have thought this. I wonder have you, an unhappy attorney, who went to law school maybe became an attorney but just didn’t really see a fit with being an attorney. You know, I’ve thought, I wonder you’ve probably have thought I really wish I hadn’t have gone to law school. You know, it’s, we can call it a mistake. We can say we didn’t think critically about it. We can really beat ourselves up about the fact that we went to law school. We incurred all of this debt and then it just wasn’t a fit for us. We shouldn’t have done it. We stopped practicing or we’re practicing now and we’re miserable as many of us are.
To drive it home even more for me being here in the bay area, being here in Silicon Valley, you to think I went to law school in 1996 at University of California, Hastings and I could’ve gotten a job at Yahoo. I could’ve gotten a job at Google, at YouTube, and become an early employee and got a lot of options and all that sort of stuff and so, that just makes me feel even worse.
So, I wanted to talk to you about how I’ve been dealing with this and that is to really flip this and to not look at this from a point of regret or missed opportunity.
As much as I’ve done that in the past, as much as I know many people do do that but rather look at it from a lens of appreciation and this is difficult and you might be saying, “Casey, what are you talking about? How can I appreciate having gone to law school, being miserable as an attorney and all this law school debt?†I get it but the point here really is to look what we did achieve in law school, what we did achieve with being a lawyer.
There’s really no other way to look at it unless you want to be miserable and so, when you look at what we did achieve and the skills that we have, you know, these are things that we help people understand the Leave Law Behind career coaching program and you think about what we’ve learned as attorneys in law school and in practice of writing persuasively, of issue spotting, of speaking comfortably in front of important people or in pressure situations, of being adult in the room, of working long hours, of understanding process, of herding cats, of being the air traffic control, of getting things done, of mentoring young people, of on and on and on.
There are so many, what we call, “transferable skills†that are not just legal skills, that are not just need in the practice of law but rather are used and needed and desired in the rest of the world, in alternative non-law careers. They really, really are. I’ve seen this time and time again with the people that we helped leave the law. So we can sit here and beat ourselves up and just be miserable and think about all the obligations we have, our mortgage and our student debt and our kids’ college tuition and on and on and on. Or rather we can realize that we are the hero in this movie that we call our life.
We are the hero.
The audience is watching and it’s never too late.
No matter how old you are, it’s never too late to really align or realign with your soul, to realign with what you were before you took the LSAT, with what you really wanted to do in life. There are so many jobs out there, hyping jobs that really add value to the world that you can be a fit with. Takes little work, takes little shifting of beliefs which we’ll all help you do in the Leave Law Behind career coaching program.
I want you and I encourage you to really, if you think this way that law school was a mistake to move beyond regret and rather move to more of an idea of appreciation because failure is an event. It’s never a person.
You’re not a failure. I am not a failure. We’re not failures.
We did not make mistakes just by going to law school. It was an event. It’s something that happened in our life and that’s okay. There’s a lot of ups and downs in life. There’s a lot of ups and downs in out favorite movies and so in this movie, which you call your life. I encourage you to take the time now to see what the next act is gonna hold because that is within your control if you want it to be, if you believe it to be.
If you’re really interested, if haven’t done to already to leave the law, please goto https://leavelawbehind.com to download a bunch of free resources. Your Path Out the ebook that we just wrote. There’s a free video, mentoring and coaching series that we do for you. Please click that link, give us your name and email, it’s all secure and private and we will send you these free resources to help you.
Now, if you’re really interested in accelerating out of the law into a dream career, please goto https://leavelawbehind.com/dream-career and learn about and sign up for Leave Law Behind career coaching program.
This is my life’s work. There are so many people in there right now going through and taking the steps, the proven path that works to leave your legal practice for a non-law alternative career.
I’m Casey Berman, founder of Leave Law Behind. I’m so happy to have you in this video, so happy to have you as a member of the community and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much. Bye bye.