“I don’t want my reason for leaving Biglaw to be that I couldn’t handle it.”

I hear versions of this from lawyers who may already know they don't want to stay in Biglaw forever. But they also don't want to feel like they had to leave before they were ready—or that the difficulties they were experiencing made the decision for them.

That can sound like a desire to prove something. Sometimes it is.

But I think there is often something deeper underneath it: a desire for agency.

You may change jobs and remove some of the pressure. Sometimes that's the right decision.

But the fears and habits that make those challenges especially difficult don't necessarily disappear because the setting changes.

That's one reason I think Biglaw can be an investment in more than your financial future.

For all the time and energy you invest in Biglaw, you should get back something lasting besides money.

ON THIS PAGE

→ What are you building while you're there?

→ What deserves your investment depends on what you want

→ You don't need to know exactly what comes next

→ Leaving as a choice, not a necessity or escape

→ How the 3 parts of my approach connect

What are you building while you’re there?

Career development isn't just about advancement or your next move. It's about what you're building in your current role that you can take with you: skills and judgment, relationships, reputation, experience, financial flexibility, and future options.

These things can accumulate as a side effect of putting in the hours. But the payoff can be much greater when you build them by design.

Are you consciously building them, or just hoping they come with the next 2,000+ hours?

For all that Biglaw demands of you, it's worth asking what return you want on that investment.

What deserves your investment depends on what you want

There is no universal answer to what you should be trying to get from Biglaw.

The value of a particular assignment, relationship, reputation, or opportunity depends in part on the future you are trying to create.

If you expect to leave in the next year or two, investing enormous amounts of energy into pleasing one powerful partner who has no interest in training you may create relatively little long-term value.

If you're trying to make partner there, the calculation may be different.

Neither choice is inherently more ambitious or more correct.

The question is whether your limited time and energy are going toward the things most likely to create value for the future you actually want, rather than the future you assume you're supposed to want.

Part of career leverage is learning to distinguish between what matters for succeeding where you are and what will continue to matter wherever you go next.

You don’t need to know exactly what comes next

Sometimes the hardest, most crucial work is clarifying what you actually want.

Sometimes it's building the foundation that will give you better choices later.

Often, it's a combination.

In fact, building leverage can make it easier to figure out what you want.

It's difficult to think expansively about your future when every option feels unavailable, unaffordable, unrealistic, or dependent on someone else’s permission.

More options can create the psychological space to ask a different question:

Not “What can I escape to?” but “What would I actually choose?”

The sacrifices and tradeoffs are easier to tolerate when you know what they're in service of. A job doesn't have to be your ultimate passion to feel meaningful if you can see how it's helping you build something you genuinely value.

That is a very different experience from staying because the money is good and you don't know what else to do.

Leaving as a choice, not a necessity or escape

Sometimes leaving is the right answer.

An environment can be unhealthy, incompatible with the life you want, or simply no longer worth what it requires from you.

Nothing in my approach assumes that every difficulty should be overcome so that you can stay. But there's a difference between:

“I know what this job requires, I know what I can do, and I want something else.”

and

“I'm afraid I can't do this.”

That distinction matters especially when the challenges involve things like perfectionism, lack of confidence, fear of mistakes, navigating difficult interactions, overthinking, or procrastination.

Those patterns can follow you into a new environment even when the new environment is objectively better.

So sometimes the work before a transition is not about convincing yourself to stay.

It's about developing enough skill, leverage, and confidence that you can choose based on what you want—not what you're afraid of or believe you can't do.

How the 3 parts of my approach connect

The habits that helped you succeed earlier may need recalibration when the environment changes.

The capabilities you build—how you manage time and energy, communicate, exercise judgment, create systems, protect your emotional energy, and develop career leverage—can change both your effectiveness and how demanding the work feels.

And the value of building those capabilities ultimately depends on what they allow you to do with your career and life.

The goal is not just to get better at Biglaw, but to become better equipped to decide what you want from it (or what you want after it).