I'm unemployed and career change attempts are floundering.

September 4, 2024 11:17 PM

I'm a lawyer and I've been out of work for nearly a year, and trying to find a job in a new field has yielded, well, nothing - even with career counselling and workshopping and all the other things we're advised to do when trying to find new work. So here I am.

I've worked my entire legal career (12+years) in family law, but towards the end of my final job my blood pressure was spiking badly from stress, because either you're dealing with contentious rich assholes who demand utter perfection or you're helping regular working-class families and bleeding them dry even when you try to cut them a deal. So, under medical advice, I quit.

After a year of looking for a job outside of family law I have struck out a lot. I'm happy to continue doing legal work (although I'm also happy to do not-specifically legal work so long as the money/work is good enough - see below for more about that); I just don't want to worry about billable hours. Unfortunately, most of the work where you don't have to worry about billable hours is government work, and in Ontario many government legal jobs aren't open to the general public (they self-promote from within very heavily).

Worse, when legal jobs are available, my career specialization actively works against me. I've nothing against taking an entry-level position - it's a necessity if I want to shift fields, obviously - but I'm 48 and between that and working for more than a decade in one field I'm getting nowhere applying for them. I'd love to work in the nonprofit/NGO sector, but applications for those jobs aren't going anywhere either. A law degree was supposed to open career pathways, but it feels like the exact opposite is happening.

I've done career counselling and all of the related exercises therein, and I know what I would like - a job where it feels like I'm making the world a bit better, at least. I'm an excellent writer, an experienced litigator and good at both participating in and managing a small team, and my salary expectations are relatively modest given my work experience (I'd be satisfied with the 60K-70K range, which given my experience and the sort of jobs I've been looking for isn't unreasonable at all).

It feels like I should have found something by now, and it's really dispiriting. Ideas are welcome.

posted by mightygodking to Work & Money (15 answers total)

A family member that worked as a securities litigator, working 60 hour weeks got a job with a large corporation as in-house counsel making a great compensation package and hitting the golf course by 5:30. No billible hours. He was the person telling the outside lawyers what to do. I assume that Canada has those sorts of jobs.

There must be corporations that provide court ordered services to divorce families or to people in distress that encounter the judicial system. Seems like your background fits well into that sort of corporation

How about creating your job? Be a consultant. There was a question the other day about how hard is it to do a divorce by yourself. Create an advisory that walks people through the process. Almost like a Legal Zoom. For $150 (whatever amount) you will give them all the legal forms needed plus a checklist and a few pages of notes advising them what pitfalls to avoid and what are phrases on the forms that are responsive. You could do it for Wills, divorces, contesting traffic violations etc.

As for convincing someone that a person with lots of experience in their 40s is willing to start at the bottom, I would try a different approach. You have not worked for a year. I would pitch it as you retired to spend more time with your family, and now you are looking for a lower key job than you had before to do in semi retirement that allows you to have the proper work life balance. Also get creative with compensation. You expect to be paid at a rate of $85,000 per year, but for the first 2 months during a "try to buy" period they can pay you at a rate of $60,000 and if you and them agree to go forward then they raise your pay and give you a bonus amount that makes you whole. It lowers their risk of hiring a slightly unusual candidate, shows them you are willing to bet on yourself and demonstrates creative problem solving. I doubt anyone takes you up on it, but it shows determination

Just tossing ideas out there...

Good luck.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 1:18 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

Not sure where in Ontario you are but the GTA has a huge unemployment rate and it’s been layoff city across industries and roles. It’s not just you in other words, please don’t internalize it.

Have you already looked for “document specialist/controller/handler”, proofreading and editing jobs, grants and fundraising, HR, and government jobs? And gone to agencies (AlthisHR I think is a good one - WOW looking at their job board it’s dry as a bone, yikes…) also try charityvillage.com. And legal organizations and charities, and colleges and universities teaching law?
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:25 AM on September 5

In addition to provincial government, I would look seriously at municipal legal departements, or at other non-practising lawyer jobs, like legislative drafters etc. In a department adjacent to family law, your experience could be an asset in those roles.
posted by Kurichina at 7:35 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

What about document review work? Both document review companies and individual firms hire these positions regularly. Freelance drafting or research work? In-house work would avoid the billable hour problem. You could also reach out to headhunters (like those that post ads in the Ontario Reports) and ask them if they have any jobs you might be a fit for.
posted by hepta at 7:36 AM on September 5

Just as an industry search term to check out, look at “litigation support”, which is actually more of a specialized IT job but I suspect there are positions where understanding legalese is a requirement. These are the people who wrangle the software that collects the emails and chats and documents and whatever other electronic items required for discovery, evidence, etc. You’ll find positions that are agency/consultancy - you work full time for a litigation support company that consults you out to companies for the length of their case - but there does also seem to be positions where Giant Multinational Company hires you 1099 or maybe W2 and then lays you off after the case or, more often, when they settle. So it can be a bit of a wild ride but it’s an avenue to explore if you haven’t.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:36 AM on September 5

Consider working for your local or state government? These roles are salaried, not based on billable hours. You'll take a pay cut but you will have an excellent work-life balance with good benefits and a pension. Plus you will be more likely dealing with other attorneys on the corporate side rather than the general public in most of these roles, and you might feel very very good about doing your part to hold those assholes accountable...

Corporate counsel in IT companies is a very well paid role with slightly lower stress than what you describe. Again, salaried not billable hours. IDK if contract law is something you specialize in but if you do then this might be your ideal place to be. Find a non-Bay-Area but still California tech company so that you can benefit from the laid back work culture while avoiding the silicon valley grind.

If you want to work in technical writing, legal writing, or other such writing adjacent roles, DM me and I might be able to help. I have zero legal background but I've worked in tech writing and proposals for about a decade. It's super low stress and well paid especially in relation to the qualifications required (though it will be much lower than what you will earn as an attorney most likely).
posted by MiraK at 8:34 AM on September 5

(I believe OP is Canadian.)
posted by praemunire at 8:53 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

Have you applied to all the government roles you might be interested in? A lot take ages to process applications but have contacted me six months later. I'd also look at all of the administrative tribunals, roles for tribunal members and potentially case support. Basically anything that's an administrative decision-maker might be interested in your background, I think. I understand they can be stressful, but it's not billable hours. Some are full time jobs, where others are more casual.

For the non-profit, maybe you can set up some informational interviews with lawyers in those fields and find out how the field usually hires? I'm guessing they might be posting roles post-getting funding but have a candidate in mind, but if you do some networking something might pop up.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:11 AM on September 5

I’m a lawyer with the Ontario government, and I agree that it’s hard to break in cold from the outside. Have you been trying to connect with managers in MAG? I articled in MAG and have spent most of my career here so don’t have experience with trying to break in from the outside, but my impression is that just waiting for external postings and applying to them has a pretty low likelihood of success. You increase your odds quite a bit if you try to connect with as many hiring managers as you can and try to land an un-advertised short term contract, which then gets you into the internal hiring process. MeMail if you have questions or want to talk about MAG.

I will caution you that we’re in a period right now where it’s hard for managers to add any new positions to their teams, so while there definitely are people getting hired it’s not the easiest hiring environment.

I think the idea of looking for tribunal member positions is an interesting one, and could at least be a bridge while you look for something else - most (all?) tribunals have a roster of part-time members if you didn’t want to do a full case load.
posted by a_marmot at 9:29 AM on September 5 [3 favorites]

(Apologies if you know this already but wanted to share just in case) The Ontario Public Service has a pretty specific way of scoring applications where you specifically have to outline how you meet the job criteria in the cover letter. They do not want short cover letters. Last time I applied and interviewed for an OPS job, my cover letter was 2.5 pages. Here is a decent guide to cover letters and applications. I also find the r/OntarioPublicService to be very helpful with application tips and info on how to get into the provincial government.
posted by snowysoul at 9:31 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Have you been trying to connect with managers in MAG?

My wife actually works for MAG (in a non-lawyer role) so this hasn't been the issue. :)
posted by mightygodking at 9:39 AM on September 5

Ah well, then you probably have some insight into MAG’s frustrating hiring process. If it makes you feel any better, I think a lot of people find trying to get in frustrating and a bit soul crushing.
posted by a_marmot at 9:55 AM on September 5

I'm also in the Ontario Public Service and every ministry has a legal branch, so I wouldn't limit yourself to only MAG. With your family law background, maybe that would help at MCCSS?

You can look at the staff directory online (called Info-GO) - the legal services branch could be reporting to the Deputy Minister's Office so that's how you would find the director and staff for each ministry. I would see which staff has a LinkedIn and reach out for some info interviews to get a sense of what it's like to work in that ministry and what you need to get in. Also definitely watch the job postings - more jobs now have info sessions that anyone can attend. Yes external postings are far and few between but you never know
posted by foxjacket at 12:13 PM on September 5

The lawyers in Ministry LSBs work for MAG - those are MAG jobs and those people went through the MAG hiring process and report up through MAG management, but they’re embedded in their client Ministry. There are a relatively small number of lawyer jobs within the broader public service that are outside of MAG, at arm’s-length agencies etc., but as a general rule of thumb, if you’re a lawyer working for the provincial government your employer is MAG.
posted by a_marmot at 12:43 PM on September 5

I don't remember the name of the company and am no longer on speaking terms with the lawyer, but when I used to work for a lawyer with a solo practice, she joined a company that was like a collective of lawyers where she'd pick up part-time contract work from them to make some extra money when she didn't have enough of her own clients. The collective had staff who handled all the billing and collections and all she had to do was perform the legal work and submit the necessary timesheets for the staff to bill the clients. Since it was explicitly part-time contract work, there was no annual billable hours requirements, just and expectation that she only commit to projects where she could put in the necessary time to meet the deadlines.

I bring this up as a suggestion for a possible way to bring in some money in the short term while you figure out what you want to in the long term.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:08 AM on September 6