Description
How to Relaunch Your Career After a Long Break
Speaker 1:[00:00:00] How can you seem desirable if you took a career break for 12 years after working at a 3 top tier law firms around the world and now want to relaunch your career since your kids have left the house? By the way, after the 12-year break, I have been teaching law while hoping to get back into a firm again, but the response Ive gotten from firms is I've been out for too long.
That's a good question, but everybody has to choose their priorities at some point. And certainly a family is a good priority. And I don't think 12 years is that long, but even if you'd continued practicing for the past 12 years and we're at a firm, it would be difficult to get another job because you don't have any business. So, there is a preference in law firms for younger attorneys that are manageable, that will follow directions, and work very long hours over older attorneys that are perceived as set in their ways and not as manageable. That's just how it works.
But, if you do want to relaunch your career since the kids have left the house, the way you'd want to do things is teaching law, by the way is often something that law firms don't like, because it looks more like you're doing something unrelated to the practice of law and [00:01:00] something that's not as demanding and requires a different set of skills. It's very difficult to get a job if you have a lot of experience and no business, regardless. But the thing is you have skills and you worked at three really good firms it sounds like if you did corporate, you should be able to get a job in-house.
The other thing is you can always look at smaller law firms. So, the thing to remember is just that law firms are businesses and because law firms are businesses, you need to reach the ones that have a need for your skills.
Here's an example, the real estate market, they always say that you don't really need a real estate agent. And a real estate agent will come in and say, "Oh, I'm gonna do all this social media marketing. I'm gonna do everything." But really what ends up selling something? What sells is the market and the price. And so what's going to sell your skills is the market and the price. So if you're willing to work for a smaller law firm that does not have people with their qualifications need you and not pay a lot, you will get hired. It's as simple as that.
You just need to keep looking at a law firm that will hire you. And, [00:02:00] as you look at smaller firms, hopefully applying to places that don't have openings, but you will be able to find a position, because there's always going to be someone like you. So for example, if I was an attorney and I broke off from large law firm or I broke off from a mid sized law firm and I had a three or four person law firm. I would love to hire someone that had worked at a major law firm. That would look good and help me attract clients. And I would love to have them, but I wouldn't be able to pay them a lot of money.
So there's lots of people like that. There's lots of upstart law firms in every market. There's lots of individuals in every market that would love to work in a smaller firm, would love to hire someone like you. So you just have to find the right firm. You can't aim for the top. Even if you were still working in a large law firm, no large law firm is going to hire someone with that much experience and especially after a break. So you need to find a small law firm.
