15 Reasons You Should Leave Your Law Firm and Look for a New Job

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Summary: Thinking of leaving your law firm and finding a new job? If you are experiencing any of the fifteen reasons discussed below, it is time to start your search.

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The decision to leave any law firm can have positive or negative consequences, so it is important to evaluate it carefully. Leaving a smaller law firm to move to a larger, more prestigious one could drastically increase your salary and career prospects. On the other hand, leaving a large, prestigious law firm to join a smaller firm, or to go in-house, will make it difficult for you ever to get into a major law firm again. Whenever you make a decision to leave a law firm, you make a decision that will either take you one step closer to being successful and happy, or that will take you one step further away from the sort of career and life you are seeking.

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The Quality of Your Life is Proportional to the Quality of Your Decisions

A person’s success is largely a product of that person’s decisions—good and bad. When you look at the most successful people in any profession, you can see that a large part of what made them successful was the decisions they made. Your decisions in your life and career will determine who you become and what you achieve. It is all about making good decisions.

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1. To Get Into a More Prestigious Law Firm

In my profession, there are two types of attorneys who move law firms: (1) those who are motivated and trying to trade up and (2) those who are trying to trade down (or anywhere). Law firms like attorneys who are trying to trade up. If a law firm thinks you are trying to trade down, the firm will view you with suspicion due to “the law of momentum”—once an attorney starts trading down he or she will generally not stop that downward slide and will leave the profession, or the law firm environment shortly. Prospective firms will think the attorney is just trying out an “experiment” and will soon make yet another move.

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2. Are Compensated Poorly

Some law firms pay as little money as they can to their attorneys or as much as they can afford. If you are making significantly under-market salary for the region of the country you are in, it often makes sense to investigate the market—but not always. It is important to consider the reasons a law firm may be compensating you poorly. A law firm will compensate you poorly for some of the following reasons:

• The law firm does not have the money to

pay you well• The law firm has the money to pay you well

but is doing something else with it • The law firm is having financial problems• The law firm does not value you BCG ATTORNEY SEARCH

3. To be Closer to a Significant Other.

If your significant other lives somewhere else and you believe that the relationship is likely to last, then moving firms to be closer to that person is a good idea. It is also a good idea to move if your significant other is in a legal market where there is more opportunity than the one you are in, or where you see yourself more likely to settle down.

At the start, though, a question to ask is: “Whose career is more important?” If you are doing well at your current firm, have one or more mentors, feel comfortable with the people, and are compensated fairly, then is it really in your best interest to leave behind all of the political capital you have accumulated? BCG ATTORNEY SEARCH

4. To be Closer to a Family Member, or to Go Home (Where You are From and Grew Up)

Moving to be closer to a family member, or where you are from, is a common reason for moving firms and also a good one. Law firms like it when an attorney relocates to join a family member and go home. If this is something you are considering doing, you want to do so between your second and sixth years of practice—the time when you will be most marketable as a lateral attorney. Partners with significant portable business can make this move at any time.

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5. To Get Exposed to More Sophisticated Work

The sort of work done in a large law firm in New York or Palo Alto is going to be much different than the work done by a firm in a smaller market—especially on the corporate transactional side. Within markets, differences regarding the sophistication of work offered can be quite profound. Small litigation matters are different than class actions. Large real estate deals involve different skills than smaller ones.

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6. To Get Better Training

I know an attorney who started work in an insurance defense firm for his first job out of law school and he was handed 100 cases and told to “handle them” with no training whatsoever offered. As a young attorney, it is important that you surround yourself with senior attorneys who train you and offer you guidance—about the work you are doing and even about the politics of the law firm as well. When you have people training you and offering you guidance, you become a much better attorney more quickly and do not develop habits that may hurt you in the long run. Having someone hanging over you and critiquing your work is a real benefit and something that can help you grow.

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7. Your Physical Health Can No Longer Tolerate the Conditions of Your Current Firm

Over the past year, I have encountered numerous attorneys who have had serious health issues (in particular immune disorders) that seem to have been brought about by the draconian hours and working conditions of their law firms. These immune disorders seem to have affected a high number of women associates in New York, in particular (I can think of at least five women I have spoken to over the past year who left their firms due to immune disorders, and there is likely something to this that merits further study—and I am sure will be studied at some time in the future because this is happening too much).

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8. Your Mental Health Cannot Tolerate Your Current Firm

If you work in a large law firm, the odds are very good that you know of people who have experienced mental health issues working inside of a law firm. The working conditions inside of many law firms are not natural and are too much for many attorneys. The politics of many law firms can create mental health issues for many attorneys as well.

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9. There is Not Enough Work at Your Current Firm

If your firm does not have a lot of work—and this seems to be consistent—you are well served by looking for a new position and should. Work is the lifeblood of a law firm and if there is not work for you to do this means that there will not be an opportunity for you to advance, you will not get enough on-the-job experience, and the odds are good that you will lose your job at some time in the future.

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10. You Are a Staff Attorney

As a strategic cost saving measure, many prestigious law firms are now hiring attorneys with great credentials and from good schools as permanent staff attorneys. I am increasingly seeing attorneys from Harvard, NYU, and other law firms working as staff attorneys. It is perplexing that law firms are doing this with such regularity. Many attorneys apply for associate positions, go through rounds of interviews, and then at the end of the process are offered positions as staff attorneys with the firm. To my astonishment, the majority of the time these offers are typically extended to women and minorities. Over the past year, I do not think I have encountered a single white male who was offered a staff attorney position (not necessarily through me).

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11. To Work in a Practice Area That Matches Your Skills and Interests

Many attorneys join law firms expecting and hoping to do a certain type of work and then once they start work they find the kind of work they sought is not available. Other attorneys develop an interest in a subject matter while practicing at a given firm and find that they cannot do a lot of this work because it is not available.

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12. To Have a Better Opportunity for Advancement in a New Firm

If there is no opportunity for advancement at your current firm, or the opportunity looks remote, it is important that you investigate new firms.

At any one time, I am representing senior associates, counsel,

and others at major firms across the country seeking new positions because they know that the possibility of partnership is remote at their current firms—and they want to go somewhere where there is a significant opportunity for advancement.

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13. If the Culture of the Law Firm is Wrong for You

The culture of the law firm you are in is extremely important. If you are a fit for the culture, then you will be around people who understand you and will help advance you. But if you are in the wrong culture, then everything you do might be taken in a negative way. You need to surround yourself with people you feel comfortable with, understand and vice versa. There are countless benefits to this, but chief among them is your happiness.

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14. You Have Made Serious Mistakes at Your Job (Social, Sexual, Political, Work-Related) that Will Haunt You if You Stay at the Firm

Many attorneys make serious mistakes at their law firms and need to leave. Here are some examples from the past few years:

People get drunk and say and do dumb things at parties. Attorneys side with the wrong people in political squabbles

and get on the wrong side of those in power Attorneys make giant mistakes in their legal work and mess up

matters Attorneys oversleep and miss court or an important closing

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15. You Have No Mentors or the Attorneys Who Hired You (or Give You Work) Have Moved On or Are in Trouble.

When an attorney is inside of a law firm, the attorney typically needs to have an individual (or individuals) who give the attorney work and who will look out for the attorney and support the attorney. You need to have supporters in your job, and nothing is more important than this. If you do not have any supporters inside of your law firm and believe it will be difficult to find them, then leaving is something you should consider—whether you are a partner or an associate.

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Conclusions

There are several classes of attorneys who make the decision to leave their law firms and look for new jobs.

First, there are attorneys who are asked to leave, told they have no futures or given this advice indirectly in a thousand possible ways. In this sort of case, the attorney needs to make sure he or she is evaluating the situation rationally and move on as quickly as possible. Make no mistake about it: Once a law firm has asked you to move on, you need to and should not prolong it under any circumstances. You need to get out and leave now. The law firm does not want you around, and it is bad for your mental health to remain in a place where you are not wanted. Look immediately and look far and wide for a new position. BCG ATTORNEY SEARCH

This article “15 Reasons You Should Leave Your Law Firm and Look for a New Job” first appeared on BCG Attorney Search is widely known to be the most selective recruiting firm in terms of who it represents in the United States.

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