Many of us who consider leaving the law feel that we may have lost our way. We feel like we’re just in a weird stage. We often look around and wonder if this is it. We don’t think we’re as cool any longer. We wonder if we’re doing the right thing.
To take this further, some of us now think that our window of time may be expiring. That the clock of our final countdown is ticking fast. It could be a particular birthday on the horizon. It could be falling short in a recent comparison with our (ostensibly) successful friends. It could be just this general, vague, foggy feeling that we’re not living up to what we thought we would accomplish.
If we’re not a partner yet, we think we should have been made partner by now. If we’re not an equity partner yet, we think we should have been made equity partner by now. If we are an equity partner . . . we wonder why we are still unhappy.
This problem will persist so long as we continue to stick to outdated, unrelated plans. Many unhappy attorneys judge their success based on what their friends think is success or what their family thinks is success or on what they themselves thought success should be . . . back ten, fifteen, twenty years ago.
We can’t go on judging ourselves based on outdated criteria. Our ideas of success (and along with it our view on happiness, satisfaction and self-worth) all need to be periodically tuned up.