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So you don't want to be a lawyer?

Or, perhaps more likely, you don't want to get stuck doing the traditional job of a lawyer—the Big Law associate-to-partner track, the government gig, the in-house route, etc.

The good news, according to Above the Law founder David Lat, is that you don't have to.

The bad news? The only way out is through.

Lat, speaking during a panel discussion titled, "The Path Less Followed: The Rise in Nontraditional Career," at Legalweek 2020 in New York, said that while some of the skills and innate tendencies—a strong work ethic, "anal retentiveness"—that attorneys hone in more traditional law firm and in-house positions can prove helpful in other disciplines, the biggest advantage of that experience is the credibility that comes with it.

"To be totally honest, a lot of the value of a traditional career is really the branding—the stamp of approval," said Lat, who began his own career as a Big Law associate before transitioning to a federal prosecutor and ultimately becoming a successful legal blogger and, most recently, a legal recruiter.

Lat said his bona fides as a practicing lawyer are what allowed him to be taken seriously as a writer covering the profession and enabled him to relate to the attorneys he serves as a recruiter.

Panelist Chris Wilson's law firm is built on those bona fides, in fact.

Wilson is a partner at Taylor English, a law firm with a unique hybrid business model that combines some elements of a traditional brick-and-mortar institution with the scalability and flexibility of a virtual law firm.

But a big reason that somewhat radical structure works, Wilson said, is that the firm is populated with partners who have strong backgrounds in more traditional law firms and in-house roles. That pedigree, in conjunction with the cost-effectiveness made possible by the firm's comparatively low overhead, creates a value proposition that Wilson said is a major selling point for both clients and recruits.

"If you're going to be a successful attorney in an alternative model, having that stamp of approval opens doors," Wilson said.

And then, of course, there's the financial security a "normal" job can provide you while you're pursuing your dream of a less traditional career path.

"The sooner you have some financial independence, the sooner you can make a change," Lat noted.

So it may not be possible, in most cases, to entirely bypass the traditional path on your way to the path less traveled, but there are ways you can prepare before you reach that fork in the road.

Panelist Zach Abramowitz, co-founder and CEO of online conversation platform ReplyAll, discovered early in his career as an associate at Schulte Roth & Zabel that law firm life was not for him and ultimately reinvented himself as a tech entrepreneur.

While Abramowitz was blunt about the fact that his initial aim was to get out of the legal industry entirely, ReplyAll eventually found a customer base with attorneys and he came to appreciate the insights his experience—or, as he put it, "hazing"—as a law firm associate afford him.

But Abramowitz also admitted he laments the "wasted opportunities" he let pass by in law school and as an associate by not networking as much as he could have.

"I didn't actively burn bridges when I left Schulte, but I didn't build them," he said.

Wilson said it's all too easy, especially at a large firm, for assets like self-sufficiency and entrepreneurial spirit to atrophy, and that can make it nearly impossible to take your career in a new direction.

"Don't just be a cog in a machine, being fed, and then seven years down the line say, 'OK, what do I do now?'" Wilson cautioned.

For those eager to parlay their conventional legal training into a less conventional career, equally as important as amassing relationships is amassing knowledge—and that goes for young and senior lawyers alike, Abramowitz added.

"Spend one hour of your day learning new skills," he said, adding that supplemental education could be as simple as watching a webinar or a half-hour YouTube tutorial. "When I hire, I'm looking for someone who is eager, constantly, to learn new things."

Additionally, if you want, for example, to work in legal tech, Abramowitz explained, take the initiative to be the attorney at your firm that demos every new product.

"You're going to have to start in a conventional, traditional way," he said. "But if you're going to go for a nontraditional career, go in knowing that and optimize for it."