In Episode 3, we sit down with Fiona McClay, who spent 12 years as a litigation lawyer before realising her career looked great on paper but felt completely wrong in real life. Her story – complete with the messy middle, the three-year “desert of reinvention,” and the unexpected path to becoming a legal tech consultant and author – offers hope for anyone contemplating leaving a legal career behind.
The workshop that changed everything: Fiona’s transformation began in an unlikely place: a client’s workshop about thriving in the workplace. “It was like they were speaking a foreign language,” she recalls. The workshop featured businesses talking about values-led operations and human-centric success – concepts that felt completely revolutionary in Fiona’s traditional firm environment.
But this wasn’t a lightning-bolt moment. It was the beginning of what Fiona describes as three years of wrestling with the question every lawyer considering career change knows well: “What else can I possibly do?”
The desert of reinvention Here’s where Fiona’s story gets real. Leaving a legal career isn’t as simple as handing in your notice and skipping off into the sunset. Fiona describes the “desert of reinvention” – that uncomfortable space where “you just can’t see which way is the best path out. You just know that you can’t stay where you are.”
For three years, Fiona applied for jobs that didn’t materialise, wrestled with her identity as ‘Fiona the lawyer,’ and dealt with stress so intense that it affected her health.
The identity crisis every lawyer faces: “Being a lawyer is such an identity,” Shayla observes, and Fiona agrees. “When you say. ‘I’m a lawyer,’ everyone thinks they know what that means – until you start questioning whether it’s who you want to be.”
Fiona’s breakthrough came through coaching and finding her people through the Happy Lawyer Happy Life Club, a network of entrepreneurial lawyers trying different approaches to legal practice.
The gradual path forward: Unlike dramatic career-change stories, Fiona’s career change was incremental. She moved to part-time work, then freelance, while gradually building skills in legal technology. She studied innovation and change management, wrote a book, and conquered her fear of public speaking.
The result? A thriving legal tech consultancy where she helps law firms embrace digital transformation – work that feels meaningful rather than just billable.
Redefining success: Perhaps the most profound part of Fiona’s story is how leaving a legal career behind forced her to redefine success. “I may not have the giant house by the harbour… but I had to come to terms with the fact that what suits me is something different and that this is enough.”
Fiona’s advice for anyone feeling stuck? “Look for a way that you can make a change that doesn’t scare you … it’s helpful to have given yourself some wings before you decide to get pushed off a cliff.”
The bottom line: Legal career change doesn’t have to mean blowing up your career completely. Sometimes it means career resurrection through finding work that uses your skills in ways that actually energise rather than drain you.
Are you ready to explore what’s possible beyond the billable hour?
