Leaving the profession

There is a view in some quarters that many solicitors are leaving the profession after only a few years qualified. Certainly, among my contemporaries, I am aware of several who, after three to five years of working in private practice, have veered away from law to do something either completely or substantially different. But are they just individuals looking for something different, or are there factors at work which contribute to the exodus?

First stop was an enquiry with the Law Society of Scotland to see what figures are available on the scale of the outflow. Neil Stevenson, the Society’s Head of Diversity, advised that whilst they do keep figures for solicitors coming off the roll, “these figures are disaggregated for gender, but not by age or post-qualifying experience. That means we can’t tell which solicitors are those who are retiring (which will be the majority) and which will be other factors (people leaving mid-career, or people who have been removed from the register)”. Stevenson advised that the Society is “currently half way through introducing a new information technology platform which should be able to provide data on this area, as we are conscious that we need to have data such as this”.

Stevenson comments however that his feeling is that “we are talking low numbers. The rapid growth in the profession in recent years could not have been sustained by the admissions rates, if significant numbers of fairly newly qualified solicitors were leaving”.

At the same time, whilst the idea that people are leaving the profession in droves seems to be something of an urban legal myth, there are definitely some who are choosing to chuck away their statutes and hang up their dictaphones. I spoke to several people I know who have taken this route, to try to gauge what motivated them to move on to pastures non-legal and to explore what other options they had taken. (All names have been changed to protect the innocent – or those who may want to work in the legal profession ever again!)

Work: how much is too much?

From my sample survey, a main theme which emerged was pressure of work. Almost everyone cited this as a factor in their decision to quit the legal profession. As Hannah, who used to work as a litigation solicitor in a large city firm explains: “I was dealing with a very high volume of cases, which meant there was very little time for each file. I was always rushing around and soon the files had morphed from being peoples’ lives and businesses – they were simply files that were making my life a misery… In all seriousness, it got to a point where I just began to hate doing the work because I felt I was not getting scope to do my job properly due to too much work.” 

After completing a postgraduate degree in marketing, Hannah now works as a marketing assistant for a large accountancy firm. She cites it as “the best career decision I have made so far. I find that whilst I am still working as hard, I am much more focused on one task in hand – namely to promote my company’s business. I feel I can get my teeth into things a lot more and I know what I am talking about, as opposed to running around playing ‘hot potato’ with my files and giving what I felt was a poor service to clients”.

Stuart, who used to work in commercial property and has now joined the (non-legal) family business, has a similar take on things. “The main thing which got me down was that I was just slaving away and there was no time for any office banter. Everyone around me was under the same pressure – people would come in on a Monday and there would be no chat as to what anyone had done at the weekend: it would be a case of switch the PC on and start dictating. I did enjoy chatting to clients on the phone, but when you were working towards deadlines all the time, there was not much chance to build relations, as you needed to get the work done.”

Obviously, busy offices with stressed employees are not unique to the legal profession. What may be exceptional is the level of training which legal firms invest in their staff, making it problematic when experienced solicitors leave. Stuart indicates that a simple recognition of the stress levels in the office would have gone a long way: “If my boss at the time had made the effort to thank people for their hard work, it would have made a huge difference. All it takes is a thank you and the suggestion to go for lunch or drinks now and again in a nod to the fact that people have been working hard, for people to feel more valued. At the end of the day, everyone likes praise and the feeling that their work is not going unnoticed. It’s not rocket science.”

Stuart has taken the lesson into his current role, where he now manages a team of over 20. “I really do make an effort to try to thank people and make them feel that I appreciate their efforts. We recently went on an away day to a hotel for some activities like clay pigeon shooting and golf, and I think it had a big effect on team morale. Seeing it done the other way has made me much more conscious of the importance of managing people well.”

A connected issue which emerged was that people were looking to the future, anticipating that there would be problems ahead when it came to achieving a work/life balance. Many of the people interviewed seemed almost to have made a pre-emptive strike by opting out of the legal profession, before the difficulties which they were noting their more senior colleagues struggle with became a reality for them.

Chasing the money

A very common complaint from those who had chosen a different direction was the thorny issue of fees. Sheila – who has not left the law entirely as she now works for a public sector body – identified the “feeing side of things” as one of the main aspects she wanted to get away from, as a family law solicitor with a medium sized firm. “In terms of the actual work, I did enjoy it. There was satisfaction in getting a good result for your client and helping them through a hard time in their lives. However, our firm would bill clients regularly and I found it very difficult having to deal with people on an almost monthly basis – having to justify my fee, having to haggle over it all and then having to chase people who did not pay. I didn’t sign up for law to become a one man band credit control department. Also, I found that it really soured working relationships with clients having these types of discussions.”

Sheila now much prefers working in the public sector. “Perhaps I am too soft for having to argue with people on a regular basis, but I just prefer doing my work and not having to justify whether I spent two units on such and such a call as opposed to one unit.” 

Many I spoke to nominated the need to time record as a real drawback to working in private practice. As Hannah summed up, “You are so busy trying to get the job done properly and then you have the added burden of having to scrupulously record every single conversation, and then what you did next on the file and so on. When you tell people how time recording actually works, they cannot believe you have to basically justify all these six minute slots of your working life!” Hannah adds: “The annoying thing about it was that the conversation you forgot to record would be the one that you really needed to have recorded as the client would have complained.”

Of course, with the need to be transparent and accountable to clients, time recording is an essential part of a firm’s practice and there were no suggestions from those I spoke to that it was avoidable – it was simply a major gripe. Linking into the issue of pressure, many also highlighted the need to meet fee targets as a factor in their decisions not to pursue their legal careers.

Out of all those I spoke to, Alistair has made the largest career leap, by quitting his job as a construction specialist to become a ski instructor in France. As he put it: “Everything has become so competitive. Ten years ago, you never used to have things like legal awards, for example. Firms see that they can make huge profits and with that in mind, you are really under pressure to make those profits. It feels like the pressure is heaped on solicitors to deliver and not just in terms of getting good results for clients but in making sure that you meet your target. You have meetings with your department heads, you get emails reminding you what level of fees the department still has to meet by such and such a date, and if you are not performing as well as you should be, then you have a case to answer. It’s not enough that you are doing your 40 hours a week, working hard – if you have not made enough money that month, that’s not good enough.”

Alistair feels he has made the right choice and that the legal profession generally did not suit him as an individual. “I think for me it was a case of square peg, round hole. I did give law a go but I see now that I was never meant to be sitting in an office all day – I much prefer working outdoors and I am glad I changed direction when I did, as I could have plugged away for another five years and nothing would have changed. I am glad that I worked for the years I did as a solicitor as I am sure it will stand me in good stead. Next year, my wife and I want to start up our own chalet business and I am sure my legal experience will be of some use – and if it isn’t then at least I have good contacts!”

The lure of riches

I was quite surprised by the fact that some I spoke to said that the reason they chose to leave the law was to make more money. The public perception, and indeed the reality to a point, is that law is a safe bet and that generally solicitors can expect a good standard of living. Maybe it’s the Alan Sugar/Dragon’s Den effect, but a few of those interviewed professed the desire to go into business for themselves. Sarah-Jane, who used to work as a corporate lawyer in Edinburgh, has just left the profession and now intends to set up her own women’s clothes shop – following in the footsteps of her father, who owned a clothes shop.

She explained: “For me, the ideal is working for yourself. I was always frustrated by having to answer to the higher power and found filling in the HR forms pretty tedious – it felt like you had to fill in a form to be allowed to do anything. I feel I am more suited to working for myself, and although I know it’s not going to be an easy ride, from a purely mercenary point of view, if I am working hard, I want the profit to go to me, not to the partners I work for. Of course, if you work hard, partnership is an option and you will be your own boss, but it will be along with 20 or 30 other people. I did not have the patience to wait for 15 years before I could start making my own decisions. With the ability to sell online as well, it feels like everything is possible and I don’t want to miss out.” 

Ironically, Sarah-Jane feels that if she had not specialised in corporate law, she might never have had the courage to branch out on her own. “Every day, I would act for clients that had made a lot of money often in the most unlikely of circumstances, with products that on paper did not seem to be viable. I was seeing for myself that there was money out there to be made and I want to try it for myself. Of course, it may go horribly wrong but my philosophy is that it is better to regret the things you do than the things you don’t do.”

Seeing the world

Another “sign of the times” answer for leaving the profession was that people wanted to travel. A few of those to whom I spoke mentioned the feeling of being quite restricted by the profession generally. Joanne, who previously worked in private client and now works in client relations with an investment management company, remembers: “I was seeing my friends who had different degrees working in amazing locations. One friend was an accountant in the Cayman Islands; another was working for a global company in Kuala Lumpur, getting to travel to Thailand at the weekends. I knew I wanted to travel and I could not see that happening with my old job. My current job is total change of direction – now I get to travel once a month and regularly visit Singapore and Shanghai. I find it incredibly interesting and varied and whilst the travelling can be tiring, the exposure and challenge of interacting with those abroad makes it worthwhile.”

Of course, the possibilities for solicitors to work in other jurisdictions have grown considerably – although some practice areas will transfer more easily than others.

Issues to address

Some individuals will inevitably leave the profession for their own reasons, but to the extent that aspects of legal practice today tend to impact on solicitors’ job satisfaction, there appear to be some issues that legal firms should be addressing in order to reduce the risk of losing expensively trained and otherwise dedicated fee-earners.

Sue Lennox is the pen name of a practising solicitor