After a year in the southern Utah wilderness, Mary Dulka has no plans to head back to her Big Law career. She would much rather help animals.

Dulka, a former securities litigation and white-collar defense partner at Goodwin Procter, left the Am Law 100 firm's New York office in October 2016 for Kanab, Utah, a town on the state's southern border with Arizona.

In Kanab, Dulka became part of the cat caregiver team at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, where she would spend more than a year tending to felines that had fallen on hard times. In December, Dulka returned to the East Coast to work at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) of Westchester County, the same place where her animal adventure began almost a decade ago.

“I've always loved animals,” Dulka said. “Growing up, I always thought I would [have] some kind of career involving animals.”

Dulka's journey from the cozy confines of Big Law to the great outdoors at Best Friends began back in 1986 when she enrolled at the New York University School of Law.

“I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be a lawyer,” said Dulka, adding that she thought her legal education would align well with her writing skills. After graduation, Dulka landed a position as an associate at New York's Rogers & Wells almost 20 years before the New York-based firm inked the first major trans-Atlantic law firm merger with London-based Clifford Chance.

At Rogers & Wells, Dulka started handling securities and mutual fund litigation, she said. But in 1994, her practice deviated to products liability work after Dulka moved to corporate boutique Reboul MacMurray Hewitt & Maynard, which was eventually absorbed by Ropes & Gray in 2003.

After four years at Reboul MacMurray, Dulka returned to her securities practice at Clifford Chance. She remained at the Magic Circle firm until 2009, when Dulka switched to Goodwin Procter in New York, where she would eventually make partner five years later.

But for Dulka, who described herself as an “accidental lawyer,” the stresses of a Big Law career started to wear her down and began affecting her physical and mental health.

“Work was always hanging over my head and I could never relax or catch up despite how many late nights and weekends I worked,” said Dulka, who was a part of a Goodwin Procter team that submitted an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on behalf of transgender student Gavin Grimm.

So to counterbalance that work-related stress, Dulka began volunteering at the SPCA shelter near her home in the New York City suburb of Westchester.

“When I was working at home all weekend on a brief or preparing for a deposition, I would always carve out a few hours to run over there and just thought, 'Wow, I really love doing this!” Dulka recalled.

After a challenging case, Dulka said she was finally able to step back and thought long and hard about her legal career. She had saved enough to make a dramatic job change and realized that she wanted to do something that directly impacted lives. She first looked into working in animal welfare law, but her securities litigation background didn't align. Through her connections at the SPCA, Dulka became acquainted with Best Friends.

“When I looked them up on their website, I had no idea that they had this incredible sanctuary in southern Utah,” Dulka said. “I felt very strongly that that's just where I was meant to be.”

Founded in Kanab more than 30 years ago, Best Friends is home to nearly 1,600 homeless animals, be they cats, dogs, horses, pigs or sheep, to name just a few. For Dulka, the sanctuary offered her an opportunity to work exclusively with cats, many of whom were deemed unadoptable due to illness.

“It's just really rewarding to give them all this love and affection and to guide all these hundreds of visitors and volunteers at the sanctuary to do the same,” Dulka said.

Dulka worked with the sanctuary's cats, feeding, cleaning and administering medication to those with special needs. And while she was a little self-conscious about making the jump from a stakeholder to an entry-level position, there were many people at the sanctuary who were also former professionals, including her former Best Friends' manager, who was once a rocket scientist.

“Whether you started out doing this in your 20s or you decided to move into it years later after you had another career, everybody's at the same point where we love the animals, we want to help them and we're all in this together,” Dulka said.

After a year away from her family, Dulka decided to return to New York and found a position at the same SPCA chapter where she began animal welfare work. Dulka said that while she would consider a career as a legal advocate for animals, she certainly will not head back to Big Law.

“Right now, I'm just really happy where I am,” Dulka said. “I'm trying to live my life in a more spontaneous way and be open to different things and different opportunities and just gain as much knowledge as I can.”