If you want to make a lot of money while living authentically, you should probably stop practicing law.
Most people who choose to become attorneys have a desire to be immensely helpful to others. They probably stood up for kids being picked on. Or they were immensely helpful to parents and teachers. They grew up loving the good feeling of knowing they’ve *helped* someone today.
(I love helping. It’s good stuff. Drink that Kool-aid.)
Along the way to adulthood, most people, who later become lawyers, realized that they could be even more helpful with power and a title behind them. Into adulthood they also realized being helpful is great but they have to pay the bills and would rather be comfortable doing it.
In comes the great idea to apply for law school and become an attorney. Except practicing law in the “big money”-making way often has nothing to do with being helpful in the way that they’d hoped. Instead, they’re “making the rich, richer” “fighting over pettiness” and ignoring the struggles of the underdog. In fact, these lawyers may be on the other side of the courtroom burying said, the underdog.
Stacy started her own law firm not too long ago. She was tired of pouring her life energy into helping well-off people “get one over” on their business partners, their soon-to-be ex-spouses, and even their government. Everyone wanted a loophole and had a vendetta. Everyone wanted to prove they were right in the fight.
Her firm didn’t seem interested in helping the people who had a just cause: fathers who were wrongfully separated from their children, working people who were being scammed, ex-offenders who just needed a clean slate to get their life back.
After a few years, Stacy got fed up with giving her life energy to petty. Her inner circle knew she was meditating on starting her own practice. She had met a few potential clients who said they would definitely pay for her to help them. Eventually, with the encouragement of her friends, Stacy left the stressful, hourly-billable world behind and hung her shingle. What came next, you wouldn’t expect...
She had NO clients. Stacy couldn’t figure out where to find people who were willing (and able) to pay.
She hustled. She tried networking, asking for referrals, posting on social media, even standing outside courtrooms, looking official, hoping pro se litigants would ask for her help.
Nothing worked. She watched her savings dwindle away, with no client income to replenish it, and began regretting her decision to leave her firm.
Even though Stacy knew it was possible to build a successful practice while doing fulfilling work, what Stacy didn’t know is that she wasn’t in the right headspace to do it. Despite watching other attorneys successfully hang their shingle and build a practice, despite her years advocating and helping clients, and despite her sizeable savings to float her until she “made it”, Stacy could not take the right actions for her business
until she:
1. Inspected her Shadow and
2. Integrated those characteristics that had been hibernating in her Shadow for decades.
Stacy didn’t know she had to almost become a COMPLETELY different person in order to fill her new role, and that her Ego was going to FIGHT HARD to keep her the same.
Without a solution to her mindset issues, Stacy soon found herself pounding the pavement looking for another law firm job. She had to secure this job, even though she KNEW she couldn’t stomach the idea of trading her life energy for dollars, helping people who didn’t really need her help. But...she had to eat.
At the end of the day, Stacy felt being a lawyer meant either living inauthentically or being poor. She had become a lawyer to help people but that part of her wasn’t being fulfilled either with the money-centric law firm or on her own.
There actually is a third option Stacy didn’t know about. She didn’t have to choose between authenticity and the successful practice of law. She could have both. She could live authentically, practice law successfully, and make really good money IF she learned how to dive into her authentic self, explore her Shadow, pull out the resources she already had within her, and confidently apply them to reach her goals.
She knew all the actions and processes she had to take to build her successful law practice but she was unaware of the mindset piece.
And even if someone had let her know her mindset was the issue, how exactly would she go about it?
When you’re fighting for a goal, Shadow Work is KEY.
I’m still offering my time and services in exchange for building my research data on this experiment I’m conducting. If you’d like to explore your dreams and challenges and get some mindset help, while feeling good about providing valuable feedback for my project, please reply to any one of my emails to connect with me.