First,
I started my application to law school with “I do not want to be a lawyer.” It was true then, and was true throughout my time in legal practice. Yet, I am incredibly grateful for my time in law school and at Clifford Chance - law gave me the space to think critically and act wisely on issues that matter.
In law school, my interests centred on public law: military justice, criminal law education, and advocacy. When I applied for jobs, for reasons beyond my understanding, I was accepted into Clifford Chance, arguably one of the most competitive and corporate paths available. There, I worked on a wide range of matters: IPOs, sovereign financing, private equity (including clean energy), and was actively involved in CSR and pro bono work. I thoroughly enjoyed legal practice and, if I may say so myself, I was pretty good at it.
Yet
Legal practice, for me, was filled with contradictions. I enjoyed the work, yet found it lacked meaning. I sought justice, yet saw how law often maintains the status quo. I advised clients on the forefront of their industries, yet saw how slowly and reluctantly the legal industry moved. I did well and was well compensated, yet knew that legal practice was not the place for me to stay.
It took me five years of law school and five years of legal practice to come to this conclusion. In law school we think deeply about justice - what the law is, and what the law should be - yet legal practice is not primarily, nor structurally, concerned with justice. Fundamentally, legal practice is concerned with two things: money and risk allocation.
Other priorities, including “justice”, are secondary. I can sometimes understand - what even is justice? It is far easier to make sense of profit per equity partner or billable hour targets. What gets measured gets done, and how does one measure “justice”? Money is easy to measure; measurables create incentives; behaviour follow incentives.
Yet, the difficulty to measure “justice” becomes an easy excuse to prioritise other metrics. I have heard of, seen, and personally experienced things in law that shouldn’t happen at all - incidents most would frown at, behaviours that are problematic, and some actions much more serious. Often, these happen because doing the right thing carries costs or allocates risks in inconvenient ways.
This is not to say that lawyers do not care about what is right or just. Nor is it to say that legal practice is all bad. There are many instances where justice is served through thoughtful risk allocation or fair dispute resolution. I believe most lawyers value justice and try, as far as the system allows, to bring that into their work.
Yet, this reflection is critical in understanding what legal practice is good and not so good at. Law firms are financially rational actors, not moral ones. With such a system, metrics such as revenue, profit, billable targets are prioritised over innovation, justice, and societal good. Some firms try different ways to manage this. There may be individual partners that, with their personal values of justice or innovation, try something different. Or some firms have a culture of pro-bono or advocacy. Yet, the system and incentives that exist in the industry make it difficult for other prioritises to be sustained.
So
So I left.
I am deeply grateful for my time in JustShip and the military, which gave me a sense of what I enjoy doing and where I excel outside legal practice.
Through law school and legal practice, I developed a set of skills that would have been difficult to acquire elsewhere: lawyer-level meticulousness, an intuition of risk, the ability to anticipate problems, and more. So, with these skills, I am back in entrepreneurship again, including in robotics. In law, things are fairly linear - success, earnings and KPIs are very predictable. My current work is not like this at all!
You might wonder: so, what do I think about (the future of) law and legal practice?
I expect the existing structures in legal practice will continue to exist and dominate legal practice. Partners at established firms, having invested decades building their careers, have little incentive to disrupt a system that works well for them. So, the status quo is likely to hold, with incremental change at best, as firms balance the needs of many stakeholders (and there are many - not easy to be a partner!).
Legal AI is, of course, is reshaping the industry. AI-powered law firms, legal AI tools for law firms and clients, law adjacent software (compliance, data) or niche products (immigration). Many have raised crazy amounts of money to build these businesses. I have no doubt that this will change the way legal practice works, just like how LexisNexis or WestLaw removed the need to go to law libraries, so there is much to watch in the space. But unless there is a fundamental shift in how legal services are purchased and valued, the underlying incentives of the industry are unlikely to change. AI alters how work is done, not why it is done.
So where do I see myself in all this? Likely not in legal practice (though contacts still reach out to me for legal matters, and I’m happy to help). The past few months have given me the time and space to move away from the risk aversion of lawyers to risk acceptance that entrepreneurs need.
I now analyse legal and commercial problems more holistically and with greater nuance - something my business partners and clients have expressed deep appreciation for. So I am still on that journey: to innovate, build, and continue growing as a businessperson.
So my goal now isn’t law or legal practice. It’s to continue to do work that make a difference in lives (including in robotics or the military!). We’ll see where that leads.
Next,
Interestingly, the first line of my admissions essay to law school, “I do not want to be a lawyer”, is less true now.
Given what I’ve experienced in law, I think there is much that can be done to innovate, learn, build and do things that make a difference in legal practice. We’ll see what happens next, but for now, I’m grateful for my time in the law, for the deals I’ve done, and learning I’ve had.
And I expect to bring those lessons from law with me where I go next.
DNMZ
p/s Qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales officially today: 11/11/2025. Picked a nice date of course. Qualifiation is often the “start” of a lawyer’s journey, yet not for me. Signed up for the SQE exams last year thinking I would stay in law, did the exams when I contemplated leaving, and left law shortly after.
Clifford Chance’s office in Canary Wharf - many memories, good and bad.