I figure that many people on here have probably been faced with the dilemma I am currently facing.
My job sucks balls. I’m a young lawyer in New Zealand working in Taupo(into my 3rd year of practice) and my job basically sucks. I don’t have any work on half the time, and my boss hasn’t attempted to market my services at all. I am on shit pay, and could easily get around about 20k more if I moved to a different firm (probably). I lost more than half of my clients, when my boss made the decision to get rid of legal aid, as most of my clients were family law clients and most of them require legal aid.
He has now made the decision, through some pressure by myself, to get legal aid back and I have had to apply for lead provider status. I’m still waiting on my application to come through.
I’ve been thinking quite strongly about changing jobs for at least 1.5 years, but there has been one thing stopping me from doing so. Bloody triathlons and Ironman.
Taupo is home to the NZ Ironman, and training around here is real good for that kindof thing. Because I have no work on half the time, I can pretty much guarantee I will knock off work at 5pm every day. This allows me to do up to around 2.5 hours of training at night if I want to.
Now I want to succeed in ironman and in particular would like to qualify for Kona. My current job allows that as a possibility because of the hours. On the other hand I am really sick of my job and the boredom it brings. It is not challenging me at all, and I know I could be getting much better experience elsewhere.
Now I know there are a fair amount of lawyers on here, as well as there being people who have a massive training ethic. I would be grateful if some of you would offer your comments…
Okay, since I’m not a lawyer, and not in NZ, this whole thing is born out of more than a little bit of ignorance…
But why are you waiting for your boss to market you? Can’t you do that yourself? I’m not saying hang yout your shingle and go it alone, but I would think that the boss might be happy if you brought in clients for the firm, and I’m sure you would be handling the majority of them…
You lost more than half your clients… Does that also mean you lost pay?
i am a junior. my areas are family law and other branches of litigation. i have been severely restricted in my potential client base by my boss’ decision to not provide legal aid. providing a legal aid service gets you other clients etc. when i talk about marketing i’m talking about ads in local paper etc.
my pay is frankly shit. i didn’t lose pay because it was my boss’ decision to get rid of those clients. if i had lost pay i would have pursued a personal grievance against him (the remedy for employees against employer’s decisions).
I am in the same position, I have issues with my job (boss, lack of challenging work, etc.) but I turned down a good offer with a larger company (which did far less interesting work IMHO but had good opp. for advancement) because I didn’t want to blow out my IM training.
Crazy, most of you will say, but I can relate to your situation in sooo many ways, fulla. Once my IM is done then I can either focus on career or on child #2. The job I have now is a pretty sweet set-up, but it can be boring at times, and I feel like I am being blocked from advancement. But compared to most of the other tech jobs in Vancouver these days, it’s pretty damn good. Good enough to stay for now.
I am an attorney and would like to visit NZ My thoughts on priorities: The early years are when the learning curve is the steepest. If this law thing is going to be a long term gig for you, you need to switch to another firm that will give you the best training. (I am guessing you think this means leaving Taupo) A possible alternative is to pick up another local firm, with your current boss’s approval of course, to expand your work experience and income.
As for Tri training. You can do it, but, I don’t think you can do both well. (Regularly leaving work at 5:00 p.m. is not normal in the early years.) Pick one and bust it out hard. If you pick law, you will reap the rewards of a good learning base as much as you would any training base. This will then allow you to cut back at the office and pick up OCD hobbies like triathlon. If you pick tri, make sure you make money as a pro, cuz you are not going to get these years back.
I will add a hedge here by saying that not all areas of law require massive amounts of time. Litigation, however, does require the big hours.
Are you committed to the area of law you are working in? There are alot of people with the degree who never step in a courtroom. Have you thought of alternative uses for your education?
I think that is why they call it work. Hang in there for 30 more years and think how much fun you will have. I guess there are two kinds of people work whores and people that can’t get enough of their work. Good luck in finding something you like. Sometimes good jobs go bad and some go worse than others. If you find something you like, milk that cow as long as you can.
