So many lawyers I know started their careers in the law by default, rather than by affirmative choice. A parent or other influential adult told them they were good at debating and would therefore be a “good lawyer”; they were smart, verbally skilled, loved to learn, but hated math and science; or they were told they needed to have a “profession” and law “just seemed like a good option.” But, regardless of whether you made your way to your career in the law by default or by design, the choices you have made in your career since then have led you to your current position and level of satisfaction. Like many of your colleagues, you probably have professional goals you haven’t yet achieved. So, how can you maximize your opportunities and create the career that you truly want?
Over the past thirty years in the legal profession, I have watched colleagues make both good and bad career choices and have concluded that those who are the happiest and most fulfilled in their careers are those who have been proactive and have made conscious decisions about where they wanted to go and how they were going to get there. If you want to be fulfilled in your career, whether in law or any other field, you will need to carefully consider and clarify: (i) your values and what is most important to you; (ii) your goals; and (iii) your personal definition of “success.”
Our values are learned from our families and communities of origin and are typically set by the time we reach young adulthood in our early 20s. Our values motivate us, influence our decision-making and drive our behavior. And, depending on whether or not they are consistent or inconsistent with our firm’s and with the values of the key decision makers and others with whom we work, we can feel either comfortable and aligned or uncomfortable and “out of step.” For example, someone who values and is motivated primarily by making a lot of money may feel comfortable and aligned with a firm in which competing with other firms to achieve the highest PPP is an essential measure of the firm’s success. On the other hand, someone who chose to go into law to “help people” may feel much more comfortable in the non-profit or government sector where public service is the focus. Therefore, being clear about your values is an essential element to making good career choices. If you don’t “fit” into your firm or organization from a values perspective, you are not likely to feel comfortable and succeed there over time.
Thoughtful goal setting is another key element to making good career choices. Setting goals, both personal and professional (they are inseparable and each deserves serious consideration), for the short term is something most people are able to do relatively comfortably. However, thinking ahead enough to set medium- and long-term goals requires a level of introspection and planning that many find very challenging. And yet, how can you make the best choice in the short and medium term if you don’t know where you are ultimately headed? For example, if you were offered an opportunity to become an office managing partner at your current firm and you had as a long-term goal running your own small firm, it would make sense for you to take on the challenge of managing an office so you could gain experience that would eventually help you to succeed as the managing partner of your own firm. However, if your long-term goal was to become a government lobbyist for your industry niche, it might make more sense for you to decline the offer so you could have more time to focus on making a name for yourself in your industry and building relationships with influential people in the industry and the government whom you need to know to succeed in your future role.
Defining “success” is often a challenge. Like our values, we absorb our family or community’s definition of success and, unless we take the time to really think about it for ourselves, it is hard to gain clarity about what our success may look like. It may turn out that success for you is indeed the same as it was for your parents. But, as the generations progress and the world changes, you may find that what worked for your parents may not work for you, and, in fact, may no longer be reasonably attainable even if it did! As we think about ourselves as whole, integrated people, we might find that a “successful” life for us includes more than a fulfilling career. It may also include building healthy and enduring relationships with our family and friends, giving back to our communities, and, finally, maximizing our own human potential, whether that be spiritually, physically, intellectually, or in other ways we might deem important. Having the time to dedicate to your career and to some or all of these other dimensions will obviously mean that you will need to make many choices and tradeoffs along the way.
Career choices will always have consequences, and some will prove to have been better than others in hindsight; but, with thoughtful planning and attention to our personal values, goals, and definitions of success, we can make many more proactive and “good” choices and create the careers and integrated lives we imagine.