Ex-lawyer: returning to code after years in practice

Starting Background

Fernanda Penna Ribeiro had an established legal career in Brazil when she decided she didn't want to continue. Not for lack of ability: for exhaustion. The burnout she described in her STRV interview - published in March 2023 - wasn't just physical. It was the feeling of having built something she no longer wanted. And the question she found herself asking, at almost thirty years old, was a radical one: what now?

The answer didn't come immediately. It came after a period of searching - which she herself describes as chaotic and frightening - during which she discovered programming almost by chance, through an online course. The first reaction was surprise: this is something I enjoy doing. The second reaction, harder to manage, was: but I'm already too far behind. I don't have the foundations everyone else has. How can I start over?

Benton Wong had a different but equally non-linear trajectory. As told in a Course Report interview in 2019, he worked in biotechnology, then studied law, then held business leadership roles - three careers in sequence, each with its skills and networks. He arrived at the decision to become a developer not by chance but by deliberate choice: he had identified programming as the skill he would have wanted in his previous careers, and decided to acquire it directly instead of working around it.

What do these two paths have in common, apparently so different? The fact that neither was a response to a "natural vocation" for programming. They were responses to concrete life situations - burnout in Fernanda's case, strategic choice in Benton's - that found in programming a way out and forward. This is a point that standard tech career change narratives tend to minimize: you don't need to "love programming" to begin. You need a concrete reason to learn.

For a European or Italian lawyer considering this transition, the international dimension of Fernanda's story is relevant: technical skills are portable, and the tech job market where you can apply is not limited to your own country.

The context of legal burnout as a starting point

Burnout in the legal profession is not rare. Research on professional well-being in lawyers shows burnout rates significantly higher in the legal profession than in the average of highly qualified professions. Workload, competition, managing high-emotional-stress situations, client pressure, and the hierarchical structure of many law firms are factors that contribute to this data.

Fernanda exited this situation through programming - not because programming is necessarily less stressful than law, but because the change of context offered the possibility of restarting without the weight of accumulated years of expectations.

Typical Difficulties

Returning to code after years of law practice has specific difficulties that those who start right after secondary school or during university don't encounter in the same measure.

Professional identity as ballast

After years of legal practice, the professional identity of a lawyer is deeply rooted. It's not just a job: it's a way of thinking, of relating to problems, of speaking and positioning oneself socially.

Fernanda describes it in her account: the moment she stopped introducing herself as a lawyer - first in social conversations, then in professional contexts - was a moment of deliberate rupture. It didn't come naturally. It required an active choice to let go of a consolidated identity. And before the identity of "backend engineer" arrived, there was a period of uncertainty about who she was professionally.

The technical debt of self-taught learning

Those who learn programming self-taught - through online courses, bootcamps, or tutorials - often accumulate uneven skills. They know some things well and others poorly; they have gaps in areas that a university curriculum would cover systematically. This "technical debt of self-taught learning" is not a lack of intelligence or commitment. It's the natural cost of an unstructured path.

Benton addressed this problem directly: instead of continuing with self-teaching, he chose a structured bootcamp - Flatiron School in New York - that provided him with a more coherent base and a portfolio of verifiable projects.

The temporal distance from learning new things

A 35-year-old lawyer starting to program doesn't only face the challenge of new content. They also face the challenge of learning after years when learning completely new things - in the sense of skills from zero - was not part of their daily life. This isn't an insurmountable problem - the adult brain learns effectively even at a later age, and the research on this is clear. But it requires recalibrating expectations on pace and progression.

What Worked (Fernanda and Benton)

1. Accepting the starting point, not idealizing it

Fernanda wrote explicitly about going through a phase where she looked for the "fastest path." This phase, she says, was partly an illusion. There is no fastest path in the absolute. There is a most appropriate path for one's own learning style and situation. The real starting point was: zero technical knowledge, professional burnout, need to rediscover motivation. Accepting that starting point allowed her to build a realistic plan instead of chasing an ideal.

2. Specializing more quickly than normal

Benton, instead of trying to cover the entire tech landscape, specialized relatively early - choosing a specific path (full-stack web development) and a primary language during his training. The advice that emerges from many successful tech career switch stories is consistent: a portfolio showing three solid projects in a specific area is more effective than ten superficial projects in different areas.

3. Using the previous professional background as a differentiator

Fernanda works as a backend engineer on products that intersect with the legal and business domain. Her background as a lawyer is not irrelevant in her current work - it's an asset that distinguishes her from developers with purely technical backgrounds. Benton brought his background in biotech and law to tech contexts requiring understanding of complex data and regulated systems.

4. Building a tech professional network before looking for work

Both Fernanda and Benton invested time in building connections in the tech world before actively looking for work. Benton got his role at Scribd through a professional connection, not through an application portal. Fernanda built her network during the learning period, participating in hackathons and tech meetups.

5. Managing time expectations honestly

Both paths required more time than initially planned. Fernanda took about two years from the decision to change career to the first stable technical position. The management of temporal expectation - understanding that the transition requires a horizon of 18-36 months, not 6 - is one of the factors separating those who complete the journey from those who stop before.

6. The bootcamp as an acceleration tool (not a shortcut)

Benton used the Flatiron School bootcamp not as a shortcut but as a structuring tool. The bootcamp offered a coherent progression, a learning context with other students, and a portfolio framework that made applications more efficient.

Cognitive Framework

Burnout as catalyst and its implications

Professional burnout is a frequent catalyst in tech career switches. But burnout is also a state that reduces available cognitive resources - exactly those needed to learn new and complex things. Fernanda navigated this paradox explicitly. The practical advice for those in a similar situation - wanting to change career after a period of exhaustion: don't rush learning to compensate for "lost" time. Learning in a state of exhaustion is slow and frustrating. Sustainable pace is always more effective than maximum pace.

The multi-career as non-linear advantage (Newport)

Cal Newport in So Good They Can't Ignore You (ISBN 978-1455509126) describes multi-career trajectories as potentially advantageous: each career builds a set of skills that overlaps with previous ones in ways not always predictable at the start. Benton's biotech background gave him scientific analysis skills and reasoning about complex data. His legal background added systematic reasoning and risk management. His business leadership background added project management and communication with non-technical stakeholders.

Sectoral specialization as an entry strategy

One of the most recurring observations in successful tech career switch stories is that market entry happens almost always through sectoral specialization, not through generic technical competence. Not "I'm a developer," but "I'm a developer with a background in [specific domain]." For those from law, LegalTech, RegTech, compliance software, digital contracts, privacy engineering: all these areas benefit from the combination of technical competence and deep legal understanding.

Reading List and Resources

• Fernanda Penna Ribeiro - "From Lawyer to Backend Engineer" (STRV blog, 2023) - First-person account of Fernanda's transition. Honest about burnout, precise about the stages. Read this before any other resource on the law-to-tech transition.
• Benton Wong - "Why Benton Switched from Lawyer to Software Engineer" (Course Report, 2019) - The story of Benton's multi-career trajectory.
• Cal Newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You (ISBN 978-1455509126)
• James Clear, Atomic Habits (ISBN 978-0735211292) - Framework for building sustainable learning habits in conditions of reduced energy - particularly useful for those learning after a burnout.

If you're planning how to organize the next months of learning in a sustainable way - possibly in parallel with current work, or in a recovery period after burnout - the 6-month study guide includes a weekly plan designed specifically for those studying without being able to dedicate 100% to the transition. You can download it for free above.

Next Step in the Series

This article told two cases of transition from law to software engineering: Fernanda Penna Ribeiro and Benton Wong. The next articles in the series move to different backgrounds.

Return to the series cornerstone for the complete view of all 20 planned articles.

See also: From law school to developer: the long path is possible - the story of Zubin Pratap.

What I Learned Writing This

Writing about Fernanda and Benton at the same time helped me see a distinction that often gets lost in general career switch narratives: the difference between transition driven by burnout and transition guided by strategy. They're different motivations that produce different experiences - and the practical advice isn't the same for both situations.

For those driven by burnout: take time to recover before accelerating learning. For those moving from strategy: build emotional motivation in parallel with rational planning. Without that, difficult moments risk becoming moments of rationalized abandonment.

If you're an ex-lawyer considering or already pursuing this transition - whatever your motivation - I'd like to know where you are in the journey. Write to me at federico@federicocalo.dev.

I'll reply. Always.