From Corporate Lawyer to Designer & Visual Creative: My career change story (Part 1/2)

At the beginning of 2019, I made the big decision to leave my career in corporate law and pursue something creative. I didn’t know what exactly. I just knew I wanted out, and that I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I never even tried to pursue something else.

It’s now been almost two years since I left my law firm and I can safely say I have no regrets. I’ve gone via tech training, making videos and working with a pop star to launching my own creative studio (Light Sauce Studio). I still have a long way to go before I get it to exactly where I’d like it to be, but I can confidently say that I’m on the right path now. And this is how I got here — PART 1/2 as this post got very long!

Side note: I know this is a very lengthy article. If you’d rather watch me speak about this, I made a video here, which inspired this post.

Why corporate law in the first place?

If you come from an Asian family, or know anyone from an Asian family, you’ll know. There’s law, there’s medicine and there’s nothing else. I say this half-jokingly — perhaps because I’m only half-Vietnamese. But education and those who are successful within it are extremely highly valued, they bring status and pride to the family. And although I was by no means raised by conservative parents, these values still manage to seep their way into your upbringing.

Aside from that, when you’re a goody two-shoes who does well at school (British school, mind you) you hear a lot of; “oh, you’ll make a great lawyer one day.” So my plan to become a lawyer never came as a surprise, really. Plus my mom is a lawyer, and she was a single parent and therefore my entire frame of reference. It just made sense.

As an over-preparer, I’d made my decision by the age of 16, by which point I had my eyes set on certain red brick (British equivalent of US Ivy League) universities and I was doing everything in both my school hours and extracurricular hours to get there.

I studied law at Cambridge, graduated with a training contract at a city law firm in London, where I went on to qualify as a corporate lawyer in Private Equity, no less. It had only taken 7 or so years to get there.

Why did I want to leave?

Hours: After qualifying, I stayed on in my Private Equity team for another two years. That’s four years in city law in total (training contracts are two years in the UK). The work was all-consuming — I worked nights and weekends, and my longest day at work was 36 hours. I literally walked in at 8am on a Wednesday and left at 8pm on a Thursday. One week I counted that between Monday and Friday I’d had exactly seven hours of sleep.

I would come home after my partner was asleep and leave before he’d wake up. He actually called me one day, asked me if I was still alive and brought to my attention that we’d basically not seen each other in about two months. Bearing in mind we lived together.

Lack of stimulation: At first, I enjoyed the challenge of the work. I felt like I was learning something new everyday, which is incredibly important in keeping your mind active. But eventually that learning curve flattened and I found that the job was challenging not because it was mentally stimulating, but because it pushed you to your physical limits.

Health: There were a number of warning signs as to what the lack of sleep and levels of stress could gradually do to my (and anyone else’s) health. A colleague with an early onset stress-triggered illness. A colleague with a scare in her pregnancy due to stress and lack of sleep. And my own weight loss, inability to keep food down, and insomnia. I’m not even a very “stressy” person — but don’t kid yourself friend, you might not feel the stress, but your body does.

Other interests: In all honesty, I don’t think the stress, hours or lack of sleep would have ever made me leave in and of themselves. It’s really hard to see that the hours are abnormal when you’re inside the corporate bubble. I genuinely thought that “9–5” was just a saying, that nobody really worked that short an amount of time.

The true niggling feeling that wouldn’t leave me alone though, was the fact that I’d always been a creative at heart. I’d done art and photography in high school. My side gigs at university included fashion photography for local papers and design work for university societies. Even during my time as a corporate lawyer, I ran (and still run) a YouTube channel with my now fiancé.

As it was, I could slowly feel the right side of my brain shrivelling from neglect. Surely there was something out there that could stimulate me mentally but also required some creative thought?

Lack of purpose: Whilst I had no problem with working around the clock in principle, there was a distinct lack of purpose to what we were doing. We weren’t saving lives. It doesn’t actually matter if the company gets sold today or tomorrow in the grand scheme of things. The only difference is the number of hours of sleep you won’t get.

It wasn’t even a great way to get rich quick — whilst the salary was far above what most people my age would be making in other industries, if you want to grind yourself down for 2–3 years in law the way to do it is to go to an American firm. You won’t see your family or friends (or a bed) for the duration of that time, but you’ll make at least double what your peers at British / European firms will make. Then buy a house, make a good investment and a swift exit from law.

The “where do you see yourself in 5/10/insert number of years’ time” question: And most of all, I really struggled to see anyone in the higher ranks with a life that I would eventually want to have — you know, the light at the end of the tunnel. I saw partners whose children were raised by nannies. I saw lots and lots of female senior associates who left (not the workforce, just the corporate law firm) the minute they decided it was time to have children. Partners who had no relationships or families. Partners with no hobbies outside of work.

I couldn’t help thinking, is that what I’m working towards?

What made it so hard to leave?

A career in law is a huge investment in time and effort (and money if you’re in the US). It’s tempting to keep telling yourself, “I’ll just stick it out till I get to the next rung on the ladder.” Before you know it, you’ve been in the same place for a decade. I’d already started the trek, so I wanted to fully qualify as a lawyer at the very least. Once I was qualified, I convinced myself I needed a few years of experience.

More importantly, I didn’t hate my job. I was in a great team with great people (many of whom I’m still friends with and speak to regularly). We had a lot of fun, in between the hard work. I’m also one of those weird people who enjoys the adrenaline rush of a fast-paced transaction. It’s a little bit like a drug — you know it’s bad for you and will probably kill you eventually, but in the moment you’re willing to throw yourself at it whole-heartedly.

Besides, leaving is hard. Could I make money doing anything else? Could I pay my bills if I left? Would I ever be successful again? What about my status? My very identity? I actually found that those last questions were much bigger fears than the money questions. Being a lawyer was so integral to my identity, my sense of self. I was scared that if I extracted that part, there’d be very little left.

What helped me make my decision to leave?

In all the comfort of the status quo, it took a bit of a push to get me to actually make the move.

Missed opportunities from potential clients: Through my YouTube channel, I started getting opportunities that I would have loved to work on. Hotels that contacted us to ask for bespoke videos. An up and coming pop star that wanted help with her videos. A charity that wanted us to document their efforts. But I had a very full time job and limited holidays. I was exhausted. We took up a few of the opportunities, but had to turn down the vast majority.

I tried doing the side hustle thing, it didn’t work: The opportunity I really didn’t want to miss was working with said pop star. I decided to do a couple of videos for her whilst doing my day job. I ended up working through the day / half the night and then editing the other half of the night for a good week. I crashed.

I took a career change course: Eventually, I knew I wanted to change careers, I just didn’t know how. How could I quell the fears that came with such a big move? I needed help. So I decided to invest in the career change accelerator at Escape the City. This helped me prepare strategically and methodically, and also made me feel less alone. Crucially, the course helped me plan for my escape financially, which took a lot of pressure off.

The stars aligned: My partner hated living in London. At around the time I’d decided I’d had enough, he asked me if he could apply for a job elsewhere, if I’d be willing to move. It was a get out clause and put the pressure off me slightly: if he got that job and we decided to move, I’d have a deadline by which to leave my current firm.

Life events: The final push was when a friend of ours unexpectedly passed away. I feel embarrassed that this is what it takes for some big realisations. But life is fickle. It isn’t there to be wasted.

I quit. What next?

If you’ve gotten this far in the article, wow. Thank you.

Tomorrow, I’ll cover what I did after leaving my job in order to find my feet and hit it off in a brand new career. Stay tuned!

Thanks so much for reading this far! I’m writing an article about creativity and/or career change here on Medium every day for the month of February 2021, as a challenge. Follow me here if it strikes your fancy or find my design/visual work at www.lightsauce.studio (@lightsaucestudio on socials), my videos at www.youtube.com/wefilmthings1 (@wefilmthings on socials) or me personally @eliskahsk on socials.