{"id":142763,"date":"2026-01-27T17:00:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T01:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/01\/27\/advice-from-marty-supreme-getting-a-handle-on-a-fast-growing-nonlegal-career-path-and-paris-checking-in\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T17:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T01:00:29","slug":"advice-from-marty-supreme-getting-a-handle-on-a-fast-growing-nonlegal-career-path-and-paris-checking-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/01\/27\/advice-from-marty-supreme-getting-a-handle-on-a-fast-growing-nonlegal-career-path-and-paris-checking-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice From \u2018Marty Supreme,\u2019 Getting A Handle On A Fast-Growing Nonlegal Career Path, And Paris Checking In"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil, here.\u00a0 When I was a teenager growing up in NYC, I frequented a place called the Table Tennis Center<\/em> on 96th<\/sup> Street off Broadway.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t wander in accidentally.\u00a0 You went because you knew<\/em>.\u00a0 Street level, thick with smoke, always noisy, it featured a bunch of beaten-up tables, metal chairs and a mix of old-school hustlers playing for cash, petty criminals, competition-level players, kids like me, and the curious who almost always left having lost whatever money they had on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The place was owned\/run by Marty Reisman, a trash-talking, expert player and hustler.\u00a0 But he had a soft spot for the kids.\u00a0 He gave us ping-pong lessons and enjoyed showing off for us playing what he referred to as \u201cpigeons\u201d for money, often with an extreme handicap like using a sneaker or just his elbow as a paddle.<\/p>\n

Every so often, before there was a lot of action in the place, he\u2019d speak with us about things other than ping-pong or money.\u00a0 I remember distinctly one conversation where Marty asked me what I wanted to do for a living.\u00a0 I said \u201clawyer.\u201d He looked at me and smiled: \u201cNow, why would a smart kid like you want to do that?\u201d\u00a0 It turned out he was right.<\/p>\n

It came to mind when, to my absolute shock, I read about a movie being made based loosely on his life starring the most bankable young movie star in the world, Timothy Chalamet.\u00a0 I would have sooner believed Martians were landing on earth.\u00a0 The movie is in theatres.<\/p>\n

\n

One of the things we monitor closely at Ex Judicata is trending nonlegal jobs<\/strong> for JDs<\/strong>. One that keeps crossing our screens is \u201cPractice Group Director\u201d or \u201cPractice Manager.\u201d\u00a0 Essentially, this is someone who assists the Practice Group Leader (PGL) in running the particular practice (litigation, capital markets, IP, etc.) at a law firm like a business unit so the PGL who is a partner can focus on client development and legal work.\u00a0 We have found that the role is often misunderstood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re administrative staff.\u201d\u00a0 They are not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tell lawyers what to do.\u201d\u00a0 They do not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are lawyers by training.\u201d\u00a0 They do not have to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a cost center.\u201d Enlightened firms view it as helping drive revenue.<\/p>\n

For clarification, we turned to Susan Lambreth, a Co-Founding Principal at LawVision<\/strong>, a top legal project management, practice group management, and law firm leadership consulting firm.\u00a0 An attorney by background, Susan told us:<\/p>\n

\n

These roles are like \u201cmini\u201d COOs of the practice group or department.\u00a0 The roles have been around for 30 years and there are well over 500 people with these roles in US law firms. The responsibilities vary widely from firm to firm but can include the day-to-day operations of the group, financial management, talent management (like workload assignment), group business planning, lateral onboarding, partner progression recommendations, and more.<\/p>\n

The department chairs and practice group leaders need business professionals who are full-time helping them so they, as the partner leaders, can maintain their busy legal practice.\u00a0 Much like Office Managing Partners have an office administrator and other roles supporting them, when law firms evolved from geographic management of the firm to \u201cbusiness unit\u201d driven management, they needed to add professionals to help the department chairs and\/or practice group leaders manage their groups.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Practice Group Professionals belongs to the category \u201claw adjacent\u201d jobs.\u00a0 Essentially positions where one maintains some connection to law without practicing law.\u00a0 Many former practicing lawyers love these jobs because they are deeply involved in a firm\u2019s practices \u2013 but helping to run the business of the group and without the pressure of billable hours or making partner. These roles are also sometimes known by the more antiquated phrase, \u201cJD Advantage\u201d jobs. Compliance and legal recruiting are probably the two most common \u201claw adjacent\u201d paths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For many, there is comfort in retaining a connection to law having spent three years of one\u2019s life in law school.\u00a0 We understand.\u00a0 But counsel, do not be held back by the belief that if you leave law your career still has to have, at least, a tangential connection to law.\u00a0 It does not.\u00a0 Follow your passion.\u00a0 And always remember that your JD is a degree in complex problem-solving, a skill which is valued by pretty much every career in the universe.<\/p>\n

\n

Ex Judicata was in Paris over the holidays.\u00a0 We had the opportunity to sit down over dinner with an assortment of law firm partners, associates, and one COO of an Am Law 20 firm.\u00a0 The place was L\u2019Arret, which had recently opened.\u00a0 The chef is Mashama Bailey, who has had one other restaurant, The Grey, in Savannah, Georgia, for 15 years.\u00a0 Not a common nexus from Savannah to Paris, which we thought was kind of cool.<\/p>\n

The main takeaways? Lawyers in France are no different than lawyers in the US in the sense of so many being interested in exploring nonlegal careers.\u00a0 The world of work has never been more transparent in human history with sites like exjudicata.com helping to show the breadth of opportunities for non-practicing lawyers.<\/p>\n

The difference?\u00a0 D\u00e9sespoir or desperation. There wasn\u2019t the same sense of panic or hitting the wall or feeling trapped that we have encountered so often among practicing lawyers on exjudicata.com.\u00a0 A lot of it we would chalk up to lifestyle. The pace is a lot slower in Paris than in, say, New York City.\u00a0 Even if one is working on global deals.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d love to know what you think.<\/p>\n

\n

The authors of\u00a0The Great Escape\u00a0column,\u00a0Neil Handwerker and\u00a0Kimberly Fine,\u00a0are the founders of exjudicata.com, a platform designed to help lawyers move to nonlegal careers. \u00a0They just launched\u00a0a new related platform, the EXJ Community, the first ever peer-to-peer network of non-practicing lawyers.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Advice From \u2018Marty Supreme,\u2019 Getting A Handle On A Fast-Growing Nonlegal Career Path, And Paris Checking In<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neil, here.\u00a0 When I was a teenager growing up in NYC, I frequented a place called the Table Tennis Center<\/em> on 96th<\/sup> Street off Broadway.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t wander in accidentally.\u00a0 You went because you knew<\/em>.\u00a0 Street level, thick with smoke, always noisy, it featured a bunch of beaten-up tables, metal chairs and a mix of old-school hustlers playing for cash, petty criminals, competition-level players, kids like me, and the curious who almost always left having lost whatever money they had on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The place was owned\/run by Marty Reisman, a trash-talking, expert player and hustler.\u00a0 But he had a soft spot for the kids.\u00a0 He gave us ping-pong lessons and enjoyed showing off for us playing what he referred to as \u201cpigeons\u201d for money, often with an extreme handicap like using a sneaker or just his elbow as a paddle.<\/p>\n

Every so often, before there was a lot of action in the place, he\u2019d speak with us about things other than ping-pong or money.\u00a0 I remember distinctly one conversation where Marty asked me what I wanted to do for a living.\u00a0 I said \u201clawyer.\u201d He looked at me and smiled: \u201cNow, why would a smart kid like you want to do that?\u201d\u00a0 It turned out he was right.<\/p>\n

It came to mind when, to my absolute shock, I read about a movie being made based loosely on his life starring the most bankable young movie star in the world, Timothy Chalamet.\u00a0 I would have sooner believed Martians were landing on earth.\u00a0 The movie is in theatres.<\/p>\n

\n

One of the things we monitor closely at Ex Judicata is trending nonlegal jobs<\/strong> for JDs<\/strong>. One that keeps crossing our screens is \u201cPractice Group Director\u201d or \u201cPractice Manager.\u201d\u00a0 Essentially, this is someone who assists the Practice Group Leader (PGL) in running the particular practice (litigation, capital markets, IP, etc.) at a law firm like a business unit so the PGL who is a partner can focus on client development and legal work.\u00a0 We have found that the role is often misunderstood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re administrative staff.\u201d\u00a0 They are not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tell lawyers what to do.\u201d\u00a0 They do not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are lawyers by training.\u201d\u00a0 They do not have to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a cost center.\u201d Enlightened firms view it as helping drive revenue.<\/p>\n

For clarification, we turned to Susan Lambreth, a Co-Founding Principal at LawVision<\/strong>, a top legal project management, practice group management, and law firm leadership consulting firm.\u00a0 An attorney by background, Susan told us:<\/p>\n

\n

These roles are like \u201cmini\u201d COOs of the practice group or department.\u00a0 The roles have been around for 30 years and there are well over 500 people with these roles in US law firms. The responsibilities vary widely from firm to firm but can include the day-to-day operations of the group, financial management, talent management (like workload assignment), group business planning, lateral onboarding, partner progression recommendations, and more.<\/p>\n

The department chairs and practice group leaders need business professionals who are full-time helping them so they, as the partner leaders, can maintain their busy legal practice.\u00a0 Much like Office Managing Partners have an office administrator and other roles supporting them, when law firms evolved from geographic management of the firm to \u201cbusiness unit\u201d driven management, they needed to add professionals to help the department chairs and\/or practice group leaders manage their groups.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Practice Group Professionals belongs to the category \u201claw adjacent\u201d jobs.\u00a0 Essentially positions where one maintains some connection to law without practicing law.\u00a0 Many former practicing lawyers love these jobs because they are deeply involved in a firm\u2019s practices \u2013 but helping to run the business of the group and without the pressure of billable hours or making partner. These roles are also sometimes known by the more antiquated phrase, \u201cJD Advantage\u201d jobs. Compliance and legal recruiting are probably the two most common \u201claw adjacent\u201d paths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For many, there is comfort in retaining a connection to law having spent three years of one\u2019s life in law school.\u00a0 We understand.\u00a0 But counsel, do not be held back by the belief that if you leave law your career still has to have, at least, a tangential connection to law.\u00a0 It does not.\u00a0 Follow your passion.\u00a0 And always remember that your JD is a degree in complex problem-solving, a skill which is valued by pretty much every career in the universe.<\/p>\n

\n

Ex Judicata was in Paris over the holidays.\u00a0 We had the opportunity to sit down over dinner with an assortment of law firm partners, associates, and one COO of an Am Law 20 firm.\u00a0 The place was L\u2019Arret, which had recently opened.\u00a0 The chef is Mashama Bailey, who has had one other restaurant, The Grey, in Savannah, Georgia, for 15 years.\u00a0 Not a common nexus from Savannah to Paris, which we thought was kind of cool.<\/p>\n

The main takeaways? Lawyers in France are no different than lawyers in the US in the sense of so many being interested in exploring nonlegal careers.\u00a0 The world of work has never been more transparent in human history with sites like exjudicata.com helping to show the breadth of opportunities for non-practicing lawyers.<\/p>\n

The difference?\u00a0 D\u00e9sespoir or desperation. There wasn\u2019t the same sense of panic or hitting the wall or feeling trapped that we have encountered so often among practicing lawyers on exjudicata.com.\u00a0 A lot of it we would chalk up to lifestyle. The pace is a lot slower in Paris than in, say, New York City.\u00a0 Even if one is working on global deals.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d love to know what you think.<\/p>\n

\n

The authors of\u00a0The Great Escape\u00a0column,\u00a0Neil Handwerker and\u00a0Kimberly Fine,\u00a0are the founders of exjudicata.com, a platform designed to help lawyers move to nonlegal careers. \u00a0They just launched\u00a0a new related platform, the EXJ Community, the first ever peer-to-peer network of non-practicing lawyers.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Advice From \u2018Marty Supreme,\u2019 Getting A Handle On A Fast-Growing Nonlegal Career Path, And Paris Checking In<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil, here.\u00a0 When I was a teenager growing up in NYC, I frequented a place called the Table Tennis Center on 96th Street off Broadway.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t wander in accidentally.\u00a0 You went because you knew.\u00a0 Street level, thick with smoke, always noisy, it featured a bunch of beaten-up tables, metal chairs and a mix of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}