We asked: Why did you quit law?

We’re all about your stories here at The Footnotes.

My parents said they would pay for my degree if I did law. I’m now ‘finding myself’ at 27 in Bali.

I quit it during undergrad luckily, so I don’t have a huge debt from something I’m not practicing. I didn’t even want to be a lawyer, just sounded good to say to the fam at Christmas lunch. I ‘d recommend to anyone who is thinking of studying law, but doesn’t actually want to be a lawyer, to not. It’s not a generalist degree.

I gained 15kg in my graduate year – the work life balance was non existent. I’m now a reformer pilates instructor and working at a startup.

I’m one of the people who studied law with the intention of actually being a lawyer, but I actually couldn’t get a grad job. Everyone says to study law, but no one tells you about the odd 15k graduates looking for jobs at the same time as you. I’m now back at uni doing economics and think I’ll go into something in finance.

I was doing insurance law. Enough said. Snooorrreee.

Everyone at the firm I was at were d****s and my marks weren’t good enough to easily move to another one. I work in media now and love it.

I was in family law and realised I’d stopped caring about people. I had some commercial experience and now work in business advisory.

I left after my sixth year of litigation at a big firm (when I decided I needed to be human again, whatever the cost.) I now work at a bank. I did a lot of corporate and securities litigation and investigation work and my knowledge of those regulations translated into a junior officer role in a department where they needed the expertise. You do develop a lot of transferable skills in law.

I didn’t quit law all up, but I quit firms. Two words: in-house counsel. Best move of my life.

I only did it because my dad’s a judge and so the career option and progression seemed pretty foolproof. I work in finance now and have been trading crypto and advising on ICOs.

I didn’t see it as a long term career goal. I never went into law imagining it would be all I ever did – and the long hours, stress and expectations just didn’t seem worth it. I was putting in all this effort for a dangling carrot I wasn’t even after.

My body literally could not hack it. Perhaps it’s my personality type or the firm I was at – but I just was not cut out for how competitive my peers were. It was an ‘every man for him self’ environment and that wasn’t what I wanted to be around.

The only thing more boring than studying law, was working in law.

So whether you know you’re on the right path or not, hopefully we can help give you a little positive direction…take our quiz.

Until next time when ‘We Ask’ you something else…