Mini-Sabbaticals/Retreats and Career-Change Vacations

There are places where you can go to rethink your career, oftentimes for as little as a week. Half the price of a week at a spa, and a hundred times more useful than a week at Club Med, they are a great invention for people like lawyers, who don't get a lot of time off. They are run by trained career counselors, and ^often held as mini-retreats in beautiful settings. If nothing else, it will give you a chance to clear your mind, and focus one hundred percent on yourself for a short time. Listed below are some of the best.

Centerpoint


Centerpoint Institute for Life and Career Renewal has two distinct advantages: It has lawyer-friendly programs and it is located in Seattle, a beautiful place to decide your future. John Hart, the White House official profiled in this book, attended a Centerpoint retreat shortly before making the decision to leave law for politics. They run programs in their office in Seattle and retreats held at mountain or waterfront lodges in the countryside outside of Seattle during the summer and fall months.

Centerpoint is run by Carol Vecchio, a career counselor for attorneys, and former career planning director at a major law school, and Rikk Hansen, a career development expert. Centerpoint offers seminars specifically for dissatisfied/burned-out lawyers at their main office in Seattle, and their costs are fairly reasonable. For more information on Centerpoint, write: CENTERPOINT, 1326 Fifth Avenue, 658 Skinner Building, Seattle, WA. 98101-2604.

Richard Bolles's Career Vacation/Retreats

Richard Bolles, the "daddy" of all career counseling, and the author of the bestselling book What Color is Your Parachute offers a retreat once a year for job/career changers. Most recently, the retreat has been held at the Inn of the Seventh Mountain in Oregon. For more information, write: Registrar, Two Week Workshop, What Color is Your Parachute, P.O. Box 3791, Walnut Creek, CA 94597.

The Crystal Barkley Institute

Although it is not a vacation or a retreat, the Crystal Barkley Institute (main headquarters in New York City, locations throughout the country), offers intensive, one-week career change programs that are highly regarded. They are, however, pretty expensive. For more information, call (800) 333-9003, or in NY, call (212) 889-8500 or write: 152 Madison Ave., 23rd floor, NY 10016. Their intensive forty-hour seminars are offered several times a year in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In New York, they do not offer a five-day seminar, but they do offer the intensive forty-hour course on two sequential weekends. John Crystal, the Institute's founder, was Richard Bolles's original mentor. Follow-up consulting is mandatory. The course costs $1,430 and includes five hours of private counseling. If you register 30 days in advance, you'll receive a 10 percent discount, so it's a good idea to plan ahead. If you decide that the course isn't exactly what you need, there is also private counseling available for $150/hour.

LONGER VACATIONS/SABBATICALS

Sometimes, two weeks away is not enough. Ideally, your time away should be a month or more. Has a lawyer ever been able to do this? Believe it or not, yes. Unfortunately, it is more precedented at the partner level than at the associate level. If you are currently an associate, you may have to settle for a mini-retreat/vacation (described above), or a series of weekend seminars. If you are well-liked in the firm, however, you might be able to initiate a sabbatical program for associates.

HOW TO CONVINCE THE PARTNERS

It may be a tough sell at first, but here are some tips. Let us say that you are a fifth-year associate at a law firm. Convince the firm to form a sabbatical policy, starting with you. Then, remind the other associates and partners that if you can go, they can go too. If you are willing to take an unpaid sabbatical, you can argue that you will save the firm money (no lawyer can argue with that). If you are planning to do volunteer work/community service, you can convince the firm that it will be good for public relations. In this era of downsizing, law firms are increasingly willing to consider alternative work arrangements as a cost-cutting measure.

Making it Happen: Initial Steps Out Sound too good to be true? If you are feeling like you could not possibly take leave, work could not survive without you, the firm would never let you, etc., here is some food for thought. This time off may be necessary to your mental and physical health. If you are seriously burned out, you risk doing your body harm. In addition, I strongly recommend that if you are at a loss as to whether or not to leave practice, you give time-off a try. It may be the only way for you to gain perspective, and then make a final, well-thought-out decision.

WHAT IF THEY WON'T LET YOU GO?

If you can't swing it, you have some tough choices ahead. How about quitting outright? It is obviously a big risk and may not be possible if you have student loans. But if you have a spouse who is employed and you don't have any major debt, don't rule it out completely. Many, many lawyers have struggled with these issues. Among those who have quit completely, Glen Gulino is now an agent for William Morris. Even though Glen's story is a successful one, it took him a few years to get on track, and he even used some of his savings to tide him over. Others have temped or subcontracted projects to law firms. Another made a deal with her spouse to take a year off and has now started a career in advertising. It's not easy, but it isn't impossible, either (For more encouragement, see Utne Reader's "Just Quit! The Fine Art of Breaking Free," October, 1996.)