Certainly there are countless counselors among the million plus who are both incredibly dissatisfied in their profession and equally clueless about what to do instead. But there can definitely be life after law, says Liz Brown, herself a recovering litigator.

After graduating Harvard Law School in 1996, Brown practiced law in London for one year, followed by a decade in San Francisco. When she moved back to Boston in 2007, she practiced for a short time, but didn’t return following maternity leave. “I didn’t want to work full time because I had this cute baby,” she says.

When her daughter got a bit older, Brown accepted a part time position teaching at a local college and then a second job overseeing a non-profit organization. Brown slowly recognized she was conflicted about whether she should return to the law or keep her part-time employment.

While she enjoyed the “exchange of ideas and being an advocate” when she practiced law, she realized she had been unhappy and unfulfilled as a litigator.

“The divide between my values and my 24-hour-a-day profession became almost unbearable,” she says. Cutting the Cord As Brown became more engrossed in her teaching position at Boston’s Bentley University, she realized how much the opportunity allowed her to tap into her desire to counsel others, but in a manner different than attorneys normally do.

When a full-time, tenured teaching post opened up at the college about 18 months ago, Brown threw her hat in the ring. She competed against a nationwide field of candidates for a year until she won the post over the summer. Now there’s no looking back. Six months ago, Brown abandoned her law license in California, although she’s still licensed in Massachusetts and New York.

“Once I accepted my current job as a tenure-track professor, I knew I was never going back to California,” she says. But Brown is not the ordinary attorney-cum-alternate career person. During the time she was competing for the teaching position, she researched and wrote a book on the topic.

The recently released “Life after Law: Finding the work you love with the JD you have,” features stories of lawyers who, for their own varying reasons, opted to leave the law to pursue other careers.

Seeing a Need, Filling a Void

In her 30 years practicing commercial real estate law in San Francisco, Elaine Andersson was dismayed by a reality in her corner of the world: a lack of diversity.

“Even after 30 years of law firms working towards diversity, only approximately 20 percent of firms have women as partners. Commercial real estate has less than that,” she says. In 2012, she decided to utilize her vast experience and clout to establish the Commercial Real Estate Diversity Report, an online publication featuring original research about the industry to, as Andersson puts it, “make people aware of the statistics and how to change them.”

She enjoys “using everything I know about law practice and helping people develop leadership skills. I believe the work I do now is helping women, minorities and people in the LGBT community.”

Got Art?

David Foox is proof that lawyers shouldn’t be stereotyped.

The South African native, who moved to the United States at the age of 12, practiced Intellectual Property law for a decade when he decided to exchange patents for painting. He can’t exactly pinpoint when he made the official leap from courtrooms to canvas because he had painted long before he held a law book.

“I had no concept what it meant to be an artist, but I enjoyed it,” he says. Foox stepped into the foxhole of the art world, when a friend of a former girlfriend, himself a respectable artist, stopped by to view his works. “He suggested I should have an art exhibit. I made an art show at a friend’s place in Tyler, Texas. More than 800 people came and I sold all my pieces,” says Foox.

He soon found himself imagining the new lives his artwork had taken on in their owner’s homes. That experience rendered him “invigorated to leave the law to paint,” he says. Although the year 2013 is winding down, life is revving up for Foox. In December, his art will be featured at an art fair Miami, on a super yacht and he will be painting live at another Florida event.

Sage Advice

Andersson, who survived a battle with breast cancer early in her law career, waxed philosophical about leaving the law to pursue other passions.

“If you aren’t happy, change,” she says. “There is an expression that a law degree prepares you for pretty much everything. Except brain surgery.” Foox agrees. “Having a law degree is an advantage when you do any kind of business,” he says. If you’re serious about making a career change, don’t wait for that perfect moment, he argues.

“If you try to put everything in place before you leave, you will never leave. I encourage people to look at life as a wandering journey and look at the change as a new inspiration.”

Brown advises lawyers thinking of leaving the practice to “figure out what you like being good at it,” she says. “Think about what, in your life, you most enjoy doing. Build you new career around those skills.”

Tami Kamin Meyer is an attorney and writer. She is licensed to practice law in Ohio, both the Southern and Northern Districts of Ohio and the US Supreme Court. She serves as Of Counsel for the Consumer Attorneys of America, a national law firm based in Florida. She has written for several publications, including Ohio Lawyer, Ohio Lawyers Weekly, Ohio Super Lawyer, Corporate Secretary, Legal Newsline and the ABA Small and Solo Practitioners newsletter. In 2007, a study guide she wrote about filing personal bankruptcy was published by Quamut, a division of Barnes and Noble.