Lawyer-Turned-Entrepreneur Says He Had to Overcome His Legal Training to Succeed
A practicing lawyer who gave up a $200,000 salary to become an entrepreneur says his legal education posed obstacles in business.
Writing for the Washington Post, Paul Mandell attributes about 75 percent of his business success to skills, knowledge and traits developed outside the classroom. His legal education, he says, was a hurdle to overcome.
“My legal training made me risk-averse and perfection-obsessed—both of which helped in my legal career, but which were liabilities in an environment demanding quick decisions and high productivity,” Mandell wrote.
He offers an example. As an entrepreneur, Mandell needed to lease short-term office space. His potential landlord offered a four-page lease. “I spent literally days on that four-page document, researching D.C. law, correcting typos and spacing and inserting provisions on assignment of the contract and forum selection, to name a few—just as I had been trained to—until the old document was unrecognizable,” Mandell recalls. “While the new contract seemed perfect to me, it was totally excessive for a month-to-month agreement. The reality was that I had just wasted tons of time that I could have spent identifying client prospects.”
Mandell adds that he doesn’t regret his legal education because it did provide skills and knowledge that were helpful in launching a new business. He is CEO of the Consero Group. A September article in the Washington Post says the company “creates high-level schmooze fests for senior corporate counsel executives.”
