Solicitor to Counsellor - doable or not?

[WinteringTheStorm]

Hi

I’m looking for some guidance from anyone who has sought to retrain in later life to being a person- centred counsellor.

I’m a 22 year pqe solicitor who has reached a state of burnout. I’m trying to work out what to do for the remaining 18 years of my working life given it’s clear I cannot be a solicitor anymore. I have had years of counselling for my own issues (childhood abuse, bereavements, issues arising from my children’s disabilities) and have always found person-centred counselling to be extremely useful. I am not interested in practising in CBT although EMDR is an area of interest to me.

I am approaching 50 and need to make a choice to either retrain as a counsellor (which would absolutely be my first preference) but I’ve read various MN threads about it being, in essence, an expensive hobby. As a family we can’t afford for it to be that. My husband’s job as a teacher isn’t desperately secure and were keenly aware that our children are unlikely to live independently until they’re much older than ‘normal’ if at all.

Any views on the idea/likelihood of a career in counselling truly being an expensive hobby would be very gratefully received. Thank you.

What's the minimum you need to earn?

About £28,000 per annum. We’re ‘lucky’ in that my dad died a while ago and I inherited enough to pay off our mortgage and we have some savings but I was intending to keep those for the children’s treatments/therapies really.

I am someone who began training as a counsellor (person centred) and I stopped, due to the cost of training and it seemed to me that I couldn't make sufficient income from doing this, to pay my way. I still find it very interesting but I didn't feel I could make the full switch to be dependent on this for an income.

I'm assuming as a solicitor, you have a first degree ? which would mean you'd have to pay for all tuition fees yourself, plus all other associated costs.

I'd suggest think very hard about it and also, of course, how saturated the market may be for counsellors covering the approx area where you live (although online counselling is an increasing market too).

The BACP will also give you guidelines, see
https://www.bacp.co.uk/careers/careers-in-counselling/training/

Good luck with whatever you decide !

The average counsellor earns about £9k/pa, but most aren't full time.

12h/wk for 48 weeks at £50/hr would get you over £28k/pa, so it's very doable. Adjust for different hours, hourly rates etc.

It depends which area you're in & how good at marketing yourself you are, might take a while to build your clientele. You can supplement it with teaching or being a paid staff member for a charity or NHS trust if appropriately qualified. Obviously everyone does online these days. And if you qualify in certain specialisms, you'll be more likely to find more clients, so might be worth looking into that.

I look left a corporate role 14 years ago to become a psychotherapist. Not purely p/c though (integrative with CBT, Psychodynamic and Systemic) I’ve never looked back. I earn more than I did in the City but have heavily invested in my training and am also a Clinical Supervisor and trainer. I work for myself. Happy for you to PM

There was a thread about this exact situation a few weeks ago.

The consensus was that training is incredibly expensive and probably not worth it.

It’s absolutely doable but the big thing you need to watch out for right now is the market is very squeezed. Every professional I know around the age of 50 seems to be giving up their job in law or project management at a bank etc so they can become a coach or a counsellor. And this is at exactly the same time as the market for AI led coaching and counselling is really becoming very sophisticated. The services that are delivering counselling at scale, and guarantee you some flow of work, pay very little. No way would I want to become a counsellor unless I wanted an expensive hobby at your age.

Have you considered joining something like Keystone law? I think that’s the name. Where essentially it’s a platform for solicitors who are all working under the same banner but they effectively run their own practices and decide on what hours they want to do. That way you can cut back in the way you want to.

It is hugely expensive to train - the training itself, the time and travel cost of voluntary placement work, course books, personal therapy, supervision...I started training in 2018 and still don't break even, though I hope to break that barrier this year. It is also a saturated market where the differences in training depth etc are not always very apparent.

This only works for people who have a very stable client following as you basically eat what you kill. It's very insecure and stressful to constantly generate your own work.

I did legal consulting (like Keystone) for a while but I made no money and we can’t afford for me to earn nothing/very little. We definitely can’t afford for counselling to be an expensive hobby.

But you know that “what will you do with your one wild and precious life” poem? My answer is very definitely not the law and my heart says counselling. I have a lot of thinking to do! Thank you for all of your thoughts, they’re very much appreciated.