Leaving Litigation

[notoriousrbg]

I'm a fifth year call and have been very unhappy practicing litigation. I have been thinking about leaving law but have been struggling to find another career path where my law degree would be helpful. I know several people who have left law and ended up in commercial or business jobs but I have no experience or interest in business. Most of the jobs I find in the government such as policy jobs have their maximum salary as below $100,000 which is difficult as I am currently making more than that. I am willing to take a pay cut but it's hard to think of my maximum pay in another area as being under $100,000. Has anyone left law or know someone who has left law, and where did you or they end up going? I'm just looking for more ideas as to what there is realistically outside of law (without having to back to school) and what my expectations should be in pay. 

[PePeHalpert]

It might be helpful if you expanded on what aspects of litigation you don't like, and if there are any aspects of practicing law that you do like.   There may be related fields that would interest you, like workplace investigations or working for regulatory bodies. 

[Mal]

This kind of post is incredibly frustrating. 

Your expectations are seriously messed up. Outside of law $100k a year is a great salary. I left practice to work for the BC government and made $70k to start. It has taken me 4 years in government and a transfer to Ottawa to make $100k. And you know what? I am incredibly grateful for my job. It offers rewarding work and a great work-life balance; not only that I am grateful for the salary which is more than enough, even for my single-income household. 

You're five years into your career and unhappy. And yet, you chose a specialty that offers few exit options (insurance litigation), have shown no steps to build skills outside your specialty, and have a warped sense of your value. 

[CleanHands]

49 minutes ago, Mal said:

This kind of post is incredibly frustrating. 

Your expectations are seriously messed up. Outside of law $100k a year is a great salary. I left practice to work for the BC government and made $70k to start. It has taken me 4 years in government and a transfer to Ottawa to make $100k. And you know what? I am incredibly grateful for my job. It offers rewarding work and a great work-life balance; not only that I am grateful for the salary which is more than enough, even for my single-income household. 

You're five years into your career and unhappy. And yet, you chose a specialty that offers few exit options (insurance litigation), have shown no steps to build skills outside your specialty, and have a warped sense of your value. 

This field is chock full of Patrick Bateman-tier lunatics who have no idea what life is like for the average person or of how expendable they are, and posts like this are all too common on this forum.

[Jaggers]

If you can find an in house litigation job at an insurance company or large company, I think you're looking at quite a bit more than $100K/year, though probably a pay cut from what you can make in private practice, for sure. Those jobs aren't super easy to come by, but they're not that rare either.

[Mal]

27 minutes ago, Jaggers said:

If you can find an in house litigation job at an insurance company or large company, I think you're looking at quite a bit more than $100K/year, though probably a pay cut from what you can make in private practice, for sure. Those jobs aren't super easy to come by, but they're not that rare either.

So, the OP can continue to make a high salary by... staying in litigation? 

[BlockedQuebecois]

11 minutes ago, Mal said:

So, the OP can continue to make a high salary by... staying in litigation? 

Everyone knows in-house lawyers don't "practice law".

[LMP]

OP, I think people are right to suggest in-house insurance might be the best move. I know a few people who made the jump after 5-6 years and took on more management/leadership roles. I think you might need to network a bit to make sure the role is to your taste. 

[Jaggers]

There are a lot of different in house roles for litigators. In some you litigate, in some you manage litigation, in most you try to head off litigation, etc. Virtually any in house litigation "practice" will be different from doing private practice.

[Mal]

2 hours ago, Jaggers said:

There are a lot of different in house roles for litigators. In some you litigate, in some you manage litigation, in most you try to head off litigation, etc. Virtually any in house litigation "practice" will be different from doing private practice.

[BlockedQuebecois]

In circumstances where OP hasn't explained why they dislike litigation, I think it is more than fair to suggest OP consider litigation-adjacent roles outside private practice. 

Yes, all those roles will be described with some reference to "litigation". But, in my view, it is approaching on bad faith to suggest that the roles played by in-house counsel who either manage litigation or work to head off litigation are identical to the role of a litigator in private practice. 

[Jaggers]

And whatever Pam says, they're not the same. I've done all three, for more than 5 years in each.

[t3ctonics]

I think I was in your position once @notoriousrbg. As a fourth year call I was burned out in private practice and started thinking I wanted out of law altogether. I tried going in-house first though, and it was definitely the right choice for me. I realized that what I thought I hated about law was really just large firm private practice (i.e. billing, business development, unpredictable hours, constant availability, everyone being stressed out) and aspects of litigation (mostly the conflict, but also the tedium of dealing with evidence and questioning witnesses). I did take a significant pay cut, which required a bit of a lifestyle change, but over the past 6 years I've since made that up and more. And I've only had to work more than 40ish hours a week a couple of times a year

I've gone from litigation in private practice to a municipal in-house role doing mixed litigation and advising (mostly labour and employment), and then to primarily advising and managing some litigation (by junior in-house counsel and outside counsel). These practices feel significantly different.

For a bit of context, I actually enjoy some aspects of litigation. I like putting the pieces of a case together in the early stages - pulling out the key facts and issues and developing the theory of the case. I like writing briefs and making oral arguments. I like negotiating settlements, especially in mediations. For the most part, I dislike dealing with documents and witnesses. I hate going through mountains of documents and I dislike discovery and direct and cross examination. I hated the uncertainty of outcomes. And I find litigation disproportionately stressful relative to the stakes; even an arbitration worth only a couple thousand dollars could keep me up at night.

When you're actually running litigation files yourself, you are in the conflict. Litigation is stressful for both the parties and counsel because of the stakes and the conflict itself. It's also stressful for the lawyers because you have an opponent that is trying to tear down everything you're trying to do, and the matters that make it to trial or arbitration are usually the uncertain ones, so no matter how well you do you can still lose. Managing expectations is part of the job, but clients will still often hold their lawyers responsible for losses.

In-house litigation, while relatively rare, does exist. It is somewhat different for two main reasons. First is the exclusive continuous relationship with the client. You will come to know their operations, the people involved, and their priorities. You will be expected to think beyond the specific case to consider implications of having to disclose certain evidence or make certain arguments, and possible impacts to an ongoing relationship with the other party (like a vendor, client, partner, union, etc.). Second is the overall difference between in-house and private practice, like not having to hustle for work or clients, not having to record hours, and working more reasonable hours. A consequence is that you can put whatever time you think is appropriate into a file. You don't have to worry about putting too much time into a smaller file and potentially having to write it off, or if a file turns out to be simple and doesn't warrant much time, you don't have to worry about not having as much billable work as you thought. You don't have to think of your time as potential money, just as time to get things done.

Then when you're managing litigation files and not running them yourself, you take a significant step back. You're not the face of the conflict to the other parties or the court. You still retain a large degree of responsibility for the file within your organization, but have less control than if you were running the file yourself. You have to rely on your outside counsel's judgment on many things, so you need to select and instruct them carefully. Delegation is an important but difficult skill for most lawyers to learn, and many go too far one way or the other - micromanaging or providing insufficient guidance - but is crucial for managing litigation. You can (and will be expected to) take a bigger picture view and think more strategically for your organization like I mentioned for actual litigation, but to a greater extent - it may even become your primary focus. The implications for a given file may just be money for a lot of cases, but fairly often there are other potential consequences as well, like a finding that a longstanding operational practice creates a potential tort liability, or that one of your standard form contracts has an unenforceable provision, or your collective agreement has a discriminatory provision. The factual findings or legal precedent set may be your priority rather than actually "winning" a given case and you will plan and instruct your outside counsel accordingly. 

The other kind of litigation-adjacent work, avoiding litigation, is a pretty broad category that I would say covers a spectrum from drafting contracts and policies on one end, to advising on how to do things so as to avoid liability or regulatory risk in the middle, to responding to demands and negotiating settlements before an action is started on the other end. Much of this is solicitor work more than litigator work. This has a more proactive focus rather than reactive, and engages more business strategy and long-term considerations than litigation usually does. Some places will assign the "nasty letter" component to  litigators if they have them, or to external counsel if it's a higher stakes or particularly sensitive or contentious matter. 

All of these kinds of in-house litigation and adjacent work are significantly less stressful to me than private practice litigation was. Managing litigation is significantly less stressful for me and much lower conflict than actually doing in-house litigation, as I'm not directly involved in the adversarial process. The conflict was the aspect of litigation that really got to me. In my current role I am regularly responsible for decisions with operational and financial implications that vastly outweigh any litigation I've ever been lead or sole counsel on, but it's far less stressful because it's not in a situation of active conflict.

All this is to say that there is a range of litigation-related in-house work that can be far less stressful than private practice litigation. There aren't a ton of these positions, but they exist and private practice litigation experience is valued for them.

I don't really have much useful to add regarding non-law work for former lawyers. I know a few people that have left law - some to run businesses of different kinds, a couple who got into government policy work, and one who was a stay-at-home parent for several years and is now a letter carrier for Canada Post. The former lawyers who got into policy had relevant prior degrees or experience, and those who went into business either had prior entrepreneurial or management experience, or transitioned from in-house legal to business management roles. I've also met a few people with law degrees who never practiced. One manages a Boston Pizza, one manages a team of adjusters for a large insurance company, and one is a procurement manager for a municipality.