How did you know you were ready to leave the law, even if it was just leaving a law firm?

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Haven’t left the law but left law firm life hopefully for good. I would wake up anxious, stay anxious throughout the day, and go to bed anxious. Just a constant state of anxiety and I always felt like I was surrounded by dementors all the time.

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3 years.

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Anxiety about deadlines, being on call all the time and billable hours makes me want to quit law for good. Now that I’ve saved up I want to have a small business where I will be the creator and the boss.

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Going through this now, 7y and dying to quit and start my own business

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Tea shop sounds really cool! And doing part time nonprofit is the dream. Where would you open it?

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Following. Been in firm life for 3 years and the stress of the job coupled with the anxiety of billable hours is bringing me to a breaking point. It's just not how im wired, and I realize it's not going to get any better. I feel like I'd be happier in-house (and someday i'd really like to own a bar 🍻).

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I think many of us attys have zero actually transferable skills to non-legal professions (except maybe career coach for lawyers who hate their lives...aka all of us) and that’s why we all dream about entrepreneurship! Getting into the business we should have done when we were entry levels but we’re too old now so might as well start from the top

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I spent an entire day dreaming about owning a coffee shop, and then I spent a bunch of time (that I should have been billing) researching what that would entail. Then I figured out I'd likely be working 80 hour weeks for minimum wage and I cried a lot.

The idea of being in a relaxing environment making people happy was just SO seductive.

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I regularly went to a coffee bar for a work lunch after law school and crammed for exams during law school. So I think coffee bars are cool. But I agree - I need to find a low risk high return (or just modest return) business but not sure if this even exists.

Following...

But was there like a pivotal moment or final straw or did you all just gradually come to that realizes so then took the first opportunity out of there?

Billable hour is evil. You burn yourself out to overactive and get depressed if you don’t.

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I like the coffee house idea. I went to coffee house to study for my bar exams and law school exams. That’s the old days - I saw one coffee house was owned by a former stock trader but unfortunately it was closed later.

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