Lawyers Should Work With Purpose. Mine Led Me Back to the Office

Whether you’re working in a law firm or in-house, it’s important to find purpose in your work. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

And sometimes a sense of purpose leads you to the next step in your career. That’s what happened to me. I’m heading back to work, driven by purpose.

Lawyers have a curious relationship with their work—many happy lawyers do work furthering a cause that’s important to them personally. Others simply enjoy the process of helping others navigate the legal system.

But for many lawyers, after years and even decades of practicing, finding purpose is hard. The profession often means putting aside what you like and what you believe, and simply advocating zealously for your client’s position. You might be taking legal positions that deep in your heart don’t feel right, but you do it out of professional obligation to your client.

The profession is marked by long hours, high stress, and demanding workloads, which can erode the initial motivation many lawyers have to serve others and make a positive impact. The relentless focus on billable hours, client demands, and the pressure to maximize profits can lead to burnout, reduced fulfillment, and a sense that their work lacks deeper meaning.

I’ve been lucky. I worked at the Department of Justice in an era where the work felt important to me. I prosecuted violent criminals and people who betrayed our country. And then I moved in-house, working at a series of companies that were changing the world, improving lives, and promoting good business. My legal work resonated because it was tied to purpose—I was furthering positive change in the world.

Writing this column has been important purpose-driven work in my life. Bloomberg Law has given me this platform to write about conducting business with integrity, building great cultures, establishing meaningful compliance programs, and finding time for career side hustles. I’ve talked about themes in my book “Intentional Integrity,” and I’ve enjoyed hearing from readers about their career experiences and how the articles reframed their thinking and inspired them to do different things with their lives. It’s been a wonderful experience.

So why go back to the office?

Over the last 20 years, climate change has been gnawing at my conscience. There’s no longer any reasonable scientific debate on what’s going on. We’re seeing a long-term shift in Earth’s average temperatures, leading to rising sea levels, melting glaciers, more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, floods, and wildfires. These changes threaten food security, water supplies, ecosystems, and human health. Without urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts are expected to intensify. I’ve got two children, and they’re asking me what I’m going to do about all this.

After 40 years of practicing law, I could step back and play golf, relax by a pool, travel, and spend time with friends for the rest of my life. But that doesn’t feel right to me. I remember that my greatest teacher, my mother, taught me that if I make a mess, I need to clean it up. It’s a matter of taking personal responsibility for a problem that I’ve played a role in creating. When Taylor Francis, the co-founder of Watershed, reached out to me and asked if I’d consider working there, it felt a little like Earth calling.

Watershed is an enterprise sustainability platform that helps companies measure, report, and reduce their environmental impact, with a particular focus on greenhouse gas emissions. Its platform enables customers—including major corporations such as Airbnb, FedEx, and Visa—to comply with regulatory requirements, meet investor and customer expectations, and drive decarbonization efforts. Even major law firms who care about sustainability and want to better understand the regulatory framework are signing on.

Watershed’s mission is to accelerate the climate economy, aiming to help its customers collectively reduce or remove 500 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, roughly 1% of annual global emissions. I’m in an office with climate scientists, engineers, the product team, and sales and service professionals—we’ve got one thing in common: We want to make a difference. The energy feels great.

It’s a watershed moment for my career, I guess. I’m ready for the journey.

Rob Chesnut consults on legal and ethical issues and was formerly general counsel and chief ethics officer at Airbnb. He spent more than a decade as a Justice Department prosecutor and he writes on in-house, corporate, and ethics issues.

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