Career exploration: Searching for meaning or am I on the right track?

Imagine this is your obit: "John Smith billed 80,000 hours. May he rest in peace."

Is this the way you want to be remembered?

That's a question David Behrend asks lawyers who may not be happy in their careers and may be ready to explore renewing goals or using their law degrees in new ways for "encore careers."

Maybe you are a young associate pushed out of a job when your firm merged with another one.

Maybe you graduated from law school, but never really landed a good job because of the recession, and competition is fierce in a state with more 95,000 lawyers.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Maybe you finally made partner at a major Miami law firm, you have a big sailboat docked at the yacht club, but you're just not happy. You can't seem to balance your professional and personal life, working long hours and weekends in the competitive culture of endless deadlines that drains your creative juices and shrinks your reservoir of energy.

Behrend, who has a master's in education and is director of Career Planning Services for Lawyers in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, is pairing up with Michael Cohen, executive director of Florida Lawyers Assistance, Inc., to offer free career counseling to Florida lawyers via computer or telephone from the privacy of your home or office.

The first online group interactive session takes place on Wednesday, January 23, at noon, by logging into Gotomeeting.com (see box for more information), and will be held every other Wednesday at noon thereafter.

The idea is to get you thinking in a new way about what to do with the rest of your life, career-wise. If further one-on-one counseling is needed, that can be arranged.

"Because of the economic situation, we are dealing with so many lawyers experiencing stress and depression because of losing jobs, downsizing, or they're in a sole practice and they are seeing their practice evaporate," Cohen said.

"We are trying to address the problem at the front end, rather than waiting for someone to call the hotline and say: 'I'm so depressed I can't get out of bed.'"

Since the onset of the recession in 2007, Cohen said, he has noticed "an uptick of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse cases seen by FLA."

The FLA career forum is designed to enable lawyers, at all stages of their careers, from lawyers entering the profession to those who may be winding down their practices.

"It's open for the whole continuum. Like with other groups, people at one end can learn from those on the other end. People...