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I see it a lot. Clients saying they are enjoying their career less and less—perhaps considering a change of firm or career but not sure that this will really help.  It starts to have a detrimental effect on life. I think most lawyers do want to make the legal career work and we’re naturally driven people; the question for most is: 'how can I make the type of legal career that I actually want and works for me?'

Here are a few thoughts and questions that have helped clients who are feeling stuck.

1. Control. I often remember the advice I was given by a seasoned professional who said: 'if you don’t take control of your career, someone else will'. Ultimately, we do have the ability to identify what is needed and to make the necessary changes. But, if we don’t take the time to do this—to think through how to move from ‘a’ to ‘b’—then it isn’t going to happen magically.

    

2. Optimism. One of the traits I see in a lot of lawyers is optimism about bigger issues. We say, for example, 'things will get better once the [x] case has settled' or 'once [y] transaction has completed'. Optimism can be useful, but it can also be a way of avoiding an issue. Then, we 'wake up' a year later realising that nothing has changed. Sound familiar?

    

3. Options. One of the paradoxes of lawyers is that we’re great at considering the issues for clients but often we see our own situations as binary: 'either I carry on exactly as I am at the moment, or it’s all going to collapse and I will end up in a Dickensian poor house'. In fact, there is flexibility once you get out of your head.

    

   If you have concluded that you are not spending your time and energies in a way that reflects what you really want from life, then what options do you have? It is amazing how frequently options emerge and are refined until a solution (which can sometimes seem blindingly obvious in retrospect) emerges.
   

4. Opportunity costs. Often, we avoid tackling issues because we focus on the cost. Making any change—changing the way you relate to team members or clients, the way you manage your time or your caseload, the focus of your work, etc—will have a cost, but isn’t there also a cost to maintaining the status quo? Is your energy better spent in making changes or maintaining the same dynamics? Are there opportunities that might open up as you start to make changes?

    

5. Assertiveness. Often lawyers can be very purposeful in their dealings with clients and counter parties, but hesitant to communicate their own needs. Assertiveness is getting clear about your wishes and needs, expressing what your wishes and needs are, and how you seek for them to be met, in a clear and confident way that avoids hostility or defensiveness.

    

   I recently had the opportunity to speak to Gillian Bishop of Family Law in Partnership about this concept of ‘empathetic assertiveness’. Please check out the podcast if interested (see below under 'Further reading').

6. Control. One of the greatest roadblocks to change is a feeling that unless we can guarantee a particular outcome, we won’t take the risk. As the previous two years have shown, we can’t control or predict events but often if we can get clear about possible outcomes and our options, this gives us the confidence incrementally to take assertive steps forward.

    

   I have always enjoyed the writings of the ancient stoics. These were practical people living in highly uncertain times —from the ultra-high net worth Seneca to the slave Epictetus. The heart of their approach was that to achieve resilience in an uncertain world you must focus not on results—which we know we can’t control—but on the process and the values you seek to embody—which we can control.
   

   Recently this has been explored in a thought-provoking book called ‘Thinking in Bets’ by Annie Duke, who points out that seeking certainty in an uncertain world can be soul destroying (or, burnout-inducing) as our decisions are effectively simply bets with varying degrees of sophistication. Again, rather than focussing on the outcome, resilience can be found by focussing on seeking to make the right decisions and moving forward in an uncertain world.
   

7. Inertia. It’s not easy to make positive changes. There is natural inertia, a tendency to stick with what we know, a fear of the new and a reluctance to rock the boat or assert our views. Until we explore the inertia - and the underlying fears and limiting assumptions - the challenges and the resistance can make the prospect of any change feel too difficult.

    

   Once we understand them, we can see the flexibility and options we have.
   

8. Community. It’s fascinating that recent surveys of wellbeing in law have concluded that lawyers feel core needs for a sense of autonomy together with relatedness. We want freedom, but we also want to feel part of something bigger than us, and to be able to express concerns, insecurities, hopes and ambitions to someone in an open and honest way.
   

          This will be the subject of a further post…

Summary

If work and life feels stuck or increasingly like a burden rather than a blessing—you’re not alone. However, there will be flexibility, and you can see the changes that you want if you work at it.

If this resonates with you, then you could ask yourself these questions as a next step:

1. Where are the areas where maybe you have been drifting and/or feeling stuck but really you need to take control?
2. If you are being optimistic—that things will change once ‘x’ happens—are you also being realistic, or do you need somehow to grasp the nettle?
3. What are the options?
4. What are the opportunity costs—and how could they be managed?
5. How can you assert your needs?
6. How can you reframe the focus onto process and values rather than results?
7. What deeper factors are holding you back?
8. How can you find the resources you need to discuss realistic options, decide on the right path for you and then feel supported as you start on that track and work with any obstacles?

Further reading

For the podcast on Empathetic assertiveness in law (2022)  with Gillian Bishop, see . For further webinars the Carvalho Consultancy is producing with ½Û×ÓÊÓƵ webinars click .

About us

The Carvalho Consultancy is an award-winning therapy, coaching and training agency. We support lawyers with the ups and downs of life and the job, providing practical, insightful support. And we should know—we’re lawyers ourselves! 

Visit our website:  and connect with us on LinkedIn: search for Adam Carvalho / Annmarie Carvalho.