Lawyer Career Strategy: Are You Planning or Just Reacting?

I say this to most lawyers I consult with about their job search: "Do you have a plan for where you want to be in 5, 10, 15 years time? If so, the next role we find you needs to put you on the path to that destination".

Most career moves I see aren’t part of a plan. They’re a reaction to pain.

A difficult Partner. Burnout. A stagnant promotion path. Or a message from a recruiter that lands at just the right time. The driver might be different, but the pattern is the same. It’s a response to something that’s not working, not a deliberate step toward something better.

The challenge is this: reactive decisions can solve an immediate problem, but they rarely create long-term alignment. If your only goal is to escape discomfort, the bar for the next opportunity tends to be low - “better than here” becomes the benchmark. And that’s where good lawyers end up on paths that don’t quite fit, in roles that don’t quite develop them, moving in circles rather than upwards or forwards.

Most lawyers I speak to haven’t built a clear view of what they actually want from their career - beyond the next title, the next salary bracket, or the vague aspiration to go in-house one day. That’s not a criticism. It’s the natural byproduct of a profession that teaches us to focus on doing excellent work for clients/the business, not to pause and think about our own direction. But at a certain point, that lack of strategy starts to show. Especially in today’s market, where staying still is often more risky than moving forward.

There’s a mindset shift I’m seeing in a few of the lawyers I work with - usually the ones who end up in roles they genuinely enjoy, in firms or companies where they’re still growing years later. They’re not waiting for the perfect opportunity to appear. They’re actively mapping the market. They’re reflecting on what kind of work energises them. They’re asking sharper questions about which sectors are growing, which teams are actually collaborative, which businesses invest in their legal talent rather than just extract from them.

They’re not relying on instinct or circumstance. They’re building relationships in the market before they need them. They’re not job hunting, they’re positioning. And when they do make a move, it’s not about escape. It’s about alignment.

If your only career plan is to respond when things get uncomfortable, you’ll spend your whole career fixing problems instead of building momentum. But if you treat your career with the same thoughtfulness you apply to a legal matter - identifying your goals, assessing the landscape, building relationships with the right people - then you’ll start to make moves that stack, rather than reset.

It doesn’t need to be overengineered. But it does need to be intentional.

If you haven’t had a proper conversation about where you want your career to go, maybe now’s a good time to start one.