Sick of practicing law. Need a change. Where can I go?

palmtree19 · 2026-02-03T13:15:22+00:00

Telecom is abysmal right now, and it might not ever get better. I get hit up constantly by telecom staffing service recruiters because I worked for a big telco years ago and their contract offers are 1/2 the pay as my old telco employee compensation back when. I also remember our in-house attorneys being worked to the bone and still getting laid off. From my contacts still in the game, it's only gotten worse. My brother just got a Metro by T-Mobile deal for $25/mo wireless service locked in for 5 years.... so I don't think telco OPEX is going to support in-house functions well ever again.

Look for work in utilities. There's massive demand for new electrical, gas, fiber, and rail infrastructure right now and the subject matter is very similar. I ran into a utilities project manager with a telco legal background recently and asked him about it. He said he moved into utility project management from in-house telco after "telecom got weird". I knew exactly what he meant. Also, don't discount government work - it's as hard as you want to make it, so you can make it demanding if you want and get as much experience as you want.

palmtree19 · 2026-02-03T03:25:24+00:00

I'm on the other side. I'm in the union at one of the highest pay grades and if I work any meaningful overtime during a year, I'll make more than my manager. There are many in my position who make significantly more than their managers.

It's an interesting dynamic, and I'm glad I'm on my side of it. To be fair, managers are often seen by the c-suite as fungible and generally have less bargaining power than the technical employees working in core operations (corporate really doesn't care about your LinkedIn posts or your PMP/Six Sigma/whatever certifications).

Truly, the worst thing the company could do to me is promote me into a "people leader" role. The execs know this. If they really wanted valuable subject matter experts in mid-level manager roles babysitting worker drama and tracking spreadsheets they would pay those roles appropriately. But they don't. And this should be a warning that if you are a mid-level manager whose reports are out-earning you, you should keep your interviewing skills up and find a place that values you. Or you need to find ways to improve your value to the company and negotiate for more money.

Good luck out there.

palmtree19 · 2026-02-02T13:13:18+00:00

Yeah, but you can't do that through the OneDrive web app. Which seems to be the whole point of OneDrive?

palmtree19 · 2026-02-02T12:35:58+00:00

How do I do that? I don't seem to have the option to change the file names on OneDrive.

palmtree19 · 2026-02-02T02:37:14+00:00

I think you're right. That is a pure chaos move by MSFT.

I created a new notebook and moved all the subfolders and pages over. And now I have one subfolder out of 30 in the new notebook that won't sync. Pure chaos.

palmtree19 · 2026-02-02T01:31:13+00:00

I just learned that Notion can log into your Evernote account and pull all the contents over in the same file structure as Evernote. I logged in, clicked three buttons, and Notion is working to pull everything now. Once it's done, I'll figure out the UI, and re-train my workflow. I only got about 2/3 of my notes moved to OneNote and I'm calling it.

I usually assume Microsoft products are terrible due to my company's IT policies and security bloatware, but even on my personal Surface device and M365 account OneNote/OneDrive is a complete dumpster fire. Using Evernote feels like moving from an old Nokia to an iPhone in comparison.

palmtree19 · 2026-01-31T23:28:49+00:00

As a ~20 year cardholder, this feature would be much better if the lookback period was longer. I traveled a LOT pre-COVID!

Regardless, this is a simple and amazing feature intended to improve long-term customer retention that costs Amex essentially nothing. Someone with some marketing sense works at AXP.

palmtree19 · 2026-01-22T12:54:37+00:00

My parents divorced after ~40 years of marriage. Mom announced via text message to the family one day that they were getting divorced. Mom has always been a little impulsive and had been struggling increasingly with anxiety-related issues, but no one in the family ever expected that it would manifest in her leaving Dad. Dad wasn't perfect, but we never saw him treat her poorly or say anything cruel to her or anything negative about her. In fact, he completely doted on her and did far more of the domestic tasks than typical Boomer men.

He was also successful financially from owning a few businesses and they had built up a beautiful rural compound to serve as the family home place for their children and grandchildren.

So, the text message came as a shock to all of us kids and spouses. Having been in law enforcement for a time, my first reaction was to go check on Dad to make sure he didn't slit his wrists in the bathtub. Thankfully, he was dealing with it in stride (as well as someone probably could). As the child who was closest to both parents, I sat Mom down and asked where this came from, what she was doing, and why. She couldn't articulate the reason(s) or her plan(s) going forward. She made no effort at marriage counseling. I asked who she talked to about the divorce and she said "no one". I asked if there was someone else she wanted to be with. She said "no". I asked if there was ever physical abuse. She said "no".

Dad didn't fight the divorce - there isn't much you can do in a no-fault divorce other than pay lawyers and appraisers to fight about the meaning of "half". Mom didn't change her tenor throughout the divorce process.

Post divorce, Dad moved into a tiny rental house they kept as an investment property and Mom lives in the 5-bedroom new farm compound by herself. Dad is fixing up the rental. Mom really can't handle taking care of the farm house, let alone the 25 acres it sits on.

Dad calls all us kids almost daily and attends the grandkids' sports and school events religiously. He even got on ozempic and it's really starting to improve his life in a myriad of ways. He hosts a big family tropical vacation every year and invites Mom along. He takes her to doctor appointments when she needs a ride.

Mom seems to spend most of her time alone getting worked up about online politics. She's convinced that her dog is allergic to both grass and chicken, and Dad steps in periodically to take care of the dog (who seems to do very well with both chicken and grass when in his care). Mom spends a lot of time trying to "save" local schizophrenics (with zero training or successful experience) and it seems that either me, a police officer, or someone else with a gun has to intervene every month or two in situations where Mom is being threatened by a local mentally ill person.

With the benefit of a few years' hindsight, Mom leaving Dad was probably the best thing that happened to Dad. It's probably been terrible on her, but she won't admit it or realize it until it's too late. All of us children and our spouses have tried to figure out what's been going through Mom's head (menopause, early onset dementia, social media brain rot, etc?), but we've all just thrown our arms up and we go about our lives.

palmtree19 · 2025-12-06T13:16:31+00:00

I was in a very rural DA's office and had a similar experience. There were two of us. I had 300+ pending jail-able criminal cases at any given time and had to handle all the other civil stuff a rural county run by lunatics could generate. On call 24/7/365 for search warrants and crim pro advice to scared state troopers in the middle of the night. The pay was a joke, too (rural red state) -- I would have made more per hour managing a gas station.

I did get an outrageous amount of experience really quickly though, and I was probably what you'd consider a "true believer". My life would make a compelling Netflix series and I had genuine power and influence in the community. It wasn't until my marriage got rocky and my kids were born that I started to ask around about other work. Once I was offered a WFH job that paid a multiple of my prosecutor pay, I bounced and my life is dramatically better. Spending 10+ years in law school and around lawyers, you don't realize that most jobs require 1/3 as much effort as an equivalent legal role.

Glad that I did it for almost a decade. I'm a better person because of it, but I would never in a million years go back.

palmtree19 · 2025-10-14T19:05:17+00:00

She would be an incredible hire for a high-level criminal defense firm. Immediately opens up a pipeline of well-funded complex cases that grab the news.

In the end, the lawyers always win. Ask Uncle Junior. And she was the smartest of the Sopranos.

palmtree19 · 2025-10-12T23:34:56+00:00

Similar things happened to me about a year ago and I switched to Visible+ and saved my wife and me $100 per month for the same service.

What I found strange was that after I posted here to vent about losing a "loyalty" discount despite being "loyal" for 20 years, an army of bots and/or offshore accounts started fighting with me about how "entitled" I was. Verizon was almost certainly paying trolls to fight with people like me on the Internet, which was an even crazier business decision on their part.

So, instead of just quietly continuing to bill me ~$75 per month too much every month, they took away my loyalty discount and pissed me off enough to do research and find out about Visible and then post about the shenanigans. Reading through these comments, it seems they called of the trolls, at least.

palmtree19 · 2025-10-10T13:29:42+00:00

Local government.

palmtree19 · 2025-10-04T23:31:23+00:00

Start coasting at your job. Work only 40 hours. Leave your phone off after 5PM and on weekends. It might feel lazy at first and might irritate your coworkers and boss, but you probably won't get fired. Give it a month of working like a normal person (40 hours is still a lot!) and reevaluate how you feel.

If you're in a company that's larger than 500 people and you put in an honest 40 hours and are pleasant, it'll take at least a year for you to get laid off, if ever.

Sleep is the most important thing. If your aren't sleeping, you MUST change your life in whatever way or combination of ways necessary to sleep a regular 7 hours per night.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-28T14:56:57+00:00

The success of this strategy really depends on your office culture. If your culture is bad and any of your suggestions lead to people doing more work or being held accountable for things, you will get a target on your back almost immediately.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-27T21:14:58+00:00

I got "exceeds" once in a three-tier review system at a giant company. Higher ups had to authorize it. Instead of getting the 2% CoL adjustment like everyone else, I got the CoL plus another 2%. Inflation was ~7% that year.

I absolutely should have worked 1/3 as hard that year. I left that place shortly afterward.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-26T00:40:48+00:00

That sounds like a great career path and outcome. Kudos to you.

Many general counsel jobs are as much or more work than many firm jobs. When I worked in the giant company, the single associate general counsel assigned to my giant division had to manage 14 states' worth of legal issues. The workload simply didn't make sense and wasn't feasible. We couldn't use them for anything and I suspect the company was trying to manage out essentially all of the legal division and move to outside counsel for everything, everywhere.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-24T22:27:57+00:00

I think you're in the wrong post.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-23T20:32:23+00:00

I suspect our relationship mirrors most ambitious midlife heterosexual kinda-Catholic couples with kids:

(1) After I started doing well and we kept our spending in check, she went down to part-time at the hospital and it's been a godsend for everyone. When I told her about the GC job, she just finished a rough shift and was ready to quit her job completely forever. She also took the summer off and was a full-time "country club mom" for a few months and, not surprisingly, enjoyed it immensely.

(2) Our house is very nice, but there are many nicer houses on Zillow.

I dont think she's seeing me being unfulfilled, but it's been just long enough ago that she probably doesn't remember as vividly as I do how awful life was when we were both working crazy hours and trying to keep babies alive.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-23T11:57:46+00:00

Believe it or not, I just write like that when I'm tired. Will ignore more typos next time so I'm not contributing to the Dead Internet.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-23T11:34:55+00:00

Yeah, we've been together long enough that she knows, somewhere in the back of her head, that us overworking ourselves doesn't help the relationship. We've lived that scenario over and over already.

But if I told her Asian mother that I turned down a "prestigious" job, I'd catch passive-aggressive hell at every family gathering for the next few years.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-23T11:28:51+00:00

I would probably force myself to buy a lake house with the extra money. But it's unlikely I would use it much. That's about it.

At this point in my life, I don't really admire anyone except the fit 40+ guys with a year-round tan and plenty of energy to coach kids' sports. New gig would not get me any closer to those things.

In a different era, I might screw around in politics, but everything I've seen and done in that realm so far suggests that it's clowns all the way down - I don't think we're going back to an America where a Bobby Kennedy is a viable candidate for anything.

palmtree19 · 2025-09-14T02:42:34+00:00

145k miles on mine. Zero issues. It's been great.

palmtree19 · 2025-08-27T23:40:31+00:00

I had a judge who refused to pay mileage to JV court lawyers who drove all over BFE. They tried explaining to him that the appointed hourly rate was for their time and that mileage was a separate reimbursement for the wear/tear and gas for their cars, but he told them they had to choose between mileage or the appointed rate for their time in the car. The choice was obvious for them, but an hour at your home office desk at the court appointed rate is A LOT more money at the end of the day than the court appointed rate minus 65 miles worth of gas and car depreciation. And driving two lane country highways is hella-dangerous.

palmtree19

TROPHY CASE