Should I Leave BigLaw? Therapy for Attorneys at the Crossroads

A guide to the decision itself: what the question is usually asking, why tired and wrong-fit can overlap, what research on lawyers’ well-being points to, why staying on changed terms counts, and small tests you can take back.

Twenty minutes in the parking garage

Kelli is an illustrative composite, not a real client or a real lawyer. She’s 52, an equity partner in a real estate finance group, and it’s 6:40 on a Wednesday morning in March. She’s parked on the fourth level of her firm’s garage with the engine running and the heat on, because it’s still cold enough to see her breath. She has a closing at ten. She’s been sitting here for twenty minutes, and she hasn’t opened her laptop.

On her phone is a draft email to the general counsel of a longtime client, who mentioned over dinner last month that his team is hiring. The draft says only that she’d like to hear more. She’s rewritten the second sentence four times. Under it, in her notes app, is a list she started at midnight with two columns. The left column is long and specific. The right column says “I don’t know” three times.

Her college roommate calls on the drive in most Wednesdays, and today Kelli picks up in the garage instead. “I’m not unhappy with any one thing,” she says. “I’m good at this. I’m paid well. The people are fine. I just can’t picture doing it for another ten years, and I can’t picture not doing it either. How do people decide this?”

If that question sounds like yours, this article is about the decision itself: what “should I leave?” is usually asking, why being tired and being in the wrong place can overlap, what research on lawyers’ well-being points to, why leaving can feel like failing, why staying on changed terms counts as a real outcome, and how to run small tests you can take back. It won’t tell you whether to leave. That’s yours to decide, and a good decision can go either way.

A few related questions have their own pieces. If you’re wondering whether what you’re feeling is burnout, my guide to BigLaw burnout covers that. The money and logistics side, including pay, benefits and planning numbers, is in my piece on leaving BigLaw and planning your next move. And if you’ve already left and feel unmoored, the identity crisis after leaving BigLaw is written for you.

One note before we start. I’m a therapist, not a career counselor or an employment lawyer, and nothing here is individualized advice. The examples are illustrations of the kinds of questions worth asking.

This article is educational and developmental in nature. It isn’t a substitute for individualized care from a licensed clinician, and reading it doesn’t establish a therapist-client relationship. If you’re in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, in the United States call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Outside the US, visit findahelpline.com for local crisis resources.

What “should I leave?” is usually asking

“Should I leave BigLaw?” sounds like a yes-or-no question. It rarely is. Underneath it there are usually several smaller questions, and they don’t all have the same answer.

• Is it this job, this firm, or this profession? Leaving a practice group, leaving a firm and leaving law are three different moves.
• Is it the amount of work, or the kind of work? Too many hours and the wrong hours can feel alike from the inside.
• What would I be giving up, and what would I be protecting? Income, status, colleagues and a sense of who you are all sit on one side of the scale. Your time, health and relationships sit on the other.
• Whose voice is asking? Sometimes it’s yours. Sometimes it’s a parent’s, a mentor’s or the firm’s, and it’s worth knowing which.

When those questions stay tangled, the decision can feel impossible, and the discomfort of not deciding can start to feel like its own problem.

That pull matters for a decision like this one. It can push you to quit on a bad Tuesday just to end the tension, or to shut the question down entirely because it’s too uncomfortable to keep open. Neither is the same as deciding. What tends to help is making the smaller questions specific enough that you can answer them one at a time.

In practice, that can be as simple as writing each question on its own line and giving yourself permission to answer “I don’t know yet.” Kelli’s right-hand column wasn’t a failure. It was an honest map of what she hadn’t found out.

Tired, wrong-fit, or both

A lot of advice about leaving BigLaw sorts people into two boxes: you’re burned out, so rest, or you’re in the wrong career, so leave. It’s a tidy split, and real life usually isn’t that tidy. Being exhausted and being in the wrong place can overlap, feed each other, and change over time.

The research on burnout points in that direction too. In their 2016 review in World Psychiatry, Christina Maslach of the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley, and Michael P. Leiter of Acadia University’s Centre for Organizational Research and Development describe a model that frames burnout in terms of person-job mismatches. The model names six key areas where those mismatches show up: “workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values.” They also put the core idea plainly: “The greater is the mismatch between the person and the job, the greater the likelihood of burnout” (Maslach and Leiter, World Psychiatry).

Values are one of those six areas, not a separate diagnosis. Maslach and Leiter describe values as “the ideals and motivations that originally attracted people to their job” and write that when there’s a values conflict on the job, people end up making a trade-off between “work they want to do and work they have to do” that can lead to greater burnout.

That’s useful for a decision because it lets you look at the pieces instead of the label. A few questions to sit with:

• If the hours dropped by a third, which parts of this would still bother you?
• Where do you have real say over how you work, and where do you have none?
• Do you feel fairly treated and recognized, or are you mostly tolerated for your output?
• Does the work itself connect to anything you care about, or has that connection worn away?

Some mismatches might ease with a different group, a different role or a lighter load. Others may not move much no matter how rested you are. You don’t need to name which box you’re in before you can make progress. You need a clearer picture of which parts of the job are costing you the most, and whether any of them can change.

What research on lawyers’ well-being points to

One study is especially relevant to this question, and it’s worth being clear about what it can and can’t tell you.

In 2015, Lawrence S. Krieger, then a clinical professor of law at Florida State University College of Law, and Kennon M. Sheldon, PhD, a professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri, published “What Makes Lawyers Happy?” in the George Washington Law Review. Drawing on data from several thousand lawyers in four states, they report that external factors oriented toward money and status, including earnings and partnership in a law firm, “showed nil to small associations with lawyer well-being” while internal and psychological factors appeared to be the most important contributors to lawyers’ happiness and satisfaction (Krieger and Sheldon, George Washington Law Review).

They also report that attorneys in large firms and other prestigious positions weren’t as happy as public service attorneys, despite better grades and pay, and that junior partners weren’t happier than senior associates, despite more pay and status.

That’s a meaningful finding, and it has limits. It describes patterns across a group, measured at one point in time, in particular states. It doesn’t show that leaving a firm would make any one person happier, and it doesn’t say public service is right for you. What it can do is loosen a belief many driven women in law carry quietly: that the next title or the next number will finally make it feel worth it. If you’ve noticed that it hasn’t so far, you’re not alone, and you’re not ungrateful.

The more practical use is turning the finding into questions about your own days. When do you feel most like yourself at work? Which tasks would you do even if nobody was counting the hours? Where do you feel respected, and by whom? Your answers are better evidence about your life than any average.

Why leaving can feel like failing

For a lot of lawyers, the hardest part of this decision isn’t logistics. It’s the feeling that leaving would mean you couldn’t hack it, that everyone who warned you was right, or that all the years were wasted.

Angie is a second illustrative composite. She’s 47, counsel in an employment litigation group, and it’s a Saturday afternoon in November. She’s on the aluminum bleachers at her son’s swim meet, laptop balanced on her knees, a thermos of coffee going lukewarm next to her. The pool deck smells like chlorine and wet towels. She’s reviewing deposition notes between heats, and she missed his first race because a partner called.

In her bag is a printout of a posting for a senior attorney role at a state agency. She printed it three weeks ago. She hasn’t told anyone. “If I leave, it looks like I couldn’t make partner,” she says to her husband that night, loading the dishwasher. “And if I stay, I’m the person who missed the race. I don’t know which one I’m more afraid of being.”

Part of what makes that fear so heavy is that it isn’t only about this job. For many driven women, the pull to push through was built long before law school. If you grew up as the reliable one, the child who didn’t cause trouble, or the one whose achievements held the family’s pride, then quitting can feel like breaking a rule you never agreed to but learned early. That’s the proverbial foundation of the house you’ve built your life on: the early lessons about what makes you acceptable, lovable and safe.

When those lessons are active, a career question can set off something much older. You may notice a flood of self-criticism, a tight chest, or a sudden certainty that you’re being dramatic. None of that means the question is wrong. It means the question is touching something that deserves care, and it’s much easier to decide well when you can tell the difference between “I don’t want this” and “I’m afraid of what it would mean about me.”

Staying on changed terms is a real option

Much of what’s written about this question assumes that the brave answer is leaving. Sometimes it is. But staying on changed terms can be a considered choice too, and for some people it’s the one that fits.

What “changed terms” means will depend on your firm, your role and your bargaining power, and none of these is guaranteed to be available. Some possibilities to ask about:

• Moving to a different practice group, client mix or kind of matter.
• Stepping out of a management or committee role while keeping client work.
• A counsel or other non-partner track, if your firm has one and it suits you.
• A different arrangement for hours, availability or travel, with clear expectations on both sides.
• A planned timeline: staying for a defined period, with a specific reason, and a date to look at the question again.

Asking can be frightening, especially in a culture where wanting anything less can read as a lack of commitment. It can also be clarifying. How your firm responds to a reasonable request tells you something real about whether staying could work.

Kelli, a few weeks after that morning in the garage, is an example of holding the question open. She’s started a second draft, this one to her firm’s chair, asking for a conversation about stepping off the executive committee. She hasn’t sent that one either. The client email is still in her drafts folder next to it. She hasn’t decided which, if either, she’ll send, and for now that’s allowed.

Small tests you can take back

Big decisions feel less frightening when you can learn something before you commit. A useful rule of thumb is to run small, reversible tests in both directions before you make a move that’s hard to undo. These aren’t a formula, and they won’t produce an answer on their own. They produce information you don’t have yet.

If you’re considering leaving, you might:

• Have a coffee with two or three people who’ve made the move you’re considering, and ask what surprised them.
• Take one informational call with a recruiter or a hiring contact, with no obligation to go further.
• Read a few real job descriptions closely and notice which lines make you lean in and which make you tired.
• Spend a weekend doing something related to the work you think you’d want, and see how it feels on Monday.

If you’re considering staying, you might:

• Ask for one specific change, like a different matter, a protected evening or a step back from a committee, and see what happens.
• Have an honest conversation with a mentor or sponsor about what the next few years could look like.
• Track for two weeks which parts of your work leave you depleted and which leave you steady.

A few things these tests can’t do. They can’t tell you what you’ll feel in five years, and a single bad conversation isn’t a verdict. Pay attention to patterns across several tests, and to your body’s reactions as well as your thoughts. If you’re so exhausted that everything feels unbearable, it may help to get a little rest and support before you treat any test result as definitive.

Both/And: you can be good at this and still want something else

One of the most painful parts of this decision is the belief that you have to choose between two stories. Either you’re a strong, capable lawyer, and so you should stay, or you’re unhappy, and so you must have been wrong about yourself all along.

Both can be true. You can be excellent at this work and still not want it for the rest of your life. You can be grateful for what the firm has given you and still resent what it has cost. You can love parts of the practice and be done with the way it’s organized. Holding both doesn’t make you confused. It makes you accurate.

Angie, a month after the swim meet, is a small example of this. She’s still at the firm. She’s also had one coffee with a friend who works at the agency, and she came away with more questions than answers. When her son asked why she’d been on her laptop at his meet, she told him the truth: that she’s good at her job, that it asks a lot, and that she’s thinking about whether it’s asking too much. She hasn’t applied. She hasn’t thrown the printout away.

Letting both things be true can take the panic out of the decision. You don’t have to disprove your competence to justify wanting something different, and you don’t have to deny your unhappiness to justify staying.

The Systemic Lens: why the choice feels like it’s yours alone

When you’re stuck on this question, it’s easy to decide that the problem is your own lack of nerve, discipline or clarity. That framing leaves something out.

Large-firm practice sits on particular ground. The billable hour ties pay and standing to time and availability. Partnership tracks reward years of sustained output. Business development can depend on evenings, dinners and travel that are harder to fit around caregiving. Women who leave large firms don’t all leave for the same reasons, and research on some of those reasons is discussed in my piece on the money and logistics of leaving.

Those structures don’t only shape who stays. They shape how the decision feels. When the system treats constant availability as normal, wanting a life outside work can feel like a personal defect instead of a reasonable response to the terrain. You may feel it as a knot in your stomach on Sunday evenings, as guilt when you log off before a partner does, or as the odd relief of a canceled meeting that you’d never say out loud.

Naming that doesn’t make the decision for you, and it doesn’t mean the firm is the only factor. It does mean that some of the weight you’re carrying isn’t yours to carry alone, and that the difficulty of this choice says as much about the ground you’re standing on as it does about you.

What therapy can offer while you decide

You don’t need therapy to make this decision. Plenty of people work it out with trusted friends, mentors and time. But if you’ve been circling the question for months, or it’s tangled up with anxiety, shame or old family messages, therapy can be a place to think it through without being pushed toward either answer.

A good therapist won’t tell you to quit or to stay. What therapy can offer is room to separate the strands: what you actually want, what you’re afraid of, what belongs to you and what you absorbed from others. It can also help with the parts of this that aren’t strategic at all, like grief for a version of your life you imagined, or anger about what the work has cost.

If you’re considering therapy, it’s reasonable to ask a prospective therapist questions before you begin, including how they handle confidentiality and what its limits are. In its guidance for individuals under HIPAA, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explains that your health care provider must give you a notice that tells you how they may use and share your health information, and that you can ask for a copy at any time.

Therapy and coaching can both help during a career transition in different ways, and my piece on coaching versus therapy after a BigLaw exit explains the difference.

Deciding on your own timeline

You don’t have to decide today. You can make the question smaller, look at which parts of the job are costing you the most, notice where the fear is coming from, and run a test or two you can take back. You can let staying and leaving both remain possible while you learn more.

Whatever you choose, it’s likely to feel less like a verdict and more like a direction. And if you want company while you work it out, you don’t have to do it alone.

Warmly,
Annie.