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Pertinent facts: My wife and I are planning to take 12-18 months to travel the world. I have spent the last 2-3 years at a mid-V100 firm primarily doing corporate tax with experience in certain other legal practices. We recently paid off all student loans and managed to save a nice little nest egg. Such savings should last us during our travels and provide a minimum of 7-8 months of living expenses to return to. I am a HYS law grad.

I have two general questions:

How limited/abundant should I expect opportunities to be upon our return?

I would like to come back to an in-house counsel (or a non-legal) job in the $150K+ range. We hope to settle in a secondary market (Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, etc.). I fear traveling for 12-18 months may kill almost all legal opportunities within this salary range.

Has anyone else had experiences coming back from traveling (or a non-traditional sabbatical) and attempting to get an in-house job? If so, how was your experience? Did you do anything during this time (e.g. a humanitarian project, writing project, etc.) in order to help explain your sabbatical?

Somewhat pertinent.... I've been planning to do something like this all along.

My firm hired a guy that spent like 2-3 years traveling the world/generally fucking around. I think he had maybe 3 yrs experience before he dipped out. He's basically a part time lawyer with a great work life balance, but doesn't make anywhere close to the $ the partnership rack ppl do

Would enjoy sharing ideas of how to pull this off if you DM me.

This would be my dream.. My wife and I have been floating this idea too but we are planning to have kids so probably not going to happen. Would love to hear more though.

More relevant to use question, I feel like jobs will be there. If anything, you will have tons of stories to tell during interviews. 150k in a secondary market may be a stretch though. I bet biglaw firms will be open to hiring you but obviously you dont want to go back.

A $150k+ in house job would be a great result for someone who has put in 5+ years in big law, let alone someone with 2-3 and a year or more away from practice. Others may more have more direct experience, but I feel like you are setting your sights way too high.

RaceJudicata wrote:A $150k+ in house job would be a great result for someone who has put in 5+ years in big law, let alone someone with 2-3 and a year or more away from practice. Others may more have more direct experience, but I feel like you are setting your sights way too high.

I would not call 150k for a 5th yr a great result that sounds pretty fucking bad to me. Everyone I know that has gone in-house makes more than that in all in comp. Obviously calculus changes after the sabatical