Leave Law Behind with Casey Berman [Episode 26] Wired For Success TV

~ Wired for Success TV ~Mastering the 7 Areas of Life

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Presented by

Melanie Gabriel & Beryl Thomas

[Episode 26]

Leave Law Behind with Casey Berman

http://www.wiredforsuccess.tv/

Leave Law Behind with Casey Berman [Episode 26] Wired for Success TV

[0:00:11]

Melanie: Welcome to another episode of http://www.wiredforsuccess.tv. I’m Mel Gabriel and as usual with me is my co-host Beryl Thomas. Hello Beryl.

Beryl: Hi.

Melanie: And today our guest is going to be Casey Berman. Casey trained as a lawyer but increasingly found that it was not a fulfilling career and so he decided to leave law behind and let up the entrepreneur that had been lurking somewhere inside him.

He had fun building his various businesses and realized that many other legal people were also frustrated with their work in some way. So he founded Leave Law Behind, a US consulting practice that helps lawyers who are unhappy in their work to discover what they would much prefer to do with their lives and coach them as to how they can take practical steps to get there with the goal of creating something that is more fun and fulfilling.

Today, Casey is going to share with us his reinvention story and how he’s working with others to help them past their fears and concerns about leaving law behind.

So welcome Casey and thank you for joining us today.

Casey: Well thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Melanie: So Casey, tell us what actually led you into law in the first place and tell us also what was going on inside you that told you that it was time to leave law behind.

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Casey: Two very good questions. Thank you very much. I’m honored to be here. I’m flattered to tell my story and take this time. So I really appreciate it and I think you guys are doing just some great work with Wired for Success, so I’m very happy to be here.

Beryl: Thank you.

Casey: What led me to be a lawyer was I – you know, Jewish kid, San Francisco, grandfather was a lawyer. I didn’t like blood so medical school was written out. I wish there was something more definite I could point to where I visited 15 law schools and had a checklist and did some thorough due diligence. But I think I really spent more time back in the 90s on following sports or looking at tech gadgets than I really did even thinking about law school.

I mean I’m saying that tongue and cheek but really – and this is what I see with a lot of the people that I work with. There’s really no – how do I say it? With many law students and attorneys, what we find is a surprising lack at critical thinking when it came to going to law school.

I’m here in San Francisco and I wait to University of California, Berkeley undergrad and then University of California Hastings, which is like UCSF, University of California San Francisco Law School essentially and I went to go speak to my alma mater.

There was a woman there, a law student, second year and she said – we were talking about why you went to law school and she said that one reason she went to law school was because a lawyer had helped her family when she was younger with some family issue.

Tongue and cheek I said, “Well if that person who had helped you was a veterinarian, do you think you might have gone to vet school?” She laughed but what really showed is that many people are influenced by family or things they don’t like i.e. blood or other people in their lives.

So I was one of those where I just really didn’t even think about going to law. Like I said, Jewish kid and spoke well and moved my hands and well, let’s go to law school and I can laugh about it now but you really think of the


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irony of the situation. Three years at least in America. Tons of money and loans and so on and you’re not even really thinking about this decision.

So I’m feeling a little sad even thinking about it. What happened is when I went to law school, I was too young. I was 22. I should have taken a break. It was a two-way street. I definitely didn’t put my all into it. Where I really enjoyed my undergrad and did well there, law school I was kind of middle of the pack and your confidence takes a hit and there’s not a lot of mentoring. There’s kind of trying to window out [0:04:28] [Phonetic] people.

So it was a tough environment, tough being relative. Then when I got out, certain things fell into my lap. I had friends who gave me jobs, provided me opportunities in the law and they just never really clicked and I think what happened in 2000, a friend of mine who was in tech, being out here in San Francisco provided me an opportunity and I would like to think I did something about it. I did a few informational interviews but really just getting out there, being around people who are unlike other lawyers or other law students. Put me into a circle of folks intact and that really – over a beer, he said, “Hey, why don’t you come do business development and legal affairs for this small startup.”

I had no idea what it meant. I knew what I didn’t like, the law I was practicing. I said, “Sure, let’s do it.” So since then, then I was in-house counsel for a software company and I really enjoyed it. It was very good but had a lot of responsibility. But I think what really came to answer your second question was I found the law very reactive.

The business development guys, this is now 2000 through 2005. I’m more experienced. I’m working with attorneys. I know what I’m doing, a lot of software licensing. But I found that it just was very reactive. The business development guys, the sales guys.

The CEO would have great ideas and they would come to me and I would have to either say, “We can’t do it. It violates such and such,” or “Our resellers will get very mad if we do that.”

So I didn’t like the reactive. I, Casey, wanted to do deals. I wanted to create things and so I left.


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Melanie: So it sounds like you felt that you were missing out on all the fun.

Casey: I was missing out on all the fun. That’s it. Really, that’s exactly what it was.

Beryl: And sounds like you had creativity inside you which you were having to suppress. There wasn’t an outlet for that within law.

Casey: That’s exactly right and I didn’t go the traditional firm route. One, they wouldn’t hire me and two, I just knew – one thing I did know was that the firm route wasn’t something that I wanted. But even as an in-house counsel, and I wrote an article on AbovetheLaw.com about considering an in-house counsel and part two is coming up this coming Friday.

But even as an in-house counsel, which is kind of “the alternative way to practice,” an exciting way to practice, even then it can be very stifling. You’re the one at the end of the month December 31st of every year, every end of each quarter trying to close deals. The sale guys is trying to get his commission and you’re the one negotiating agreements.

It became mundane. It became almost like customer service. Kind of a thankless job in many ways and for some people, that’s great. For me though I wanted to get out there. I wanted to create deals and I think just my personality – really what it came down to, my personality was not really in alignment with the duties of an in-house counsel. It took me four years to realize that.

Melanie: Go on, Beryl. Go on.

Beryl: I just hear you talk about you wanted to create deals. It sounded like you wanted a bit more excitement. You wanted a bit more kind of cut and thrust going on there.

Casey: Yeah.

Beryl: What did you do with that kind of feeling inside you? Where did you go with that?


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Casey: No, it’s a great point, and thanks for bringing that up. One thing that I write about a lot is your unique genius, which isn’t my term. But your unique genius is – how I described it are the skills and strengths and passions, which is know is an overused word. But the things you enjoy and really identifying those things and building your career and your personal and professional life based on this.

Not exclusively on those but the idea is that the things you’re good at, you’re going to enjoy, are going to come naturally to you and can really lead into satisfaction, fulfillment and a lot of other things and build your confidence.

So when I say deals, Beryl, what I’m really saying is I like people. I enjoy talking. I enjoy schmoozing. I like to touch people’s shoulders and elbows when I talk to them. I like to laugh. That’s my type and so when it comes to business and making money, I think something that – and now I’m getting very touchy-feely. I know I’m in California but I like to collaborate. I like to – no one is ever 100 percent satisfied with the deal. There’s always someone who thinks well, I left too much on the table.

But I like to create things and a lot of in law is not creating or it’s protecting or it’s chiseling away at the other one. So when I say deals, really what it means is I like people and when I was negotiating agreements, even the transaction is not litigation. It’s not that adversarial. I was kind of handling the boring part of the deal. I wasn’t meeting the people. I was just on the phone at the end trying to close the deal, which is pretty cool but I don’t think it was totally in line with my personality which is actually liking people.

So many lawyers will say to me, “Wait a minute Casey. You want to know if I like details or if I like to schmooze or if I like to wear a nice suit. Why are we even talking about these questions?” I’m not saying base your career on whether or not you like to dress well but I am saying base your career choices and your thoughts on those unique inherent skills that are inside of you that you enjoy.

Do you like people? Do you not? Do you like to lead? Do you like to advice? I mean let’s look at Oprah. What does Oprah do? She listens and she talks and she makes people feel comfortable. I mean we see what she has done. She’s a huge success. Yes, she has a business mind and can


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lead and so on. But I really like to point here like I really thought deal making was really another word that I needed to get out of the office and meet people and put things together. Does that make sense?

Beryl: Sure, sure.

Casey: OK.

Beryl: You along the way have found other attorneys, lawyers, whatever you term them, who feel the same way and that has led you into creating another business for yourself.

Casey: That’s right. So I created another business. My wife doesn’t know how many businesses I have going on now. I don’t even think I know. But yeah, real quickly, the story was back in – the recession in 2008 and 2009, it even got worse here in San Francisco as well and lawyers and attorneys – we use the word interchangeably – got hit extremely hard.

Where many of the recessions early 80s, early 90s, the law bounced back and those jobs came back and that it was cyclical. In this case, those jobs aren’t coming back any longer. It’s a very sad realization but it’s one that we had to make. The law firm model is a little bit broken here at least in America.

So, many of those jobs are not coming back. In ’09, at UC Hastings where I went, they had an alternative career, do something else with your law degree type of speaker series. I spoke. I’m very close with the career services there and where I expected five people to come, there were 55 people.

I did a presentation called Leave Law Behind and I was just amazed at the pain that people felt from I don’t want to be a lawyer, from I hate my life, from I feel totally disconnected, from I don’t know where to go next and I’m afraid that the guarantee of a law job is no longer a guarantee.

So that was in June of ’09. In September of ’09, I put together a dinner and invited people. I had 20 people show up and we just brainstormed about ideas and the pain they had and then started with clients. I’ve been blogging since early 2010 and now I’m in the midst of writing a course in a


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book. I’ve got a few clients that I’m working with now and I’m at a point now where it would really be a passion and a hobby and the need is there to turn it into a business. So it’s very exciting. It keeps me up at night but it’s very exciting right now.

Beryl: So let’s just imagine now that you got a call from somebody who says, “Well, I’m in law. I’m earning a good amount of money, which I need because I have a lot of expenses, a wife, et cetera, but I’m unhappy in my work and I don’t know what else I could do because this was all I’m trained to do.”

Casey: That’s right.

Beryl: Where would you start with them, Casey?

Casey: Well it’s a great question and Beryl, I will provide all my information obviously at the end and any of your listeners and viewers can reach out to me directly via email. I reply to all of them.

I hear that all the time, particularly out here in California where it’s very expensive and besides health issues, there’s really nothing that makes many middle, upper class people, particularly many attorneys, professionals more anxious than money.

Running out of money is a fear that many of us have and I’ve never been one of those coaches that say, “Follow your passion and just leap and then that will appear.” It’s irresponsible in many ways.

The first thing I would say is leaving law takes a long time, six months, nine months, twenty-four months, three years. It takes a very long time and if you’re not prepared for it to take a long time, then – let me put it this way. You need to be prepared for this to take a long time.

But what I would say is the first thing I do, I have a few steps when I talk with potential clients, is we do address money and many folks have an idea about money on the back of an envelope or in their head. I actually require them to take that Excel or some other spreadsheet and really lay out the amount of money they have, the amount of money they need each month.


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We really get into the details because when they say they spent X amount a month or they have issues with money, I don’t believe them. I don’t think they even know to be honest with you and many attorneys don’t even use Excel. They use Word and PowerPoint. They’re not very familiar with a spreadsheet.

Some do. Many don’t. So the first thing is I think we do get to handle all our money and believe it or not, oftentimes we look at their money situation and after we’re talking, they actually feel better about it. They realize they have more money in the bank. I’m not saying we need to cut expenses. Don’t order that latte any longer. It’s not that type of analysis. It’s more of they realize they have more money in the bank. They realize they have support from parents or family or friends.

They realize a spouse that they didn’t want to talk to will actually cover them for a while. When you do this analysis which takes a few weeks, it can be a hard thing to talk about money. Once you talk about money, you get a better idea and you actually ironically feel more confident in leaving the law after you’ve talked about the money, believe it or not.

The next step then is what we go to is then we start with getting over the fear of law school. Many folks besides money, they say, “Well I’ve spent all this time in law school. It’s a return on investment. I can’t leave now.” I say OK. But you’re just going to keep doing what you’re doing.

So when you’re ready to get over the fact that you spent all this time in law school, then call me because in many ways, you need to cut your losses. Some folks are already over it. They say, “I’m done. I don’t need law school to direct my future any longer.” But many still feel that they don’t want to disappoint their grandmother.

They’re still paying their student loans, why they go to law school. We need to get through that.

Beryl: And it’s a status. Just to interrupt you is there’s some status around not being a lawyer anymore, the loss of face.

Casey: That’s right and that’s kind of the fourth step I get to. The third step is unique genius, kind of focusing on what you’re really good a. And if you


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do want to leave the law, what is it you’re good at? Let’s let that inform the steps you take. I like to talk but I don’t like to be adversarial. So don’t do litigation. Let’s put you in business development.

Oh, I mean those types of things where many lawyers, when they go to career services, they’ve got litigation, transaction or academic and I just want to shape all the career services people and say, “There’s so many more jobs out there for these highly skilled people. Why are you bucketing them into three areas?” It blows my mind.

So we examine that, the unique genius and really what your skills are and what you enjoy. God forbid you should do something that you enjoy and that you’re good at and then the fourth step Beryl is getting to that point. There’s an interesting discussion I have with the client where her identity of being a lawyer was very important to him. She liked to talk about it. She liked to say it. It brought her status and so she would say at cocktail parties or barbecues or so on, she really liked – she had issues with leaving the law because she wouldn’t be able to call herself a lawyer any longer.

I asked her. I said, “When was the last time you were in a barbecue?” She works Saturdays and Sundays. When was the last time you went to a cocktail party? She couldn’t name it.

I said, “What is the point of sort of retaining this identity that you can brag about at a cocktail party or barbecue if you’re working so hard that you can’t go?” So to your point then, the fourth step really Beryl is looking at why our identity of being an attorney is so important to us. Disconnecting a bit from that and then finding other identities. High tech entrepreneur, CEO, COO, VP [0:17:52] [Indiscernible], VP of Operations. I mean there’s a lot of other pretty good titles that gain a lot of respect that you could latch your identity on to that are out there.

Then the fifth step is getting out there. It’s a lot of work. It’s informational interviews. It’s pounding the pavement. It’s continuing to be courageous and examine your unique genius about who you are. That means talking to your parents and to your friends and to your friends. What am I really good at? What do people compliment me on? What do people come to me for advice? What would I do for free?


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You know, those sorts of things. So that’s sort of my steps. Money, get over law school, unique genius, the battling identity and then actually getting out there. Those are kind of the steps and it’s fluid. You go back and forth. But with those sorts of steps, it provides that framework but then there’s just tons of hard work, informational interviews, coffees with people, reaching out, doing self-therapy, things along those lines.

Beryl: But presumably, you’re with them every step of the way as a coach, as a mentor. You’re supporting them. They’re not doing this on their own, are they? That’s the hard bit. I know in building this business, we’ve had a mentor and it has been incredibly powerful for us to have that support, somebody always telling you, you can do this. I believe in you and these are the next steps.

To go in baby steps because I think that’s what you’re saying. Expect it to take a long time although even if it was two years, that’s relative compared to being like 40 years in a career that you hate.

So that’s relative but if you’re helping them through these baby steps where – because as we talked about this fear, and they need to replace fear with confidence, don’t they? And that can only happen as they move through these steps and they see the changes happening and they will feel it inside. Is that what happens?

Casey: It’s exactly right. It’s all about baby steps. I write a lot about that and that’s a term that most people giggle when I say it but you need to take two years to do it. You can’t do step 97 until you’ve done the 96 steps up to that. They grow on each other.

You’re exactly right and I’m with them every step of the way and not only that. I want to build a business with them. I want to make money with them. So I don’t look at this like a patient-doctor relationship and then once the door closes, we nod at each other on the street and don’t acknowledge each other, right?

If they’ve got a great idea, let’s raise money and do it. One thing I’m noodling on is to create my own debt fund where I raise money and then lend. Kind of like micro payments. Think of Kiva for disgruntled attorneys but the idea is OK, Mr. and Mrs. Attorney. You can’t get off your seat. You


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need to be motivated. Here’s $750 at a reasonable rate. Let’s build that website. Let’s go to that therapy, whatever we need the money for to get you going and that excuse, “Well, I don’t want to spend $1000 to build a website,” that excuse is gone.

I’m not sure if making money off micro payments is difficult but that’s something that I’m noodling on. So to your payment Beryl, I’m with them every step. Not only that, if they got a great idea, let’s partner together and turn this into a real live business.

Beryl: Yeah. Sorry, Mel. Your turn.

Melanie: No, finish that thought.

Beryl: Well, I’m just thinking people like to belong to a community and if they start moving out of their community where they belong and they’re respected and all that kind of thing of law, they need to move into – they want to be part of something else and there can be those kind of wilderness, that wilderness space.

But what I’m hearing from you is that actually you help them through that because you’re going to start – I imagine you have a fabulous network. I mean there’s no way you wouldn’t have a fabulous network, Casey, just because you talk and you share.

So I imagine that the other thing that you would bring to the table, you know people and you would know people who they could then trust because it’s like branding by association. If you know these people, and this lawyer is trusting you, then they could trust that person as well to go and talk about a website or whatever the next step is.

Casey: That’s right. Without a doubt. I’m in the process of creating some online forms. I’m thinking about using Facebook. There are some other ones but to connect people from all over the world together so that it’s not just me. They’re also connecting directly together. There’s also in the UK. EscapetheCity.org I think is also – or dot com.

Beryl: Oh, yeah.


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Casey: Escape the City and there’s another one around pinstripes [0:22:44] [Phonetic]. The name escapes me but Escape the City I think is a community that I know a lot of folks on your side of the Atlantic could reach out to. But you’re absolutely right.

First of all, I want everyone to know, all your viewers that there are so many like-minded people, attorneys, disgruntled, unhappy out there that for anyone, attorneys, or even professionals but attorneys who think they’re alone, they’re not. There’s so many who want to. I get four or five emails a day who want to leave, who are unhappy or maybe they don’t want to leave the law but they just want to leave it the way they’re practicing now and want to do it in a different way.

There are all of these different shades. But yeah, when someone contacts me, they’re contacting a whole network of people that I have. Many are out here but they’re all over the States. There’s a person in Hong Kong, Philippines, Europe and for example, there’s one woman who is a friend of a friend and she and I had been talking for like two years. She has taken a long time to even think about her unique genius, much less leave the law.

She came to a talk I did a month and a half ago that was very well-attended and finally I put her in touch with a guy named Gabe Roffman [0:23:55] [Phonetic] who I’ve written about. He was a construction litigator, probably one of the more boring angles of law and now he has kind of crossed that chasm, the wilderness like you were talking about and he’s in tech.

He does consulting on sales force integrations. He didn’t know how to spell sales force eight months ago but he always had an entrepreneurial tech kind of scrappy mindset about him and we worked together. He pounded the pavement for two years doing hourly contract work but what that did is his wife supported him for a while as he was making probably half of his salary.

But what it enabled him to do was go on tons of informational interviews. It enabled him to research. It really gave him a flexible schedule and he wasn’t making money. He was doing law. He was doing document review.

So I put this other woman in touch with him and they had coffee in person and they met and I am now in the background and the two of them are


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sharing ideas and she emailed me to say that Gabe gave her a plan for her to now take and potentially leave the law.

So it gets to a point where you don’t even need me any longer. Other people who kind of will evangelize forward and help each other out.

Beryl: And it’s empowering for them, isn’t it?

Casey: It’s phenomenal. I’m actually going to start some videos with Gabe because he has done just fantastic work about how to refashion his resume, how to take legal stuff he did and obviously not lie but turn it into – and repackages it so that a tech company would say, “Wait a minute, those aren’t just legal skills. Those are skills I want.”

He did a presentation online of who he was, with music to it, so they saw him not just as a lawyer trying to break in but they saw him as a natural person who could help. He did a phenomenal job. So I want to incorporate some of his real tangible learnings into my course so people can say, “Wait a minute. I can take the work that I did as a lawyer and turn it into something else.”

Beryl: So people have some very strong skills, don’t they in law? This is what I think you’re saying. And of course when we’re really good at something, we don’t recognize the – it’s just something we do. So that part of your job as well, isn’t it? To open their minds up, to look in the mirror of who they really are and that set of skills that you say are very, very transferable I would imagine.

Casey: Without a doubt. Well another example is a woman who she was helping a judge and the judge would say, “OK. There are all these PDF documents. There are all these hard copy documents. There are all these testaments. There’s all this stuff. Digital as well as in paper. I need you to look at all this and boil it down to a page and a half summary of what’s going on here.”

Well she’s a puzzle piecer together. I mean that’s what she does. She puts the puzzle together and planning that so the judge can accurately understand what’s going on. She doesn’t look at herself that way. She


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looked at herself as legal clerk, blah, blah, blah, and what I said is, “Wait a minute. You herd cats and put pieces together.”

So I brought her in to a client of mine. He has a website. They wanted to build another website and they needed to gather information about – it was a website that dealt with different countries around the world and they needed to find information about each country, what were specific things for each country.

It was a mess. Each country was different. Where do you get the information to go to [0:27:28] [Inaudible]. She did it. She put the puzzle pieces together. She went to each country. She found out what was apples to apples. She found out what was different and she laid out this phenomenal plan as to how the countries compare to each other, which we then translated into a decision tree, a logic flow that engineers could build.

So here you have this lawyer who doesn’t even know how to spell the word technology and now all of a sudden, she’s creating decision trees for Java engineers to build. How did that happen? Because she’s not just a legal clerk. She puts puzzle pieces together.

I think your point Beryl like she didn’t even realize she was a puzzle piecer together but she was. It’s those types of skills as attorneys that we don’t think of them that way. We just call them, “I’m a litigator. I negotiate license agreements.” Really what you do is you talk to people. You make people feel more comfortable. You are very persuasive but lawyers are not taught to think in that way and therefore they’re very hesitant to think that the skills are transferable.

Melanie: So what I hear you say without actually using the words I’m going to use is that in a way, you teach lawyers to start identifying themselves with the textbook notion of what a lawyer does and to begin to see themselves in a much more flexible way, capable of offering their service to a wide variety of people in ways that sometimes emerge as a result of the communication of what can be done.

Casey: That’s right, that’s right. What I would like to do then and act on that is particularly here in the States, law schools create lawyers. I understand. It’s called a law school but one thing that I really want legal – if legal


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[0:29:22] [Indiscernible] anything, I really want to inform the legal community, law schools and lawyers and firms that we need to create more than just lawyers. We need to create business people. We need to create thinkers.

The word “entrepreneur” is just so overused but we need to create people that can compete with China, that can compete with Brazil in a good way, that can create new things. We need to do that to help education here in America and elsewhere. We need to do that to get out of debt.

I have a five-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. I mean looking ahead, the future I think is always bright. But we have a lot of challenges. So to your point, Mel, I think that the textbook idea of leave law school, litigate, do transactional work and then retire at 65, I mean that has just gone by the wayside and what I really want to tell law schools is you can keep the name law school. You don’t have to change your name but you really have to realize that we need to create business people. We need to create venture taking people.

You know what I really want to create? Risk takers, calculated risk takers. They will say, “Well, we have the whole legal curriculum.”

Melanie: But you guys are trained to teach the rest of us not to take too many risks.

Casey: That’s right, unfortunately. And what we’re trained to do is to advise them on what the risks are.

Melanie: OK.

Casey: And then we let the client make the decision because obviously they know their business or their personal needs or so on. But we’re trained to tell them what the risks are in the ramifications of going each way.

What that has done though for us personally as attorneys is we’ve seen so many different risks and …

Melanie: [0:31:15] [Indiscernible] scaredy-cats.


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Casey: We scared ourselves. That’s exactly what it is. We scared ourselves, Mel, and so what I want to tell law schools is I really think law schools, many of them will be out of business. Seriously, because they’re there to make money and I know I’m going a bit on a limb here and I might get some hate mail.

But I really think many law schools will be out of business because that model of training, very intelligent, motivated, 20 to 30-year-olds only to be a lawyer, it’s going to be too niched. It’s going to be too multi-disciplinarian for the next 20, 30, 50, 100 years.

Beryl: And it seems like it’s a complete waste of their skill set too. We’re a world that needs to move forward and we need people with those kinds of minds. Before, they’ve been a little bit too suppressed, a little bit too molded into, “Let’s not take risks. We better play safe. Look what can happen when risks happen, when we take risks.”

Casey: Exactly. And it’s a waste of their skill set if law schools in my opinion keep pigeonholing them into transactional work, litigation, government, academia. I’m adding a fourth. I don’t want to bash law schools for everybody. I don’t want this to come across as bashing law schools.

It’s a great education. It teaches you to think and to write emails and to express yourself. It’s a great education. Where my issue is with law school is that I think it needs to really realize more so how modern business and how modern relationships and how modern connections are happening nowadays because I think right now the education that lawyers are learning be it the letter of the law or the software aspects, are essentially leaving lawyers, modern lawyers to the detriment. They’re not expansive enough and flexible enough to understand exactly what’s going on out in the world nowadays because things are moving so fast. So they give lawyers the ability to focus specifically on what they want or to create a niche.

Niches aren’t bad. I’m in a niche. The idea though is that I want law schools to create law school graduates who have that ability and that wherewithal and that confidence to either follow traditional path of law or to go elsewhere, but to at least have that option.


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Beryl: This is fascinating, Casey, and you clearly love what you do. It just bubbles out of you for sure. So for lawyers who are looking at this today and have got that kind of knot in their stomach now, because now they’ve heard other people can do this. What would be your messages to them right now? If they’re just thinking about it but they’ve got all this fear welling up inside them and they’ve got this voice in their head that says, “Yeah, but you couldn’t do that.”

Casey: Right. The demon voice I know very well and even when I have a great accomplishment, I was published on this blog, and the demon – one of my best successes. I was published on this blog Live Your Legend, got a lot of feedback on one of my [0:34:32] [Indiscernible].

The demon voice jumped in and said, “Well, there are other people that were published on this blog. We’re doing better things than you are. You don’t deserve to be there.” Here I am being celebrated for what I’m doing, international audience and the demon voice jumps in and says, “It doesn’t matter. You’re not good enough.”

So I know that demon voice very well. The first thing I would say is email me. I will give it later but my email again is [email protected]. Just email me, even if it’s just a few words. I think the first step really is even saying what you just said Beryl. I don’t like law.

That is a huge accomplishment in it of itself. I hate what I’m doing or I’m even thinking about it. So my first advice to lawyers who have that knot in the stomach is celebrate the knot. Really delve into that anxiety because it’s there for a reason and let’s look at it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s see what it is.

So that would be the first step is don’t ignore it. Write about it. Email me. I’ve got a number of questions I will then send to you around law school, around other things.

Let’s just have a back and forth and then I would say, if you’re really serious about it, and you’re not fooling yourself – maybe they’re just given the law firm at that time. Maybe they don’t like the senior partner. There’s many people who should stay in law, who really enjoy it. That’s what they should do.


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So one question I do have is, “Are we BS-ing ourselves here? Are we fooling ourselves? Are you giving law a hard time? Because maybe it is really what you should be doing.” But assuming we go through that analysis, we then go through the steps. Let’s talk about money. Let’s talk about what you’re good at, et cetera, et cetera, the five steps that I laid out.

But I think really the first step is one, you’re not alone. Two, let’s celebrate that anxiety and that knot in the stomach because it’s telling you something and three, let’s start talking about it and four goes back to the previous point. There’s a lot of like-minded people out there and you’re not alone.

Once you see other people are going through it, and they’re in the same stage you are and wrestling with the same stuff, your confidence and comfort level is only going to increase.

Beryl: So what is the name of your website, Casey?

Casey: So it’s LeaveLawBehind.com. They can check me out on Facebook, Facebook.com/LeaveLawBehind and then on Twitter which is @LeaveLawBehind or my email Casey@LeaveLawBehind.

Anyway, your viewers and listeners can reach out to me. I love to get them. I reply to all the emails and would love to hear from them.

Beryl: And you have a great blog. That blog is very diverse and it deals with lots of personal development issues. I really enjoy your blog.

Casey: Well thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Beryl: And newsletter.

Casey: Thank you. Yeah, I would encourage everyone to get on LeaveLawBehind.com/Blog. It’s right up there at the top. I blog a few times a week and it’s great. I think one thing that I do – and this is something I encourage people to do is people ask me, “Well what do you write about?” I say I write for myself.


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It sounds a little selfish but if you’re reading one of my blog posts, you can tell that I’ve sort of wrestled with that in the past week or two because it’s something – it’s how I self-therapize a bit.

But no, I appreciate that very much and I remember when I first pressed Publish on my WordPress. That’s what I use for my blog and it went out there. I mean I thought, “Casey, you’re a horrible writer. What are you doing? This is stupid.” I mean you put your heart on your sleeve and then you realize that you’re not stupid. People actually do like it and oh my god, someone just signed up for my email list. What?

It’s those baby steps but I really appreciate, Beryl. It’s very important to me and I think I really encourage the folks to read the blog, peruse through it. I write about everything from tactical to strategy to how to do an informational interview. There’s email scripts on there and then there’s also just more fluffy, personal – the demon voice just hit me. And how do I get over it?

I also have a lot of guest blogs. The next one coming up is actually an attorney, what we call big law here in America. She was making a lot of money in New York, had limo service and steak dinners and making a lot of money and she left. She’s now a professional coach here in San Francisco and she sort of details what made her leave. So that’s a new post coming up tomorrow.

Beryl: So if there’s one thing that you’ve really learned about yourself, Casey, through this whole process, what would that be? One really powerful learning.

Casey: So the one thing I learned – and Sari Zimmerman who was the Head of Career Services at Hastings, she actually helped me with my unique genius and she said, “Casey, you have the ability to help people gain the courage to take the next step.” What does that mean, right? Well, it helps people motivated to leave law behind. In sort of the market research work I do with my friend’s company, I will be in a focus group with six to eight people, strangers. I get this information to pull out of them and they feel comfortable. In the mergers and acquisition work I do with my dad, it gets people to send me highly sensitive financial information under a DA but nonetheless they’ve never met me.


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So I think I learned what was my unique genius from another person no less, but I learned what I was really good at. It sounds very fluffy and New Agey but I’ve been able to translate that and see how that applies in real tangible money-making ways.

So I’ve learned that about myself. I think the other thing at a higher level what I want to tell many attorneys out there is I think it’s their duty if they’re not happy in law to leave. Where else do you find ambitious, intelligent, dedicated, smart, motivated people than attorneys? Particularly the unhappy, disgruntled ones and I’m making a statement here which may motivate some or piss some off. But I really think that one thing that I want Leave Law Behind to do is to really show unhappy, disgruntled, unsatisfied attorneys that they need to leave the law and start new things slowly, baby steps, to help the world on a macro level and also to help their micro family and themselves as well.

I mean I want to say there’s really no other choice for them to do. They have to go through this process to help the rest of us.

Beryl: And they don’t have to do it alone because Casey Berman is there to help them.

Casey: Thank you.

Melanie: I can already think of two people I’m going to put in your direction. We’ve been talking about this for years and not doing much about it.

Casey: The last point, I don’t want to come overbearing but when I look at the United States election and I look at government and the euro crisis, these real macro levels, I don’t want to say that faith in government is non-existent. I mean we definitely need government. I’m a big believer in that but I just think nowadays with the technology and the connections, I mean you’re in the UK. I’m in California and we’re having a phenomenal – I feel like I’m in your office right there. With the collaboration that we can do so easily now, I really want to compel attorneys to take their smarts and to take their drive and to take their dedication and take their loyalty, which employers just want.


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These are such skills that the world needs and to not let them – I don’t want to say waste away but not let them be optimized doing a job they don’t like.

Beryl: Sure.

Casey: That’s really my message is let’s really optimize what you have because you can benefit and the rest of us can.

Melanie: Well that’s a wonderful message and thank you so much for sharing it, Casey. I know people are going to be inspired and comforted by what you’ve had to say and perhaps it will be just that it will push their need to take action.

Casey: I hope so.

Melanie: So thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s episode of Wired for Success TV. We would just like to mention before we wrap up that if you’re watching this episode on our site, then please comment in the box below and leave any thoughts and questions there Casey will come along and answer them for you.

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If you head over there, there will be a transcript of this episode too. We reply to all comments and suggestions and we would love to hear from you. So thank you for tuning in. Remember to tune in for the next episode of Wired for Success where we help you to master the seven areas of life.

So from me Beryl and my co-host Melanie and from Casey, we bid you farewell and next time. So, if you would like to say good-bye.

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Leave Law Behind with Casey Berman [Episode 26] Wired For Success TV

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