About Greg Yates
Effective Lawyer Career Transitions in 2021
My Successes and Mission
My goal is to show you how to get your perfect job and create your ideal career—a job and career where you will find personal fulfillment and achieve success and prosperity.
I show unhappy/stressed/bored lawyers how to find the perfect job and create their ideal career path, in or out of the law.
I help clients find their perfect job by marketing themselves and their skills to the right employers and clients, including exploring entrepreneurship and side hustles.
I am also a keynote speaker, author of a lawyer career development book, many articles, and a business owner.
My Successes
• Former Big Law equity partner at two Am Law 100 firms
• Developed book of business over $3.5 million per year
• Represented several of the largest financial institutions in the world
• Brought home a 7-figure income for a few years
• Won the Turnaround Management Association’s Turnaround of the Year Award – Large Company
I also worked as in-house counsel for a publicly-traded investment firm, as a lawyer in a small boutique firm, and as a non-practicing attorney in a Fortune 100 company and several small businesses.
My Mission
I am now on a mission. A mission to help you avoid having your career becomes a tragedy. Instead, I will help you create an epic career of success, prosperity, and personal fulfillment. Success, prosperity, and personal fulfillment as you, and only you define them.
Why I Focus on Lawyer Career Transitions
After years of practicing in Big Law, in-house, and with a boutique firm, I realized my calling was to serve other attorneys and professionals by helping them in the career transition process. I assist other lawyers and professionals who desire but don’t know how to:
• advance along their current career path to achieve their professional goals and to develop more business
• move their practice to another law firm or go in-house
• become an entrepreneur, either inside or outside the legal industry
• leave the law to pursue an alternative career for lawyers path
Since I,
• understand the changing landscape of the legal industry and know the high pressure and stress faced by many lawyers
• experienced, both myself and through countless stories from others, the professional and personal struggles (alcohol and drug addiction, depression, and anxiety) many lawyers face, and
• have been through the lawyer career transition process quite a few times
I serve lawyers from a unique position. This perspective permits me to help lawyers in their career transitions to achieve professional and personal successes exceeding their wildest dreams and aspirations.
Why You Need Greg Yates
I understand your challenges, relate to your issues, and empathize with your struggles.
I have been there. In addition, I have the passion, ability, knowledge, experience, skills, and tools to help you through your career transitions. My experience as a corporate restructuring attorney taught me many lessons about why some struggling companies survive, grow, and prosper while others fail. Many of these lessons also apply to individuals going through a career transition.
Purposeful, focused action is an absolute necessity for a lawyer’s career transition. I help you get purposeful and focused, and I help you stay purposeful and focused.
The process we use results in an action plan that includes specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic goals you can meet within a reasonable time. I help you customize routines, tools, methods, and systems to speed up your career transition. Your lawyer career action plan empowers you to revitalize your career and life.
Work With Me On Your Career Transition
I am not a good match for everyone. I work with select lawyers who are a good fit and who I know I can help. The lawyers I work with are:
- Motivated Big Thinkers
- Intelligent & Thoughtful
- Curious & Open-Minded
The Lawyer Career Transition System℠
The Lawyer Career Transition System℠ and revitalization process is built on my experience. It is also built on the experience of hundreds, if not thousands, of other lawyers and other professionals I have spoken to, corresponded with, read, or read about.
Many concepts are derived from my years as a corporate turnaround and reorganization attorney. Distressed businesses and lawyers with distressed careers have a lot in common.
Everything I speak and write about is filtered through my experience. It may be helpful if you know something about my experience.
My Career Story
My career story unfolded as haphazard improvisations made up on the fly. The improvisations were strung together with little thought or vision of a career path. I subscribed to the time-tested “winging it” school of career planning.
Law School
In my last year of college, I applied to law school. I didn’t even know a lawyer. I’d never talked to a lawyer. The decision to attend, or more accurately be enrolled in, law school was rather impulsive.
I didn’t understand the legal world or what it meant to work as a lawyer. That unexamined spontaneity was to become a hallmark of my career story.
I didn’t like law school from the first day. I barely finished the first year. Then, I dropped out.
The federal government stepped in to rescue me. I received a generous fellowship and stipend to get a master’s degree in Public Administration. The government got no return on its investment in me. I had no interest in pursuing a civil service career.
With a little prodding from my family, I went back and finished law school. To relieve the boredom of the ordeal, I also completed an MBA. I found business much more interesting than the law. Business strategy and finance fascinated me.
Corporate and Legal Experience
Having proudly graduated in the top 75% of my law school class, I marched forward into my career. A Fortune 100 company hired me. My salary equaled the highest salary in my class; only the law review editor made as much. And, I didn’t even have to take the bar exam. What luck!
Why did I have that luck? I didn’t follow the traditional career path of a law school graduate into a law firm or the government. I rejected it. Instead, I followed what I later called my “practical passion.”
After a few years in the corporate world, I left to teach business in several universities and colleges and worked as a consultant with a few small businesses.
Six years after graduating from law school, I took and passed my first bar exam.
I then clerked for two federal judges. One in a small town in Alabama, the other in New York City.
I moved on from my clerkships and practiced law for the first time in my career at a then well-known real estate boutique in New York.
After several years, I moved to Florida to become in-house counsel for a publicly-traded investment company.
A few years later, I transitioned my career to practice in an Am Law 100 firm in Washington DC. After two years, I became an equity partner. A year later, I was asked to move back to New York City and open a new office for the firm.
Finally, I moved to my last legal position as an equity partner at another Am Law 100 firm in New York.
How I Can Assist You?
I will show you how to create your epic career story by using my career revitalization process. It’s a simple process, but it takes action and hard work. Fortunately, the rewards are well worth the work.
Let’s talk confidentially about your career and life.
Please schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss how you can transition your career to the next level.
Lawyer Career Transition Coaching
I serve you as a Lawyer Career Transition Coach. I use the “Coach” label as a metaphor for what I do, not as a job title.
I help lawyers define their dream career path. Then, I assist in the lawyer career transition and revitalization process to get you on your ideal career path to achieve success, prosperity, and personal fulfillment.
If you are a lawyer and want to:
• leave the law to follow a career path you are more passionate about
• become an entrepreneur, either within or outside the legal industry
• transition to another law firm, go in-house or move to another organization
I can help you.
Depending on your personal needs, desires, and objectives, the stage of your career and life, and the phase of the lawyer career transition process you are at, I serve as a:
• Confidant
• Adviser
• Advocate
• Mentor
• Motivator
• Accountability Partner
• Consultant
• Coach
Whether your ideal career path leads to advancing your career in the legal industry or leaving the law altogether, my role in your lawyer career transition is to focus on your agenda to revitalize your career and life.
I bring my knowledge and experience, my former partners and colleagues’ wisdom, and ideas from people I have spoken with or read about. We work together to help you craft your ideal career path.
I understand the upheaval in the legal industry. I can relate to your challenges in the lawyer career transition process of creating a career path to success, prosperity, and personal fulfillment.
I also offer keynote speeches and workshops on various lawyer career transition topics and general career path motivational and inspirational speaking performances.
Focus on Your Career Transitions
You decide what we focus on in the career transition and revitalization process. The scope is as broad or narrow as you desire.
If you ask me, after listening to your concerns, I will give you my analysis of the best way to tackle your challenges in the transition to your ideal career and life. Most likely, we will address your most pressing concerns relating to:
• Your Current Career Path
• Your Strengths and Interests
• Your Future Professional Life – In, or Out, of Law
• Your Plans to Make Your Ideal Career and Life a Reality
These areas are interrelated. Usually, they are best addressed comprehensively, but your focus may be as narrow as you desire.
Career Transition Process
You talk. I listen. You talk about your career, your life, and the challenges you face in the lawyer career transition process. You talk about your deepest core beliefs and your wildest desires, dreams, and aspirations. I ask questions to help you clarify your current career and life, your core beliefs and purpose, and your ideal career and life.
• I help you assess your career and life to get a clear picture of reality.
• I support you in rediscovering your core purpose and beliefs.
• I assist you envisioning your ideal career and life.
Then, I help you focus on using your strengths in developing an action plan to revitalize your career and life.
Career Transition Action Plans
Once you have a detailed visualization of your ideal career and life, we collaborate on developing short-term and long-term goals to get you there. To help you transition and revitalize your career, we strategically:
• craft specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant action steps to achieve your goals
• structure the action steps to move you toward your ideal career and life in a reasonable time
• review and revise your job search documents including cover letters, resume, and LinkedIn profile
• track your progress and adjust as necessary
We then work on using your strengths to help you achieve your goals in the quickest and most efficient way. I also suggest tools, techniques, methods, and systems to implement your action plan.
Accountability In Career Transitions
Accountability in the career revitalization process is critical. Accountability to yourself and other people helps inspire and motivate you to maintain your progress.
Being held accountable can also provide you with ideas for recalibrating your action plan as you progress through the process. Greg Yates serves as an accountability partner assisting you in revitalizing your career and life.
Law Firm and Practice Group Consulting
I help law firms and practice groups by:
• training lawyers and practice groups how to attract, grow and keep their ideal clients
• teaching lawyers how to be more organized and productive, and how to manage their energy
• coaching individual lawyers on career development
Greg Yates works on a project or retainer basis.
My Core Strengths and Skills
• Lawyer Career Assessment and Planning
• Clarifying Strengths and Interests
• Defining Target Markets for Ideal Opportunities
• Resume, LinkedIn Profile, and Cover Letter Optimization
• Relationship Building
• Job Search Strategies
• Interview Preparation
• Attorney Career Management
• Lawyer Training & Development
• Business Development
• Marketing
• Collaboration
• Strategic Planning
• Problem-Solving
• Outplacement
• Public Speaking
To explore how Greg Yates can help you serve your firm’s attorneys, please call me at (212) 765-0685 or send me an email at [email protected].