Law School Attended: University Of Pennsylvania
Year Graduated: 1972
Years Practicing Law: Approximately Ten Years
"Maybe it will get better," Larry Richard said to himself, many times during law school. Richard's father is a lawyer, and he had always dreamed of having a practice like his Dad. But law school felt forced, and it was very hard work. Not like the mandatory psychology course that he aced with ease in college.
After attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Richard practiced for almost ten years, trying four different types of legal positions. His goal was to get training in litigation, and afterward join his father's Philadelphia-area law firm. His first position was with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office as a civil litigator."I felt very anxious and tense because there were so many things to keep track of...I don't have the kind of mind where I can keep all those things in track, and be organized in advance for that," he said." I enjoyed the [public] speaking part, but I didn't like the time pressure."
Richard was later to learn, as a psychologist, why that was so. In the meantime, he continued to pursue his legal career. He sensed that he was a "people person" and would enjoy a position that had more "collaborative interaction," and got a job working for Legal Aid. "I really had a sense of camaraderie with my colleagues. That was really satisfying, but it was still the same kind of work I was doing. I was going to court, only this time, as is the nature of Legal Aid, because you get three or four new clients a day, and each client requires weeks of preparation."
After two years, he left Legal Aid, in part because of burnout." I look back at that time, and I think if I had continued to live that life I would be dead," he said. With almost five years of legal training behind him, he decided to finally join his dad's firm. It turned out to be very different from his childhood vision of law practice.
The only part of the job he really liked was the interaction with clients and the feeling that he was helping them with their problems. Everything else-the document drafting, the court rules, the research-was "horrible." He liked and respected his dad and his colleagues but hated what he was doing. He realized at that time that his feelings about law practice were not going to change. "If I'm hating my life, and I'm in the best of all possible places to practice law, then it's obvious that the only conclusion is law isn't for me."
He eventually left the firm, moved to New York, and did a brief stint in the entertainment business. He then became a solo practitioner for a while in New York, representing people in the entertainment business. He had not yet hit upon the right combination that would define his career goals. He knew that he liked psychology and working with people, and that he did not like litigation.
One day in the elevator at work, he overheard two Jesuit priests talking about starting a career counseling business called Mainstream Access. Fascinated, he made an immediate pitch to them in the elevator. He offered to barter his legal services to them in exchange for learning about the career counseling business. They were thrilled with his offer.
As part of his training with him, they administered several career "tests" to Richard. He was especially impressed with one called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, from which he learned that his "type" would probably hate all of the details and deadlines involved in litigation. "I thought, boy, doesn't this explain a lot," he said. Intrigued with the idea of using testing to help people, he began to brainstorm about how he could use it in the legal profession.
He decided to get a graduate degree in psychology, and use it in some way to work with lawyers. In 1982 he started a doctoral program in organizational psychology at Temple University. On the way to getting his degree, he started a private career counseling business for lawyers in New York called Lawgistics. He later started to work with law firms and other organizations as his primary focus rather than counseling individuals. In 1993, he finally completed his dissertation and became Dr. Lawrence Richard, a psychologist who works with legal organizations. It had been almost twenty years since he had first thought about combining law and psychology as an undergraduate.
Since becoming a psychologist Richard has honed his mission to include "systemic positive changes in the legal profession using behavioral science." His goal is to change the legal profession to a model that is "more collaborative and one that is more humane."
It is a very lofty goal, but one Richard finds extremely fulfilling. After years of searching for the right career, he "feels like somebody who has died and came back and is living on borrowed time...I love what I'm doing." He is an example of a realistic career changer-someone who found his true calling not magically or instantaneously, but through a long process of slowly getting closer and closer to his ideal job.
Richard is also an example to lawyers who wonder if life gets any better outside of the law. When he was working at his dad's law firm, he used to watch the clock slowly moving, and taking forever to get to 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. (the earliest possible time he could leave). "I was just watching that thing going around the clock thinking there's this small group of people who love what they're doing, and I always thought it would be me...and I feel such a sense of loss that I'm not now one of those people even though I'm here where I thought I'd be having that experience," he said.
He is having that "experience" that he longed for now, as a psychologist. Had he not taken the risk inherent in change, he might not have ever found it.