Careers in Transit: What it's like for lawyers to live abroad
Heather Clauson Haughian spent years building her legal practice in Destin, Florida, but when her husband’s job as an Air Force special operations pilot took them to England, she found herself at a crossroads. She could start over, shift fields or leave the law behind entirely.
Haughian, who successfully tackled cultural and legal shifts to move abroad, reflects a growing trend among Americans seeking opportunities overseas amid political uncertainty.
While U.S. citizens aren’t required to register their presence abroad, making it difficult to gather statistics on this, a Monmouth University poll found that as of 2024, 34% of Americans said they would move abroad if they could afford it. This is quite a change from the 10% of Americans who wanted to move abroad 50 years ago, according to the Gallup Organization. According to the U.S. State Department, about 9 million Americans are currently living abroad.
For attorneys, the move abroad can be tricky, depending on whether you’re planning on still practicing U.S. law overseas or whether you’d like to get admitted in a new country so you can practice that country’s law.
Haughian moved to Cambridge in 2004, and she decided to take the Solicitors Qualifying Examination, which is the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the bar exam (which she had already passed in the United States).
“Passing the SQE meant I could qualify as a solicitor in England and Wales and work for a British law firm, rather than being limited to a U.S. firm with a U.K. office,” says Haughian, who quickly landed a position with Eversheds before its merger with Sutherland in its Cambridge office.
While the transition was legally and technically very smooth—she did not have to go through the visa application process since she was a military spouse under the Status of Forces Agreement—Haughian did have to immediately adjust to cultural differences. Coming from a traditional law firm in Atlanta where skirt suits were the norm, Haughian wanted to confirm the dress code at her new firm. She emailed her soon-to-be boss to ask if women were allowed to wear pants in the office.
“What I didn’t realize at the time was that in British English, ‘pants’ means underwear,” she says. “His witty reply: ‘While they are not required, pants are highly encouraged.’”
She quickly made the adjustment to British English and was happy to learn about the English lifestyle.
The legal career structure and approach to billable hours in England is different from that in the United States. At the solicitor level, the annual billable target was just 1,350 hours—a stark contrast to the 2,000-plus hour requirements often expected at U.S. firms. Upon becoming an associate, the billable hour target increased to 1,500 hours, which Haughian says is still a welcome relief compared to the demands of American firms.
Another refreshing change: the vacation culture. At her firm, every attorney was expected to take their full four weeks of vacation, and firms strongly encouraged taking at least two consecutive weeks to fully disconnect.
“Unlike in many U.S. firms, where attorneys often feel guilty for stepping away from work, British firms genuinely prioritized work-life balance,” Haughian says.
Others have similar feelings. Heather Bustos, managing partner of the Bustos Law Group in the Woodlands, Texas, moved to Valencia, Spain, in July 2024, shortly after Spain opened its digital nomad visa (this allows foreigners to live in Spain while working for an international company).
It took six months of planning, which included downsizing, putting belongings in storage and selling the cars as she and her husband prepared to move with their two children. It took a lot of effort to gather documents for the visa process, but since she is under a digital nomad visa that doesn’t allow her to source legal work directly from a Spanish company, it was relatively easy to obtain. She also had to get a pet passport.
One thing that made the process much simpler, however, was continuing to work for a U.S.-based law firm subject to U.S. rules, so there were no legal hoops in terms of her attorney role.
While the move went very smoothly, a big challenge Bustos faced was the time difference, especially when it came to her California clients who were just waking when she was winding down the day.
Still, she says, “I wish I had done it sooner. If you have the option to work remotely in a country with a slower pace of life, it makes your job as an attorney so much less stressful.”
Life-changing opportunity
Something that makes life less stressful? Stewart Patton, an international tax attorney, found the answer to be “Belize.”
He moved there from Chicago in 2013 because he was tired of the BigLaw lifestyle. Patton was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, and before he moved, he rarely saw his family on weekdays.So, he decided to open his own practice.
The hardest part was the bureaucracy, says Patton, who opted not to become a member of the bar in Belize, as he doesn’t practice Belize law. He did get stuck in a loop where he needed to get a work permit to start working—but getting a work permit required him to register for income tax. To do that, he needed to get a trade license, but he could only get a trade license if he had a work permit.
“Somehow, one of those offices finally decided to let me through,” he says. “All in all, Belize makes it pretty easy to move here.”
Today, life is good for Patton. He makes his own schedule, so he gets to see his family daily. He also has his own firm and his own clients, so he can be more creative with the practice. He found that it’s much easier to do flat-fee work and other methods that don’t fit the BigLaw model.
The ease of life and the legal transformation is very different depending on where you land, however. Dee Dee Fischer, who previously worked for Sidley Austin in Miami and is now working as a partner for the same firm in Singapore since 2023, struggled with practice-related challenges.
U.S. litigators can’t appear in Singaporean courts, she says. Plus, her caseload included cases from the United States and from Asia, but with a 13-hour time difference, she’s had her fair share of early-morning calls and late-night Zoom meetings.
Her schedule has changed too. In the United States, she had been doing a lot of class action work, with her days revolving around motion practice and depositions. In Singapore, she focuses on counsel: addressing questions about potential disputes and how to avoid them, rather than actually litigating cases that have been filed.
“Clients in this region seem to me to be even more avoidant of litigation or arbitration than U.S. clients are,” says Fischer. “And it’s been important for me to be sensitive to that, and their desire to avoid the costs and disruption of legal conflict.”
Rebuilding a professional network in another country can also be tricky, as Tristan Bramble discovered when he relocated to London in 2018 via a heritage passport, which offers citizenship by ancestry. But after joining the group American-Qualified Lawyers in London—he’s now on the steering committee—he quickly adapted.
Attorneys interviewed for the story generally agree that attorneys should go abroad if ever given the chance.
“It has been absolutely life-changing, and one of the most meaningful things I’ve done in my career,” Fischer says. “If you get the opportunity, do it.”
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