In moving to my current job, I made a 180-degree turn from what I had been doing, while still staying in the same field. I’m a criminal defense lawyer at the Bose Law Firm in Springfield, Va. Before that, I worked as an assistant commonwealth attorney in Virginia, similar to an assistant district attorney in some states. Today, I defend people I might formerly have prosecuted.

I have to look only at my family and friends for other examples of big career shifts. My brother used to work as an actuary for an insurance company, and now he’s a benefits manager for a school district. In his last job, he calculated the premiums for people buying retirement policies; now he selects benefit programs that suit the district’s needs.

A friend of mine went from working in counterintelligence for the military to working in the real estate field. In his last job, he checked government buildings for recording devices and worked long periods alone. As a real estate agent, he shows houses to prospective buyers and constantly interacts with the public.

There are several reasons why people change jobs — including bad bosses, long commutes and finances. In my case, it was largely money — I had paid my way through law school, and my student loan debt had been draining my finances. I knew I could command more money working for a law firm.

I had several other reasons for a career move. I was ready to start a family, so a higher salary would help with those expenses. In addition, I had accomplished some personal goals, successfully prosecuting murders, sexual assaults and other violent crimes, and it was time for a change. It’s not uncommon in this field to change sides the way I did — all the lawyers at Bose are former prosecutors or police officers.

As a prosecutor, I enjoyed helping victims and working closely with law enforcement. But everyone has a right to legal representation. This side of the law has its own rewards, too, like helping people get a fair and just outcome.

So much of how you feel about such a big career change depends on your background and your personality. I’ve always considered myself a public servant; I joined the Marines directly out of high school. Lawyers who are friends of mine still see me as a prosecutor and are surprised that I made the switch.

Similarly, strangers always seem more interested in my past career, and they seem able to picture me more easily in that position. It’s an indication that I was a natural for that role. But because I know people who’ve made similar switches, it’s not that odd to me. I think that people are courageous for trying something totally new or foreign to them.

I’ve been at Bose for two years, and I’ve done a lot of self-reflection in that time. I always tried to look at all sides of a case as a prosecutor, but in the end I thought people who committed crimes should have considered the consequences of their actions beforehand. Law school helped me to deal with ambiguity and to realize that not everything is hard and fast, that there are shades of gray and different ways to interpret people’s actions. But I still believed that criminals needed to take responsibility for what they did.

My wife used to remind me that some people are not career criminals; they’ve just made a mistake, and that insight drives me now. There are truly two sides to every story. Some people are simply innocent. And good people can find themselves in bad situations, and we need to consider how to help them.

A  DRASTIC career move is affected by how well you handle change. Some people adjust better than others. You have to give yourself time to become accustomed to any new job. I’ve never thought of myself as a chameleon who could adapt to ever-changing situations, but I have learned to be more flexible. The initial discomfort of trying something new wears off. We all need to show different faces at different times. Not only that, but working in a job so diametrically opposed to my previous work has helped me to grow.

As told to Patricia R. Olsen.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c51405dc5162cbaa68ac2acdecd219ec