Transcript
"I'm a Harvard law grad who practiced for a year at a big firm before exiting law to pursue multiple personal dreams, which did not work out. Now I'd like to know what my best chances are for reentering the practice. I have a master's degree in both psychology and information systems, but little in the way of employment history. I'm asking for your advice."
If you went to Harvard law school and you obviously have a lot of aptitude, at least in terms of your SATs and grades and promise, meaning your mind works like a good lawyer. Then you decided you wanted to do other things, which means that you weren't settled into practicing law for whatever reason. There's nothing wrong with that. There's a famous line that I've been thinking about recently, where it's a book called Think and Grow Rich and it is about making money. I read it the first time when I was maybe 17 years old, but it says something like most people don't become successful until they're at least 45 years old.
And the reason is because there's just all this stuff you need to get out of your system. You make mistakes, and you make bad decisions when you're young, and sometimes it takes people into their 50' until they've done that. There's nothing wrong with the fact that you've tried all these different things. Your path after trying these personal dreams wasn't leading you to something you stuck with. You dabbled with a bunch of different things. If you want to know about how to re-enter, it's something you have to get enthusiastic about. Lots of people dabble in stuff. Your improvement comes when you focus. The worst thing you can do is become a dabbler. Everything comes when you specialize and commit. If you wanna be in the practice of law, you need to commit and go wherever you go and stick it out. There's a book that I read about social intelligence a long time ago in the mid- 1990s. It's the same thing now. Your social intelligence determines how successful you are. Obviously, there are lots of smart people that go to Harvard and Yale, and Stanford law schools, but what you do with that information in terms of your skills and what you commit to is really where your ultimate success is going to come from. I'd recommend committing to someone who will hire you if you're a Harvard law grad and you'd have experience from a big firm, but you can't get a job. Large law firms won't hire you or shouldn't because they will assume that you'll leave again.
You need to start from the ground up, and after five or six years of proving yourself and hopefully getting business, someone will hire you, a big firm again. You can definitely transition back into it, and there's nothing wrong with what you've done.