Quote of the Day: Lawyer’s True Calling Is Playing with Legos

I left the law firm behind to play with [lego] bricks full time. The reaction from friends and family was interesting. There were some people who were a little negative about it, and thought I was crazy.

— Nathan Sawaya, former corporate lawyer at Winston & Strawn who now earns his livelihood building lego sculptures.

Big Law gets a bad rap: High-stress, high pressure, high time-commitment.

For anyone worried about their career choice, meet Nathan Sawaya — proof positive that beautiful things emerge from the Big Law crucible.

As Sawaya explains in this video , he was working mad hours as a corporate M&A attorney in New York City, and needed to blow off steam. At night, he would channel his excess energy into painting and drawing.

[caption id="attachment_17154" align="alignright” width="230"][Image “Nathan Sawaya attends the preview of the exhibition ‘Nathan Sawaya: The Art Of The Brick’ at Kulturcompagnie on May 11, 2016 in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Christian Augustin/Getty Images)” (src=https://bol.bna.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GettyImages-530791788-230x130.jpg)]Nathan Sawaya attends the preview of the exhibition ‘Nathan Sawaya: The Art Of The Brick’ at Kulturcompagnie on May 11, 2016 in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Christian Augustin/Getty Images)[/caption]

One day, in a eureka moment, he decided to try to make large scale sculptures out of legos. Sawaya knew he had struck a nerve when a simple online gallery of his work crashed from too many visitors.

He quit his job as a lawyer in order to make lego sculptures for people. Today, his “Art of the Brick” exhibition tours the globe, he told Seeker website.

His lego-Tyranosauras Rex sculpture measures in at 20 feet in length and took three months to complete. A batmobile took two months.

“You don’t have to find one career path, there are many ways to get you where you want to go,” said Sawaya. “Even if you don’t know where that is right now, you can always change what you are.”

Bloomberg Law previously profiled Sawaya in 2013 as part of the “Stealth Lawyers” video series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtO1EPKRuBE