The old model of a one-track legal career is fading. Lawyers have more agency and are open to exploring a wider range of job opportunities. Taking the non-linear legal career path, however, requires overcoming hesitation, fear and the status quo bias.
Table of contents
- Most Careers Don’t Follow a Straight Line
- What’s Really Holding Us Back?
- Why Lawyers Are Especially Prone to Status Quo Bias
- The Costs of Standing Still
- Why More Lawyers Are Choosing a Non-Linear Legal Career Path
- How Lawyers Can Move Forward: A Clearer Framework for Career Change
- The Legal Profession Is in One of the Most Transformative Periods in Decades
- Related Reading on Building a Fulfilling Career
Most Careers Don’t Follow a Straight Line
But in the legal profession — a field built on predictability and risk management — many lawyers feel pressure to follow a singular, linear path: law school to associate to partner to retirement.
My own journey hasn’t followed that script. In many ways, it’s far from typical. But what is typical are the feelings that surfaced every time I considered making a change — hesitation, fear and the comfort of the familiar. Those feelings weren’t unique to me. They’re rooted in something nearly every lawyer experiences at some point in their career: status quo bias.
Like many lawyers, I didn’t fully understand how powerful status quo bias was until I confronted it in my own career.
Over the last 13 years, my wife Heather and I have made several major life and career transitions. I left the practice of law, we shifted our company to a virtual model (long before it became mainstream), we moved from a major city to a small town in northern Michigan, and Heather stepped away from a long marketing career to pursue painting full-time. Most recently, I joined Latitude Legal to launch a new market and help law firms and legal departments access the talent they need.
What’s Really Holding Us Back?
Each choice felt daunting, not because the alternative, non-linear career paths were reckless, but because the familiar ones were comfortable. That’s the power of status quo bias: It convinces us that the discomfort we know is safer than the uncertainty we don’t.
For many lawyers, that bias becomes one of the biggest impediments to positive change. It’s not necessarily a lack of opportunity or talent that keeps people stuck. It’s human psychology.
Why Lawyers Are Especially Prone to Status Quo Bias
Status quo bias is the tendency to prefer familiarity over uncertainty, even when the familiar is unsatisfying. Psychologists have studied it for decades, and lawyers live with it every day, both professionally and personally. Lawyers are trained to:
- Anticipate risk.
- Protect against downsides.
- Avoid making irreversible mistakes.
- Reduce ambiguity in every situation possible.
That skillset produces excellent legal work. But it produces conservative career decisions.
Even lawyers who are unhappy in their jobs often struggle to make a move. They picture the worst-case scenario in vivid detail: financial instability, professional failure, or the judgment of peers. They imagine leaving a firm and missing partnership by one year. Maybe they imagine switching practice areas and “starting over.” Or they imagine going solo. And it all feels too risky.
As Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
The Costs of Standing Still
When lawyers weigh career decisions, they often compare the upside of change against the worst possible downside. But they rarely compare the downside of doing nothing.
That’s a flawed equation, because there are real costs to preserving the status quo, including these.
1. Professional stagnation
The legal industry is evolving — new technology, new staffing models, new client expectations. Staying put may feel safe, but can slowly diminish long-term optionality.
2. Emotional burnout
A major driver of burnout is the reluctance to walk away from the time and identity we’ve invested in our careers. Lawyers feel this acutely. The sunk-cost effect creates a false logic: If I’ve spent this much to get here, I need to stay here. But past investment doesn’t obligate future commitment, and holding tightly to that belief slowly undermines engagement and well-being.
3. Missed opportunity
Lawyers often underestimate how transferable their skills are. Strategic thinking, persuasion, writing and leadership are all skills that open doors in law firms, corporations, startups, government, consulting, ALSPs and entrepreneurial ventures.
The greatest long-term risk for many lawyers is not making a change. It’s never discovering the career they were meant for.
Why More Lawyers Are Choosing a Non-Linear Legal Career Path
The old model of a one-track legal career is fading. Lawyers are increasingly:
- Moving between law firm tiers.
- Embracing fractional or flexible work.
- Stepping into operations, compliance, consulting or business roles.
- Building portfolio careers.
- Starting their own firms or businesses.
Careers now look less like ladders and more like lattices — paths that expand outward as much as they move upward. Technology, flexible talent solutions, openness to remote work, and client demand for agility are accelerating this trend.
In my current work, I see this firsthand. Many incredibly capable lawyers are attracted to flexible work not because they lack options, but because they’re finally ready to explore them.
How Lawyers Can Move Forward: A Clearer Framework for Career Change
Fear thrives in abstraction. The antidote is specificity.
One simple exercise has helped me, and many lawyers I’ve coached over the years, see career decisions more clearly. Take out a pen and write down the following:
1. What exactly you are worried about.
Name the fear. Ambiguous fear grows while specific fear shrinks.
2. The potential benefits of taking action.
Not just material outcomes, but psychological ones such as autonomy, fulfillment and momentum.
3. The consequences of inaction.
If nothing changes in six months, one year, five years — how will you feel? What might you lose?
4. A list of incremental, low-risk steps forward.
Small steps de-risk big decisions. Examples might include:
- Informational interviews.
- Exploring a new practice area internally.
- Meeting with a recruiter.
- Learning a new skill.
- Aligning with a mentor who’s navigated change.
It’s only by getting what we fear out of our heads and down on paper, and analyzing them rationally, that we can do a proper cost-benefit analysis of the actions we intend and the change we seek.
Why does this matter at this moment?
The Legal Profession Is in One of the Most Transformative Periods in Decades
Client expectations are shifting. Talent models are evolving. Firms are rethinking how they deploy people and how they grow. Artificial intelligence is coming.
Amid this change, lawyers have more agency and a wider range of career paths available to them. But to take advantage of it, they must overcome the psychological force that keeps so many stuck for too long.
Examine assumptions. Confront fears. Pursue the path that aligns most closely with who you are and want to become.
If history is any guide, you won’t regret the risks you took. You’ll regret the ones you never gave yourself the chance to take.
Related Reading on Building a Fulfilling Career
Getting Your Resume Ready for 2026: A Lawyer’s Guide to the New Hiring Landscape
Look in the Mirror: Associates Hold the Key to Their Own Happiness
Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job
Path to a Successful Legal Career: Learn to Love the Process
Making the Transition from Diligent Law Firm Associate to Rainmaking Partner
When It’s Time to Go: Exiting Your Law Firm With Integrity
Considering Leaving Your Law Firm? Use This Process to Figure Out If It’s Time to Go
How to Become an In-House Lawyer: Five Tips for Starting Off Strong
Three Tips for Owning Your Career as a Young Lawyer
One of a Kind: A Proven Path to a Profitable Law Practice
BY JAY HARRINGTON
In today’s legal market, developing a profitable and consistent book of business requires a strategic approach. If you’re open to new ideas and are interested in growing your practice, this book is a great resource to kickstart the next stage in your career.
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