TO LEAVE LAW OR NOT TO LEAVE: WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS?
9 July 2009
My firm, like many others, is going through cost cutting measures: redundancies, salary cuts, reducing working weeks and encouraging unpaid leave and sabbaticals. The atmosphere is tense as we see lots of partners’ meetings behind closed doors, whispered conversations and people being sent on secondment or, in a few cases, just disappearing altogether. It all feels very cloak and dagger, and, in the lead up to a promised big announcement next week, it occurs to me that for all that I want to leave on my own terms, I might actually be shown the door.
Fee earners in my department are being called into meetings with the most senior corporate partner and eventually my turn comes. It is at the end of the day and the end of the week and I am not sure whether this is ominous or not.
In the meeting, I sit down and the partner talks about corporate work drying up and the measures that the firm is taking and asks where we go from here. I am overwhelmed by my desire to escape this world of billable hours, equity partner profits and stifling uneasiness about my job security. Getting up on a morning lately has been a struggle and I just want it to stop.
He asks for my thoughts and I find myself being completely open and honest as all the doubts, ideas and soul-searching I have experienced over the past few months come tumbling out of my mouth. I tell him that I don’t see my future being with the firm, or even in law, and that whatever the firm decides to do in order to cut costs, I will not be here in a year’s time. I tell him that as long as we can agree financial terms, I would like to leave and I feel an enormous surge of relief, or possibly adrenalin.
The partner appears a little taken aback and tells me that he had noticed my lack of focus, but says that there is no point getting to his age and earning a great salary if I hate my job. He tells me that he wants me to take the weekend to think things over but that he thinks I will fly if I find a career I really want to do.
I talk to a lot of people over the weekend, friends, family and colleagues, and they all tell me that I seem so happy and excited at the prospect of leaving. Friends who have seen me in tears at the unfairness of my treatment by some of the partners or who have had evenings cancelled as I have had to work are positive. Even the ones who are asking the more practical questions are amazed by how relieved and excited I seem and suggest contacts and connections I can use.
Come the start of the next week, my decision holds firm. I hand in my letter of resignation to the partner and to HR and I experience a lot of feelings: fear, emancipation, excitement, but mostly relief.
The same day as I hand in my notice, a friend is made redundant & told that this is her last day. I feel pleased that I resigned on my terms and that I have three months to consider what my next move will be. In the immediate term I have holidays booked and will go and celebrate my freedom. After that I will be going out into the unknown and the credit crunch but, tellingly, I feel better than I have done in a very long time.
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30 April 2009: Move within the sector?