In Episode 012 of The Former Lawyer Podcast, Sarah talks with Tiffany Duong. Tiffany practiced renewable energy project finance law for five years after law school, until she had an epiphany about her life on a dive boat in the Galapagos Islands. She now works as a climate and environmental advocate and conservation journalist and founded the media advocacy group Ocean Rebels.
In this conversation, Tiffany shares about:
- How she didn’t anticipate spending all her time working as a lawyer when she went to law school;
- Why law school was “a huge corporate cloud over her very naive green dreams;”
- How law school narrowed her view of what she could do with her law degree;
- Why she felt like she was having a midlife crisis in her late 20s;
- Why she ended up staying in big law firms for five years, even though she originally thought she wouldn’t stay more than a year;
- The trip she took to the Galapagos Islands where she realized that she needed to quit law;
- Why she still struggles with how to fit the lawyer piece within her identity;
- How she uses the skills she developed as a lawyer in her environmental advocacy work;
- Why reimagining her lawyer past has been so helpful;
- How she quit her law firm job and took a year off (and why that was hard);
- What a Google spreadsheet had to do with her decision about what to do next;
- Why being willing to start over again is so important to finding what you truly want to do with your life;
- How selling her house gave her so much freedom;
- Why she doesn’t regret her career change, even though she makes much less money than she did as a lawyer;
- Why managing your ego is one of the most important things you can do to find fulfilling work;
- How you truly can live your “irresponsible dream life”—responsibly;
- and much more!
Connect with Tiffany and Ocean Rebels:
