Career Advice For Lawyers - 10 Things I Would Tell My Younger Self About Work

10 Essential Career Tips For Aspiring Lawyers & Legal Professionals

Reflecting back over a career spanning over several decades, in diverse roles ranging from counsellor, manager, lawyer, business owner, academic, and consultant, here are a few things I wish I could share with my younger self about work:

Paul Ippolito

Worry Less About Career Direction

1. Worry less about where your overall career direction is heading. Test, pivot, adapt, enjoy and go with the flow. It will turn out okay. My legal professional development has taken me from advocate, litigation lawyer, property and commercial lawyer, law firm principal, legal educator, lawyer coach, law firm consultant and who knows where to next!
   

2. It takes years to become a good manager. Trust your people. Most will do the right thing by you. Don’t micromanage them.
   

3. Only listen to feedback (positive & negative) from people you respect. Stop people pleasing as it is impossible to do.
   

4. Most of the bad things I worried about (especially in my legal career) never actually happened. What a waste of emotional energy. Accept that a large part of your working life will just be problem solving.
   

5. You do overestimate what you can do in one year, and underestimate what you can do in ten years.
   

   Trust Your Team & Avoid Micromanaging
   

6. Your health - physical, mental & emotional - it should always come first. You can make money anytime, without health - you cannot.
   

7. Take regular vacations. Long ones. Overseas.
   

8. Working for yourself as a lawyer in your own law firm is the hardest, most rewarding & best thing I have ever done.
   

9. Work/Life balance especially if you are a lawyer, is a work in progress. It is a journey, not a destination.
   

10. Enjoy your work, be passionate about it - the dollars will follow.

No, I am not retiring - I doubt I ever will!

I’m just taking a moment or two to reflect, which is something I think as lawyer and legal professionals we should all do occasionally for our legal professional development, to celebrate success and plan for the future.