Nicholas Lore On Finding a Satisfying Legal Career
By Teresa Talerico
It isn't ''Law and Order'' or a John Grisham yarn, but choose wisely and a law career can be even better than those TV, movie, or paperback versions. The trick is discovering your niche and avoiding the disenchantment that sideswipes some lawyers, said career counseling expert Nicholas Lore.
Founder of the Rockport Institute, a Washington, DC-based career-counseling program, and author of the highly acclaimed career-guidance book, The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success, Mr. Lore said more than half of most attorneys are dissatisfied with their careers. A 1990 American Bar Association study found that 54% of lawyers are frustrated that they do not have much time for themselves. A former psychology major, cardboard-box-factory owner and CEO, Mr. Lore himself struggled with finding his niche until he realized he loved helping others find theirs.
Q: Why are so many lawyers unhappy?
A: People often go to law school for the wrong reasons. It's not so much a choice they've made as it seems like the most reasonable thing to do. So they're not necessarily committed to being a lawyer with a passion. Lots of people go to law school when they don't know what else to do.
Also the idea that people have of what it's like to practice law comes mainly from television and movies. And it isn't anything like that. In television and movies, you never see somebody sitting all day long behind a desk piled up with papers.
People who really like what they do have a match between their natural talents and abilities and the work they do.
Human beings are a lot of things. But at the bottom line, we're creatures, biological beings. If you've ever watched any of the Jane Goodall programs, the chimps not only have different personalities, but they have areas of special talents. And that's a survival advantage for the tribe. That's true with people, except we're much more broad in our abilities and the differences between us. So everything in the natural world, if it's not doing what it's perfectly suited for, it ends up dying. Everybody's born with very, very different sets of natural talents and abilities.
The talents that it takes to be a good student are the same ones it takes to do the work of being a lawyer, but not necessarily the ones that it takes to be satisfied being a lawyer.
Q: What's your advice for law school graduates?
A: I would say that it's worth putting in the time and energy to do a really careful job of selecting which direction you're going to head into.
If you're looking to work in law, there are personality types, what we call maestros, or expert-type people. Most of the people that work in law firms have that kind of very concentrated personality. But there also a lot of people who graduate from law schools, we think of them as tribal—they work with and through others. They might end up being in-house corporate counsel, where there's more interplay between people. The thing about a lot of law firms is you're kind of on your own when you get to the point where you become a partner. It's almost like having a doctor's office in a medical building, so you're not working in a team with people.
The first thing to do is to really make distinctions about what you're like. (The Rockport Institute attracts) a lot of young people in graduate school or recently out that go through a testing program that measures natural talents and abilities and personality traits. I would recommend they do something like that. The problem is that people's own perceptions about what fits them usually are pretty basic. Doing some in-depth self assessment, so that you know the direction you're picking is something that's a natural fit for you, is the best way to ensure you're satisfied with the work that you have.
Q: You mentioned doing self-assessment. How specifically do you do that?
A: At the very least, you should do a personality test, sort of a Myers-Briggs-type test. It's difficult to do self assessment because a young person's head is filled with all these concepts and ideas about what they're like. What they know about who they are is based on what they've done in the past. And basically their life has been set in school. And school is very unlike the real world. That's why so many people don't like practicing law. They misunderstood what they were getting into some of the time. But even more basic, they weren't making clear and sharp enough distinctions about themselves that allowed them to pick something that was a good fit. It could very well be that a lot of those people would be happy in law if they picked the right specialty in law or the right environment in law.
Q: How do you do that?
A: Once again, know thyself…You can go through a testing program. We're probably the global leaders in helping people pick careers that are a great fit. We have clientele all over the world. A lot of them are younger people, people in graduate school or about that time when they wake up and realize things are not going to automatically turn out the way they hoped they would.
Q: How much does the Rockport program cost?
A: Really all they need is $520. That gets a very complete measuring of everything known about natural talents and abilities and personality traits, an assessment and an in-depth personal interpretation with a lot of subtlety. It's subtle to the point where medical students use it to pick a specialty, and it works equally well for people who are figuring out where to hang their shingle in the world of law.
Q: What tips do you have for those who feel they can't afford the $520?
A: There are two books I can recommend. There's my book, "The Pathfinder," which has a whole guide to choosing a career. There's another book called "Do What You Are." I would suggest getting both of those books and really digging in.
Q: Can you describe a Rockport success story?
A: One example is somebody who was working toward a partnership in one of the huge Washington law firms, and something was just wrong about it. She realized exactly what the problem was. She recognized that the way her personality was structured, she wanted to have a much more team approach than she had in the law firm. So she ended up getting a job with a corporation as their counsel. The people she was working with were very different than the people in the law firm. They were very much more group and team oriented…she found that she was playing a part in senior level strategic planning and so forth rather than just purely working on legal issues.
Q: What if you get out of law school and panic, realizing you're not sure you want to be an attorney? Meanwhile, you're faced with massive student loan debt.
A: At least what you want to do is find the best place for yourself in law. Law is an enormously varied profession. It's amazing. The ways of practicing law are much broader than the different ways of practicing medicine, for example. There are things in law that fit a very wide range of people. The problem is that people don't think about it that way. They have fairly conservative ideas about what's available in law and what the options are. They really need to look at it more as possibilities - what's possible? How can I find a way to practice law that is a pretty darn good fit?
Thanks for LawCrossing! I just started using it today and already I feel better about where my job search is headed. Ely
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LawCrossing Fact #207: LawCrossing features articles on career issues.
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