It was, she said, an “unsettling sensation that I wasn't learning anything new, and that the work no longer felt challenging or mentally stimulating”.

“The legal industry is relatively slow-changing (I was still citing cases dating back to the 1800s!), and I wanted something more fast-paced and dynamic that would satisfy my desire to be constantly learning and growing. This led me to the tech industry,” she recounted.

“Technology is always evolving, which means there is always opportunity to be growing with it, and I think it's going to be the cornerstone of humanity's next phase of evolution – something that greatly excites (and occasionally scares) me.”

Zubin Pratap, a software engineer at Google, who formerly practised as a barrister in New Delhi, said he wasn’t specifically motivated to move toward tech, but knew that he wanted to learn more about modern business.

“I knew my background in law firms and big corporations wouldn't help me land a non-legal job in tech, and I knew by then that I was very curious about product, sales and technology. Over my 12 years as a lawyer, having worked in three countries, I had developed skill and fondness for practice, but I concluded that I could grow more and have a lot more impact if I left the law. I am also addicted to learning new things and I found I was able to learn more (because things change faster) outside the law,” he mused.

Atlassian senior counsel (regulatory affairs and ethics) Anna Jaffe, who is also a co-founder of the Digital Law Association, had always had a “real interest” in tech, as a TMT lawyer by training, and how it impacts our daily lives and broader society.

“In recent years, the extent to which technology has embedded itself in our day-to-day lives, and the implications of this, has become clear to a lot of us and started to receive a lot of attention from the public as well as from regulators,” she said.

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“This meant that I was already encountering the coming wave of technology regulation, as well as considerations of ethics and public policy, in my legal practice – and as a result, this career change felt less like a shift and more like an extension of where my own interests and practice had been headed.”

FrontFoot.Law director David Curtain, on the other hand, had decided that he wanted to learn how to design better ways of working and use technology in the right way to overcome these challenges.

“Working in-house I experienced first-hand the problems caused by inadequate processes and systems including poor customer outcomes, unhappy workers, compliance issues, and overall business performance,” he explained.

Challenges faced

Once the decision to make the career jump was settled, Ms Chung became a software engineer. The biggest challenge in doing so, she recalled, was the “monumental mental shift” needed for such a transition.

“Don't get me wrong: there are some similarities between law and software engineering (both careers require logical, methodical thinking, and attention to detail), but in most respects, your brain needs to be re-wired – a process that is incredibly challenging. There's no arguing your way out of a sticky situation or finding a loophole in an ambiguous clause when it comes to programming!”  

The other challenge, Ms Chung reflected, was the “doubt cast over my decision from friends, family, and even strangers, who all thought I was crazy to be giving up a career that for so long I loved, rewarded me exceptionally well, recognised my efforts, and gave me the opportunity to travel internationally to work on interesting cases”.

Mr Pratap faced a similar hurdle, noting while many people agree that lawyers are (generally) capable, competent, and motivated, with valuable training and skills, he has found that leaders are simultaneously generally reluctant to actually employ them in non-legal roles.

“Discovering that transferable skills are appreciated but not necessarily enough to get that first break outside the law was frustrating – but understandable since I'd only ever been a lawyer for 10+ years.  This was back in 2013-2014, and I think a lot has changed since then,” he detailed.

Today, the transferability of former lawyers has been normalised to some extent, he posited.

“Also, people are making that transition earlier which is easier; I think the narrative and strategy had to be adapted significantly as I was leaving after a decade in the profession!  In 2012-2014 I taught myself a lot of finance, accounting, management theory, and learned the vocabulary of the financial world on my own time so that I could convince hiring managers in 2014 that I could be effective in the business.”

For Ms Jaffe, imposter syndrome has been a pervasive issue.

“In a new role, and a new sector, it's very easy to feel out of your depth and to feel like there's so much you don't know,” she said.

“The way that I've approached this, which also worked for me as a junior and not-so-junior lawyer, is to try to reframe this as a way of appreciating how much there is to learn – and I'm also very lucky that my role gives me the space to identify opportunities and take the time to do that learning.”

Opportunities to grasp

This all said, Mr Curtain pointed out, there are now so many opportunities for lawyers with a wider interest than conventional ‘legal’ work to design and implement better ways of working.

“On a personal level, the biggest opportunity this created was to launch FrontFoot.Law and specialise in helping lawyers implement the best legal ops and tech changes for them,” he said.

It remains true, Ms Jaffe surmised, that lawyers can tend to discount some of our less obvious skills in favour of emphasising our subject matter expertise and specific legal experience.

“I've found that the skills that a lot of us have learned around our ways of thinking and approaching problems (including issue-spotting and risk analysis), as well as working with clients and counterparties, can easily be translated to non-legal practice and create real opportunities to add value in our new roles,” she submitted.

Ms Chung supported this, adding that lawyers undergo some pretty incredible and intense training that equips them with a wide variety of skills, including communication skills, advocacy, and the ability to consume and think critically about vast amounts of information, sifting through conflicting data to form a conclusion.

“These skills give lawyers a distinct competitive advantage in an industry where that breadth of training isn't very common. If you feel like coding is just too foreign to you, don't fear – there are so many other non-programming opportunities in the tech space. Being a product manager is the perfect blend of all the skills that I developed as a lawyer, plus the technical understanding that I acquired as a software engineer; but you can absolutely do the job even if you don't know how to code,” she listed.

“There are also other roles in tech that would suit lawyers, such as in operations, marketing, business/data analysis, and consulting – or even going in-house (Linktree is currently hiring for an in-house legal counsel!). And of course, you can always start your own company in tech really easily – the barriers of entry to doing so have never been lower.”

Finally, for Mr Pratap, the opportunities have been centred on personal growth and fulfilment.

“I was able to start my own tech start-up (it failed but I learned a ton) and that's how I taught myself to code. But all along the way I started to meet people with really interesting "non-traditional" backgrounds, and that broadened my mind and vision for what's possible. So, the biggest opportunity was an expansion in my world view that helped me enter a very creative period of discovery, experimentation, tons of learning, and a real sense of purpose and joy,” he explained.

“I've encountered an astonishing number of lawyers globally who switched to coding careers. I've also met a bunch of engineers, entrepreneurs, product managers, and designers; and I'm now at Google where I get to meet some incredible people, dive into challenges that aren't seen anywhere else on the planet, etc. All this because I gave myself permission to just follow my curiosity rather than ‘the script’.”

It might all sound fun, Mr Pratap warned, but his journey was a long and tumultuous one.

“There were more dark weeks than I care to remember. There was an enormous amount of self-doubt and fear, and even ...shame and embarrassment. But I've become much more resilient, confident, and connected with myself and what I value, and in that sense more focused,” he said.

“I've also experienced more flow and joy in the last four years than in my entire 14 professional years before that – but it took time and risk to get there.”

The Lawyers Weekly Legal Firm of Choice Survey is now open, giving legal professionals the opportunity to confidentially say what areas their firm is responding well to – and where they could improve.

The annual survey, which is partnered by Momentum Intelligence, also forms the basis for the Top 25 Attraction Firms ranking, identifying the firms legal professionals most want to work for. To take part in the survey, click here. The survey will close on 15 September.