Career

I've got my appraisal coming up at work on Monday, and it got me pondering about where I want to go with my career. The general conclusion is, not in the direction that work would prefer to steer me towards. I don't dislike my job as such, but it dawned on me that as I progress through the firm I'll end up doing more of the stuff I don't like and less of the stuff that I do. I loved it when I was a trainee and I could go away and research an interesting bit of law, and when I was a student and I could just learn. What I don't like is the whole client care, fee earning, schmoozing side of it. I love the law, but I don't like being a lawyer. The targets they set me at work don't motivate me because I don't want the rewards I'd get for achieving them. I don't want to be an associate particularly, so why would I work my guts out to achieve it? I get easily sidetracked when I'm doing a job if I find an interesting bit of law to read about. It might not be relevant to the client, and it might not be chargeable, but I find it far more interesting than "earning fees".

In late 2005 an academic job caught my eye, but i didn't go for it. I'm quite glad I didn't, and that I gave what I'm doing more of a chance, to see whether I could grow into my role as it changed. But it's getting more and more clear that I haven't, so maybe it's time to think about other directions I could take my career in. I'm clear that I don't want to move to another firm to do what I do. If I'm going to do this, I'll stick where I am. I don't want to move for the sake of moving. But if I could find something that ticks more of the right boxes, then maybe I should think about taking a deep breath and just going for it, to see what happens.