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Hi, everyone.

I’ve recently noticed a pattern where more and more lawyers and law graduates are taking up non-legal roles. They’re not even the kind of non-legal roles that lawyers traditionally used to take up, like the civil services or policy research. They’re completely different. I know people who have switched to marketing, strategy roles in startups, data science, content creation, HR, risk analysis, consulting, joining non-law family businesses, etc.

While of course it’s a personal choice, I’m still wondering why so many people are making the switch. Moreover, these people take a risk of competing with IIT/IIM/DU grads who are preferred by organisations because of how hiring practices have been in India. I wanted to know how and why people are increasingly making that switch, and if any have succeeded in landing good roles.

The primary reasons I can think of are-

1) Money- let’s face it, the money that you make as a lawyer isn’t too much. It pinches especially if you’re a driven and intelligent person doing their best and putting in the hours while people from other fields that you know are earning as their starting salary, what you know you can only dream of making after 15-20 years. Even in T1 and T2 firms, the amount of money you get is not enough of a compensation for the work that you put in (imo, if your opinion differs, I respect it)

2) Ease of life- while other jobs may also require you to clock in insane number of hours, the toil that comes with courts/tribunals poses a different kind of exhaustion.

3) Extent of responsibility- the level of responsibility that is placed on your shoulders is immense, since you’re charged with protecting and upholding the law. There are other professions of course that have just as much or more responsibility (such as medicine, the armed forces, etc.) but there are also jobs, which I’m not saying are easy, but operate in the domains that don’t have obligations whose breach can have severe repercussions, but still get paid relatively well. It could be appealing to consider those.

4) Interest- I know that a lot of people are passionate about the law, and wouldn’t do anything else. But there are also people who don’t really find it that interesting, and took it up because they had to take up something. Particularly people who work in areas of law that don’t have much room to become interesting.

This is just a general observation with some speculations. Let me know what you guys think, and if anyone is considering something similar/has thought of doing it but dropped the idea.