I Quit My Job as a Corporate M&A Lawyer

hey guys welcome back to the channel so if you've clicked through this video then you already know what we're talking about today i quit my job as a corporate lawyer there's a lot of story background and context over the last few years that ultimately led to me making this decision which i want to share with you in today's video this may come as a bit of a surprise given that a lot of the content we've made so far details our experience working as corporate lawyers in hong kong and i'll get into all of that in today's video but first things first similar to how m took you guys on a literal journey as she told the story behind why she ultimately decided to quit her job i'll be doing the same and our journey today starts in the airport [Music] and now here i am in sunny california visiting m side of the family which is something that's possible in part due to the fact that i've quit my job but before i get into the reasons why i left i do need to preface this video with a few things first as a lawyer in a commercial law firm i had a pretty good situation i ended up at a firm with a really good culture where people were encouraged to have a life outside of work as much as possible i ended up in a practice area that i found really fascinating where i had work that i really enjoyed doing and probably most importantly i ended up working with people that i actually genuinely liked i had a boss who i still maintain a personal relationship with to this day and colleagues both senior and junior that i worked with on several matters and happened to get along with outside of work on top of this my firm had one of the most flexible work from home policies of any hong kong law firm that i know of and that was something that was really important to me so honestly speaking all things considered i had it pretty good now this doesn't mean that i liked every single person that i worked with or that there weren't hard times because there definitely were i think the point is more that the issues that i had which i'll be talking about this video were more linked to the profession as a whole rather than my specific firm the reasons why i quit my job which i'll get into in today's video are a mixture of personal reasons and just my thoughts towards the legal industry as a whole i developed these thoughts by just being in the industry and being around other people and seeing how the business operates and i wanted to share them all today in case they're helpful for anyone to hear the second thing is that i want to share my honest thoughts because a lot of people that i've spoken to in the legal industry or in other professional services jobs have actually had the same thoughts or have shared similar experiences to the ones that i'll be describing now that's not to say that everyone's had the same thoughts or that everyone's had the same experience or that even if they did they would want to leave the industry but our mission on this channel has always been to try to provide as honest of a take as possible for people that are either in the industry or thinking of trying to get into the industry so i wanted to keep it as real as possible with you in today's video so one of the main reasons that i decided to quit my job and take a break from the legal industry is something that's kind of inherently linked to the profession which is that you're always on the clock to some degree and you're kind of accountable to your clients at all times let me explain going into the profession i kind of had this idea that a transactional lawyer was someone that was just brought in to help a client do its deals and draft its documents and that is true to some degree but the other side of it which isn't really so advertised is that oftentimes when you're working very closely with a company as your client you kind of get really involved with everything they're doing and you kind of end up supporting them in many other ways in some cases you kind of end up in a situation where your job is just to help keep your client as organized as possible so that a deal can actually get done if there are internal things that they need to take care of that you need to keep them on top of this became pretty obvious to me as i got more senior and started to get matters where i was the person in charge or i was the person that was running the file i'll give you an example of what i'm talking about so one time i was working on a file where i basically called my client contact every single day from monday to thursday reminding them that we had a deadline early the next week and that there were a number of documents that they said they would have no problem taking care of and every time i brought it up the client contact would reassure me that everything was under control and that it would be taken care of in time well fast forward to friday of that week i got a call from my client at around 9 30 p.m kind of in a panic when the contact was leaving from the office and realized that the work just hadn't been done as a result of this i kind of urgently had to cancel all of my friday night and weekend plans and had to stay in and help draft the documents and because the deadline was early next week and we needed the client to confirm a number of details in those documents we had to work pretty much all night to get the documents to the client by saturday morning for their review and input and thank goodness i had a fantastic trainee with a really good attitude because this was one of those situations where it wasn't a one-man job and i really needed his help and this kind of occurrence wasn't really an uncommon occurrence either i mean this was something that kind of happened to me more and more as i got more and more senior and got more responsibilities as a junior lawyer some of this stuff isn't super obvious i mean in this example i did have to ask a trainee to help me because it really wasn't a one-man job but a lot of the times when you get requests like this as an associate you kind of just take care of it by yourself because that's a lot quicker or just do it because you don't want to interrupt someone else's weekend the issue is i didn't really see an end in sight for this for at least the next few years because senior associates and to a large degree even partners still kind of had to deal with all this kind of stuff in the legal industry you're kind of expected to be on call to the client at all times and that's the unfortunate reality of the situation and there is this notion that lawyers get paid by the hour which is true for some practices and for some practice areas but in transactional work it's very often the case that clients expect fixed fee packages so you don't necessarily make more money by doing all this extra work like in my example and this isn't really a thing of their being good clients or bad clients it's kind of the case where even the best clients who are super appreciative of our time and our work kind of come to us for urgent situations or where they really need help and in those situations it is expected for us as lawyers to basically drop everything we have and do what we can to help the client so this is all the way for me to say that personally i basically wanted more control over my schedule and didn't really want my schedule to be dictated by the needs of others as a professional services provider now i'll also mention that i actually have a lot of respect for people that stick around and make this their career that find a way to make client services work for them with their lifestyle but it really wasn't for me and i kind of realized over time that as someone with a lot of interest and a lot of things that i wanted to pursue outside of work not being able to meaningfully schedule those things with any sense of consistency or confidence really started to take a toll on me and that brings me to the second reason i quit my job which is that i wanted to find something to do for work that felt a bit more meaningful to me being a professional services provider like a lawyer you're kind of a hired gun clients come to you when they have a transaction or a deal or just something they need your help with and you're there to help them facilitate whatever it is and help them get it done now there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself and there's definitely an important role that commercial lawyers have to play in transactions but at times when it felt like i was putting my physical and mental well-being on the line just to get a deal done by pulling consecutive seven day weeks late nights all-nighters it definitely didn't help that i didn't feel a strong sense of ownership over my work product and didn't feel that really strong sense of satisfaction when a deal made it across the finish line because at the end of the day i felt like a facilitator and not an instigator now there are a couple of exceptions to this first off when lawyers get a bit more senior like at the council or partner level they tend to develop deeper relationships with their clients i saw this in my own team and the partner that i worked for had great relationships with clients but i didn't really want to feel like i had to stick around for five or ten more years to potentially make partner before i started to get those deeper relationships with my clients and felt a bit more invested in the work the second thing is that i do think that i found some sense of job satisfaction from just trying to do the best job that i could with everything that i did we always try to do the best job possible because at the end of the day what little control you do have is really grounded in just trying to deliver the best work product possible and when you do that you do feel a sense of accomplishment and pride clients often appreciated that we would go above and beyond with everything that we did and there was definitely a sense of accomplishment knowing that we put out a really good product but at the same time that level of satisfaction wasn't really there for me and it kind of declined over time by contrast and just as an example i think what we've been doing on youtube so far has kind of shown me how something can be more meaningful to me we started making youtube videos for two main reasons firstly because we wanted to create a resource for law students and give a more transparent look in the legal industry and second because we wanted to make a resource for working lawyers on how to balance lifestyle productivity and nutrition which are all things that we care about very much and have spent several years figuring out for ourselves and the fulfillment we get when we receive feedback from you guys or when we just figure something out in our videos and up the quality in some way has really blown us away it's been super worth it staying up late to edit videos or to work an extra few hours trying to get that text effect to work exactly the way we want it to because we do feel that level of satisfaction with our finished product and i think in a way that kind of helped me realize that there was something that i was missing from all the work that i was doing with my legal career and finally it's kind of worth mentioning that the global situation of the last few years has kind of changed the profession in a really big way and it's kind of accelerated my timeline to quit my job a few years ago when we transitioned to work from home as a mandatory measure we were given laptops or other means to basically ensure that we could do our jobs fully while also being at home this is a really good thing in many respects and as i mentioned my firm had a very generous work from home policy even after it was no longer mandatory which i benefited greatly from over time since the line between being in the office and being at home started to blur more and more so did the notion of the idea of being off work when i first started working there was definitely still a notion of getting off work and going home for the day and of course you still got online on the weekends or at night if there was something urgent to take care of but for all intents and purposes when you left for the day you wouldn't really be doing substantial work if you could avoid it over the last few years though there's definitely been a bit of a decline in that separation and it definitely didn't really feel that much different being at home than it did being at work i routinely got emails from clients pretty much expecting things to be actioned right away and while partners didn't really expressly ask for things to be done right away there was this culture shift in that people were online like all the time so it did feel strange to not action things right away or to respond to emails as soon as i saw them even if they came in pretty late and at the same time travel restrictions coupled with the fact that i wasn't really going out and spending money due to the global situation meant that i was able to save more money and also work in my personal finances a bit to build a better runway for myself after quitting so that's kind of it i quit without having another job lined up and i'm just pursuing other things in the interim i'll mention briefly that at the moment of course we'll be continuing to make content on youtube and at the same time i've been managing a personal portfolio of assets which includes crypto assets and i've also been doing some personal advisory work on the side even though m and i are no longer lawyers we did spend a combined 10 plus years in the industry and in that time we spend a lot of it trying to figure out little hacks for productivity lifestyle and nutrition which really helped us get by so it's definitely still in our plans to share as much of that as possible with you guys in our videos we will also address more of what we're up to in our upcoming q a video which will drop two weeks from the date of this video in that video we'll be responding to questions that we get asked very often and any other questions that you guys might have so if you have any questions please do leave them in the comments and we'll do our best to respond to them and finally i wanted to close with one last thought the idea that i had to quit my job initially came to me when i read the four hour work week by tim ferriss when i was still a trainee lawyer there were certainly a lot of takeaways for me in that book as well as some things that maybe didn't resonate that much but the one thing that really stood out to me was that we live in a world where time and flexibility seem to be the most scarce resources in a sense an ideal dream pattern for people in our generation might be to work for periods of time and then take breaks or mini retirements provided they're adequately prepared for and it just felt like the right time to take a break both in terms of where i was at in my career and where we're at in our personal lives it's always possible to get a job as a lawyer again but for now i wanted to take a step back and see where that would take me in my personal journey thanks a lot for watching guys m also made a video on why she quit her job which i'll link to here and check out this video for a video that the youtube algorithm thinks that you'll like monday to thursday reminding them to base oh my god the joy of filming in the great outdoors

Channel: Em and Lloyd

Views: 275,879

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Id: uOJmamo9Lng

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022