Best Jobs For Former Attorneys [2023]

It’s tough to be a attorney nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a attorney isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become attorneys in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many attorneys no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former attorneys to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Here’s a quick look at the top ten most common jobs for former attorneys :

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a attorney would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — as a list, they’re kind of boring as hell. They’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former attorneys to do.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Here are some of the most interesting jobs of former attorneys:

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

How We Determined the Most Common Jobs of Former ATTORNEYS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed attorney under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a attorney, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

That’s all for how we did it — below you’ll find the full ranked list of the most common jobs of former attorneys.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former ATTORNEYS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Contract Attorney	3.69%
2	Associate Attorney	3.3%
3	General Counsel	1.96%
4	Associate	1.86%
5	Attorney/owner	1.42%
6	Staff Attorney	1.33%
7	Attorney At Law	1.11%
8	Legal Assistant	1.09%
9	Adjunct Professor	1.05%
10	Principal	0.99%
11	Owner	0.99%
12	Consultant	0.98%
13	Solo Practitioner	0.98%
14	Paralegal	0.98%
15	Partner	0.94%
16	Document Review Attorney	0.86%
17	Law Clerk	0.85%
18	Vice President	0.81%
19	Administrative Assistant	0.79%
20	Senior Counselor	0.76%
21	Legal Counsel	0.75%
22	Litigation Attorney	0.73%
23	Corporate Counsel	0.69%
24	Assistant General Counsel	0.67%
25	Housing Counselor	0.62%
26	Senior Attorney	0.59%
27	Associate General Counsel	0.58%
28	Executive Director	0.53%
29	President	0.52%
30	Office Manager	0.52%
31	Internship	0.52%
32	Chiropractor, Sole Practitioner	0.5%
33	Sales Associate	0.47%
34	Project Attorney	0.45%
35	Director	0.45%
36	Project Manager	0.44%
37	Volunteer	0.42%
38	Legal Consultant	0.41%
39	Trial Attorney	0.41%
40	Senior Vice President	0.39%
41	Contracts Manager	0.39%
42	Hearing Officer	0.39%
43	Customer Service Representative	0.36%
44	Managing Partner	0.36%
45	Substitute Teacher	0.36%
46	Chief Executive Officer	0.35%
47	Teacher	0.35%
48	Human Resources Coordinator	0.35%
49	Analyst	0.34%
50	Document Reviewer	0.34%
51	Administrative Law Judge	0.34%
52	Legal Extern	0.31%
53	Assistant Attorney General	0.31%
54	Manager	0.3%
55	Mediator	0.29%
56	Senior Associate	0.29%
57	Assistant District Attorney	0.29%
58	Registered Nurse	0.28%
59	Compliance Officer	0.28%
60	Real Estate Attorney	0.27%
61	Legal Secretary	0.27%
62	Program Manager	0.27%
63	Business Developer	0.25%
64	Instructor	0.25%
65	Associate Counsel	0.25%
66	Board Member	0.24%
67	Contracts Specialist	0.24%
68	Adjunct Faculty	0.24%
69	Writer And Editor	0.24%
70	Assistant Director	0.23%
71	Judge	0.23%
72	Founder	0.23%
73	Litigation Associate	0.23%
74	Managing Member	0.23%
75	Compliance Analyst	0.22%
76	Case Manager	0.22%
77	Assistant Vice President	0.22%
78	Receptionist	0.21%
79	Contracts Administrator	0.21%
80	Compliance Manager	0.21%
81	Office Assistant	0.21%
82	Chief Operating Officer	0.21%
83	Compliance Specialist	0.21%
84	Sales Representative	0.19%
85	Landman	0.18%
86	Assistant Manager	0.18%
87	Senior Manager	0.18%
88	Senior Analyst	0.18%
89	Assistant Public Defender	0.18%
90	Director Of Human Resources	0.18%
91	Corporate Secretary	0.17%
92	Server	0.17%
93	Account Manager	0.17%
94	Business Consultant	0.17%
95	Adjunct Professor Of Law	0.17%
96	Program Director	0.17%
97	Lawyer	0.16%
98	Legal Analyst	0.16%
99	Editor	0.16%
100	Adjunct Instructor	0.16%

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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