Remember Green Acres, that fish-out-of-water comedy wherein Eddie Albert drags Eva Gabor out to live on some tumbledown farm in the middle of nowhere? She’s a Park Avenue socialite, but he’s the husband and the penis-haver and it’s the 1960’s – so what he says, goes. If he’s jonesing for fresh air and farm living, she has no choice.
I don’t remember much more than the theme song and opening credits, but the concept – giving it all up, packing your bags and fleeing for the sticks, spouse (and maybe kids) in hand – resonates with my lawyer clients. Some are beginning to sound like aspiring Eddie Alberts.
I’d like to say there’s a great lawyer return to the land on the way – driven by a love for nature and the outdoors. To some extent that’s true. But mostly, it’s a product of desperation. The big themes are escaping biglaw misery, seeking adventure, looking for a healthier lifestyle… and fleeing school loans.
One client’s story weaves these themes into a magical tapestry of personal growth, spiritual awakening and debt avoidance.
He was suffering modestly at a big law firm in L.A. Then he got posted to an office in Asia, where he happened to speak the language. There he discovered how bad bad can be. The US office dished out standard-issue biglaw brutality. Nothing could have prepared him for the Asia office. The cruelties committed by the local staff and attorneys would make Hieronymus Bosch wince. In their laser-beam-like focus on punishing my client for speaking their language and attempting to work in their homeland, they achieved new plateaux of sadism on a weekly basis. He developed insomnia, migraines, then panic attacks – and was fired a year later, without comment.
That’s when the Green Acres theme began playing in his head.
I’m not sure where he got the idea, but for whatever reason, he bought a 500 square foot cabin in the middle of nowhere, snug against the 49th parallel. Then he wrote a blog about woodcarving. And that’s about all he did – that, and shovel snow.
Ten months later he remembered the $150k he owed in school loans and back taxes from his Asian debacle, packed his bags and caught a ride to New York City – and doc review. Foreign language doc review pays better than regular doc review, but it’s still doc review. Working with the burnt-out remnants of lawyers is refreshing after working with actual lawyers – and at first it was amusing to get paid to peruse an Asian businessman’s emails to his mistress, then click “relevant” “incriminating” and “privileged.” But even assuming steady work, he didn’t see how he could pay off his loans within a decade.
His solution? Hitch a ride back to The Great White North – and his rustic cabin. There, he could find public defender work in the local courthouse – and wait tables. He calculated that $30k per year would be enough to cover food and fuel – but insufficient to attract the attention of his creditors. Not even a bank addicted to the lifeblood of youth can squeeze that blood from a stone. In his free time – which is most of the time, at this point – he wood-carves. For whatever reason, he finds that more exciting than doc review.
Voila. All you weeping, tooth-gnashing, garment-rending lawyers out there who constantly ask me – what can I do now? Here’s a solution. Green Acres is the place to be!
If you’re a true daredevil, you can fly the coop bigtime – take it beyond a meek retreat back-to-the-land, and embark on grand adventure.
For role models, you have those lawyer-bloggers who regularly up-date us on their fantastic doings. My clients inundate me with links to these guys.
There was the former bankruptcy associate who walked across the country. I don’t remember if he did it for charity, or an up-coming documentary film, or because he was losing his marbles. From the bit I read, I suspect option number three.
I’m not sure what walking across the country costs, but most of the “grand adventure” types are drawing on some unnamed source of cash to pursue their dream.
There’s the former biglaw chick traveling around the world, who started with the Trans-Siberian, and last I checked, was on a vision quest in Thailand. Her spin on the whole thing is “wow! I’m taking time off to grow as a person!” but I suspect the truth is closer to “I was losing my shit in biglaw and could afford to do this.” She assumes we want to hear what it all means to her – ignoring the reality that smoking weed in Chiang Mai with cute Swedish guys is a well-worn trope. We get it. We’d love to blow out of law and into “personal growth” along these lines, too. But there’s the issue of cost…
I stumbled on another former biglaw victim who moved to Italy to work as a free-lance journalist. Once again, how she pulled off this feat remains a mystery – I suspect one involving an Italian husband with a family house.
For those of us who don’t savor walking across the country – and don’t have the money for a year of traveling around the planet or a husband with a house in Italy – the Green Acres experience might, of necessity, play out in a humbler – and perhaps more heartfelt – manner.
You can read about this breed of Eddie Albert – the humbler, heartfelt-er ones – in the “lifestyle” section of the New York Times. The key search terms are “organic” and “artisanal.”
You’ll find the family that lives in a house on fifty acres in the middle of nowhere, Maine. The husband – bearded, lanky, and simultaneously wifty and scarily intense – manufactures driftwood sculpture and furniture. The wife – with braided hair and sensible shoes – home-schools their kids. The family gathers hearthside in the evenings to steam kale and discuss books. It’s all very heartfelt.
Another guy built a treehouse on the coast of Oregon. I can’t remember what he does up there – but stop smirking. He’s not marking up a purchase agreement or replying to a request for discovery, so it’s more fun than whatever you’re doing.
The spin in these pieces is appealing. It requires courage to give up the money, the status, the title – to head back to the land and commit yourself to something crunchy. Lawyers are feeling the pull.
Another one of my client’s got the itch bad. For her, the question is whether her husband, an academic who stays at home with their two kids, is up for abandoning his career and switching to goat farming.
He might be.
“I know this sounds crazy,” she says. “But I want to make cheese. I want to learn how, and I want to make my own cheese.”
“It can’t be that crazy,” I informed her. “You’re the second lawyer this month.”
I’m not making that up. Goat farming – and the manufacture of chèvre – have developed into a miserable lawyer leitmotiv. You can’t riff on the theme without it.
People are trying. Lawyers are talking the talk – even if fewer are actually walking the walk.
Once again, money is the first obvious roadblock on the road to Green Acres. Even Grizzly Adams needed a few buckskins to purchase his log cabin – and stock the pantry full of mac and cheese for the long winter ahead.
The trick to leaving your money troubles behind – and unshackling your peripatetic soul – is abandoning the crazy notion of repaying gargantuan loans. After that, settling into brewing your own buttermilk is a piece of cake.
My client on the 49th parallel is giving it a go – and it might work. At some juncture, as a lawyer with loans approaching two hundred thousand dollars, you begin to sense at a visceral level you’re never going to pay that money back – not in this lifetime. The loans are perpetual – so you might as well cry uncle and give up. Then you can stake a claim out past them thar hills, earn a pittance to feed yourself, and get on with your life.
There are two major steps you have to take right off the bat. First, get rid of your phone. You can’t afford it anyway, and it drives the banks into conniptions when they can’t harass you every day. Second, scale down your lifestyle. Dump any possessions the banks might sink their slimy claws into. My client’s cabin is worth about $40k. Even in the USA, where foreclosing is a way of life, that’s not worth foreclosing on – and, in any case, his mortgage is a few hundred bucks per month.
The ultimate get-away? Leave the USA behind. Head South of the Border – or just across the border. There are lots of off-the-beaten-track spots to explore. I’ve been hearing about Costa Rica, Australia, and India from lawyers I work with.
If your immigrant parents fled another country for opportunity in the USA – well, now might be time to flee back! You already speak the language, and the banks will never find you. Sure, you can no longer work in the USA – the money-lenders would descend like rabid hyenas – but you’re technically not a criminal. You can maintain citizenship and pop in for visits.
Some lawyers are picking a random spot – any spot – on the map. It only has to be far away from biglaw and all-American debt slavery. There’s loads of space in the Northern Territory of Australia!
Farm livin’ is the life for me…
Can it happen? Can you give it up, buy a rustic cabin way over yonder and live like Grizzly Adams (or Crocodile Dundee)?
Once you’ve tasted biglaw, plodding through snow to an outhouse doesn’t sound half bad.
Speaking personally…Dah-link I love you, but give me Park Avenue.
But the honest answer is I don’t know if you can pull it off.
Eva Gabor seemed to adapt. Maybe you can too. And maybe you can convince the wife and kids to come with.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.
If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning
I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
Another suggestion: teaching English in a far-off, exotic land
TPT – thanks for this post. My escapist fantasy is usually along the lines of remote foreign beach village, but to each his own.
Thankfully I avoided the major law school debt trap, but fell into the less drastic Master’s trap. I have a job, but looking at my $60K+ tab I am wondering where all those older, wiser advisors are now who told me that a graduate degree was a must for my career and well-being. I find myself unable to make the career leap that I dream of because I literally cannot afford the uncertainty. I am handcuffed to that biweekly paycheck.
You left big law (and big loans I presume) and went back to school (more loans?) to do what you really wanted. Are you still making monthly payments? How did you do it?
Why not simply pay back your loans, save a small cushion and then disappear? I acknowledge that many people are burned out, but symptoms of burn out are often caused by a feeling of hopelessness stemming from lack of control.
When I graduated from law school 15 years ago, I owed around $100k in law school loans – at interest rates of 8-9%. I knew that I couldn’t pay off my loans on my SMALLAW salary, so I jumped to BIGLAW and ground it out for about five years before moving in-house. During those five years, I did upgrade my lifestyle a bit (nicer apartment), but didn’t buy a new car, wore moderately-priced clothes/shoes, furnished my place with IKEA and a few nicer items, etc… After contributing the maximum to my 401(k) and IRA, every extra penny went towards the loans (somewhere around $30k a year). Within 3 years, my loans were paid off and I started building an escape fund.
Fortunately, an in-house opportunity popped up just as many associates around me were being laid off from my BIGLAW firm. Seeing the writing on the wall, I jumped ship. My new salary was half of my BIGLAW salary, but because I didn’t have any loans, I didn’t sense any real difference. Less than a year later, I jumped to another in-house job in BIGCORP at 80% of my former BIGLAW salary, but only 2/3 the hours. Five years later, I jumped to another BIGCORP, increasing my pay and equity/bonus in the process. After two years, I jumped to another BIGCORP, earning 20% more than my former BIGLAW salary, plus an equity stake worth more than a year’s salary.
If the foregoing comes across as bragging, I’m sorry, but those are just the facts as to how my career has gone so far. Like everyone else, I had fears and doubts along the way. The one thing I never lost was faith in myself and my abilities. I always believed that if I could get my foot in the door, I would prove my worth and then some. I also never quit – my firm or corporation would have to fire me first.
The key to your story is that you graduated law school 15 years ago. As such, timing-wise, you came into this mess at an advantage and that likely has made it easier for you to not lose faith in yourself and your “abilities.” You have an element of right time right place working for you. You speak as if your BIGLAW w/ IKEA furniture followed by BIGCORP gig to BIGCORP gig is novel. That’s what 90% of the suckers, er newly minted lawyers, want. I’m sorry, but you are one of the lucky ones and you should know and own that. Your suggestions do not work for the suckers who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If you ask anyone who graduated in the mid-1990s, they’ll tell you that the job market for lawyers wasn’t that great. In or around 1999, the demand for lawyers picked up due to the dot-com boom, which did facilitate my jump to BIGLAW (though I did have the credentials to go straight in after graduating – I chose SMALLAW for personal reasons). However, the dot-coms started going dot-bomb around 2001, leading to massive lawyer layoffs. Hence, my jump to an in-house gig at a 50% pay cut. During my last two years in BIGLAW, however, I started to see the writing on the wall as my associate friends were quietly disappearing. Fearing I would be next, I chased partners who had significant work in areas outside my specialty and learned as I billed. The work was boring and tedious, but it kept me employed long after my associate friends were all gone.
The key to my success was thinking several moves ahead, plus a little luck here and there. In other words, proactive thinking about my career, rather than reactive, was what helped me succeed. The way I did it is still available to today’s law school graduates – I’ve had several ask for career advice and took it to heart, leading to solid positions in-house.
So it worked for you, but what about the 90-95% that BIGLAW will not hire b/c they’re not in the top 5-10% of their classes?
LOL. Wow, I never realized it was that simple! Time for Will to just shut down this blog, and his practice – everyone listen this guy and Just Do It.
2/10 trolling effort. Try harder next time.
What I achieved can be achieved by other people without the same law school grades. Many of my in-house colleagues graduated from TTT law schools in the past 10 years, did not graduate from the tops of their classes, and did not start their careers in BIGLAW.
What they DID do was find a way to get their foot (feet?) in the door at a company after spending some time working in SMALLAW, SMALLGOV and even temp lawyering. How? They packaged themselves in a way that was attractive to in-house legal departments and went after non-lawyer jobs even though they had law degrees (much lower competition for these types of positions). Compliance/Ethics, Contracts Negotiator/Specialist/Manager, E-Discovery/Subpoena Response, etc…
But you weren’t really asking how you can actually land an in-house job. If you want to wallow in self-pity and complain about how unfair life is being to you, that’s your business. Success usually involves a great deal of hard work, creativity, a little luck and doing things you don’t want to do (and that don’t make you happy).
While I’m not living a rustic fantasy, I have gone north of the 49th parallel into Canada where I have a very satisfying tax practice at a cross-border accounting firm. We only work 40 hours a week, even in April. And best of all, I don’t give a crap what my FICO score is.
Exactly. You have a plan, and that plan involves grinding it out for the next few years in BIGLAW, paying off your loans, and then following your bliss. Delayed gratification is the key.
“as a lawyer with loans approaching two hundred thousand dollars, you begin to sense at a visceral level you’re never going to pay that money back – not in this lifetime. The loans are perpetual – so you might as well cry uncle and give up”
Correction: for those of us at places similar to your former employers, such loans last for about two years of frugal living and constant payments out of each meaty pay check. Stop pretending law school loans are like having $500,000 of med school debt.
You almost certainly need Biglaw to handle regular law school debt, but as long as you have it you can get back to positive net worth in 24 months or so.
This is what I don’t get.
You can pay these loans off pretty quickly if you have a BigLaw job. You just have to live like you are still a student and just pay off the loans.
Yes, sending several thousand a month to Sallie Mae and Citibank isn’t fun, but it does get rid of the loans.
Thank you for responding so quickly to my request! I really appreciate it.
I still do want answers for the questions I did have. Isn’t leaving the U.S. and exiling yourself in a foreign nation while defaulting on $100K to $200K in law school debt (mostly debt owed to the government) a definition of fraud? And if fraud, isn’t that a felony in most U.S. states? If so, wouldn’t you get arrested upon being interviewed by U.S. customs during a “pop-up” visit to the States since you are technically a criminal by that point (and would be flagged as such in the computer systems U.S. customs uses to verify travelers’ identities)? I am really curious because you assume that one is not a criminal for fleeing creditors by living in another country. You also imply that some of your clients have gotten away with this with few consequences (because they’re technically not criminals, in your viewpoint). I’d just like to get these points clarified, that’s all.
I don’t think so…you’re simply a creditor who has left the country and lacks sufficient funds to pay his debt. I don’t think there’s an intent to defraud…but I haven’t been a lawyer in a long time. Maybe one of my other readers knows the answer.
I don’t know about the fraud angle, but a likely scenario is that when you file your US taxes, the government will keep any refund you might owe. Yes, if you are a US citizen, you have to file US taxes no matter where you live in the world.
My escapist fantasy is suicide. No joke. Any of your clients share that goal, Will? What do you advise them?
I tell them Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy. It would be foolish to squander it.
Don’t kill yourself.
Plus, according to Dante, you end up in the Wood of the Suicides.
Do you really want to be a dead tree eaten by harpies for all eternity?
Actually, now that I think about it, this might be what billing 3,000 hours a year feels like to a burnt-out mid-level associate:
“The harpies in Dante’s version feed from the leaves of oak trees which entomb suicides. At the time Canto XIII (or The Wood of Suicides) was written, suicide was considered by the church as at least equivalent to murder, and a contravention of the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill”. Many theologians believed it to be a deeper sin than murder, as it constituted a rejection of God’s gift of life.[4] Dante describes a tortured wood infested with harpies, where the act of suicide is punished by encasing the offender in a tree, thus denying eternal life and damning the soul to an eternity as a member of the restless living dead, and prey to the harpies.[5]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wood_of_the_Self-Murderers:_The_Harpies_and_the_Suicides
I read the comments here all the time and find them to be very helpful. In the hopes of helping any young associates with big time debt out there, I’ll just offer this one piece of advice: live poor. When you come out of law school and get that first big law pay check, the immediate urge is to upgrade your lifestyle so that it’s commensurate with your salary. This is entirely understandable after 3 years of ramen dinners. But you have to keep the debt you took on to earn that paycheck at the front of your mind at all times. The first year is especially critical. If you’re like me, your young, single and have minimal financial responsibilities when you first get out of school. With a 160K salary, a tolerance for cockroaches, and a little self-control you can be out of debt within 2 years. I lived with three roomates in a 3 bedroom dump in NJ with its fair share of vermin. It wasn’t always pleasant, but I paid $500 a month rent and with 18 months of big law behind me, I’m very nearly debt free. Try it. It won’t be easy, especially when you see you co-workers with new clothes and posh addresses, but it is worth it. What your bypassing in terms of material goods, you’re more than making up for in freedom.
I would like to hear some specifics on the barbarities doled out in the Asian country for the infractions of “punishing my client for speaking their language and attempting to work in their homeland.” Experiencing the nightmare of the NYC legal world, I’ve wondered what even worse levels must await in other countries. I’ve fantasized that it must be the worst in Asia, and, say, Germany. Did they really grow spiteful at this foreigner in their country, and begin to eviscerate him like a black ant dropped into a red ant colony? Other countries can be more xenophobic than the US, despite what ranting left-wingers will tell you. I wince at nationalistic chauvanism from either side, but I’d like to be made aware of what hot, new toxic games are played out overseas. And finally, let me guess, your client shrugged his shoulders and didn’t talk back at all the hatefulness during the year, and was genuinely surprised when at the end of his tenure they unceremoniously tossed him out with the same regard as tossing out the cat litter. Non?
I’m in my third year at a large law firm, and on the fence about when to quit — an issue that I’m seeing right now among a lot of my peers. I was wondering if you had thoughts on this or had seen this with your clients. During the first year it seems so easy. You fantisize about walking out, sometimes accompanied with some act of vandalism, and you know that as soon as you get those damned loans paid off you’re gone.
But then I don’t know what happens and why it becomes such a difficult question. Some people get used to the money, I think. Some don’t know what to do next. Some find their jobs tolerable enough, and even though they don’t love it, they assume that they type of abuse they put up with is probably normal. No one is going to tell you to leave, and when the decision is suddenly yours to make, how do you know when it’s time?
Have you seen your younger clients struggle to pull the trigger on resignation, knowing they hate the firm but not knowing how to leave? If so, what do you tell them?
The quick answer is yes, and it’a a huge issue – I could probably write a book about it. Maybe I will…
I come from (Western) Australia. Believe me, if you are young(ish), willing to work hard and of good character you should be able to get a job in the basic services sector (table waiting etc) without any delay. Pay and conditions are good too (vastly superior to American minimum wage) though COL is VERY high- we’re talking Switzerland levels here. Law jobs are extremely difficult to impossible to get though. Unfortunately, the greed of universities and the local bar associations (I’ve seen two new law schools open in the 12 years since I graduated) are beginning to exacerbate the sort of supply and demand problems you guys are familiar with – the industry is hopelessly saturated. The only way you could realistically get a law job over here is if one of the big firms sponsored you – and Aussie biglaw isn’t materially better than its US equivalent.
Do NOT feel guilty about avoiding loans. What it costs to go to law school in the US is utterly obscene and immoral and you should not tolerate it – let alone chain yourself to a lifetime of misery to service it.