The Other Side of 40: Why Experience Can Be the Beginning, Not the Destination
How a career pivot at 40 taught me that experience is the foundation for reinvention, not the end of the story.
The Other Side of 40: Why Experience Can Be the Beginning, Not the Destination
For much of my career, I represented pharmaceutical companies and other corporations in complex litigation. I worked on sophisticated cases, learned from excellent lawyers, and became very good at what I did.
Then, at 40, I started over.
I founded Beck Law Center, a plaintiffs' law firm in Cincinnati, and began using much of what I had learned during 13 years on the defense side to represent the people on the other side of those cases.
It was one of the best professional decisions I have ever made.
It was also terrifying.
There is a particular kind of security that comes with being established in your career. You know what you are doing. Other people know that you know what you are doing. You have a salary, colleagues, infrastructure, clients, and a professional identity that has taken years to build.
Walking away from that can feel irrational.
By 40, we're often told—sometimes explicitly, but more often by implication—that the period for experimentation is behind us. The sensible thing is to capitalize on what we've built, not dismantle it.
I came to believe the opposite.
Starting Over Isn't Starting From Zero
When I opened my firm, I was a new business owner and a relatively new plaintiffs' lawyer. But I wasn't a new lawyer.
The distinction mattered.
I knew how corporations defended lawsuits because I had spent years helping them do it. I knew how defense lawyers investigated cases, evaluated risk, selected experts, prepared witnesses, took depositions, and developed arguments.
The experience I once thought defined my career became one of the greatest advantages in changing it.
That taught me something I wish more women understood when contemplating a professional change: you don't leave your experience behind when you change direction. You take it with you.
Starting over at 40 is very different from starting at 22. You may have more to lose, but you also have considerably more to work with.
Your judgment comes with you. Your relationships come with you. Your mistakes come with you—and, more importantly, so does everything they taught you.
There Is a Difference Between Being Successful and Being Where You Belong
One of the hardest career questions isn't, "Am I succeeding?"
It's, "Do I want the life that comes with succeeding here?"
Those are very different questions.
It is possible to be good at something and still decide that you don't want to spend the rest of your career doing it. In fact, success can make leaving harder. The more you've invested in becoming good at something, the more wasteful it can feel to walk away.
But past investment isn't a reason to devote the future to something you no longer want.
I didn't stop valuing the years I spent representing corporations when I became a plaintiffs' lawyer. Quite the opposite. Those years made me the lawyer I am.
They simply weren't the end of the story.
Independence Has a Price
I don't want to romanticize entrepreneurship.
Starting a law firm meant giving up predictability. There was no guarantee that clients would come through the door, cases would succeed, or the business I was building would work.
When you work for an established organization, there are entire departments handling things you barely notice. When you own the business, suddenly all of those things are your problem.
There is freedom in that.
There is also fear.
I learned that courage in business rarely feels like courage while you're doing it. It often feels like anxiety accompanied by a decision to proceed anyway.
And I learned that confidence doesn't necessarily arrive before the leap. Sometimes confidence is what you build by surviving everything that happens after it.
Don't Wait Until You're Fearless
Women are frequently encouraged to "believe in themselves." It's good advice, but I think we sometimes present it in the wrong order.
We imagine confidence first and action second.
My experience has often been the reverse.
You make the call. File the case. Walk into the room. Ask for the opportunity. Start the business. Take the risk.
Then you discover that you can handle what happens next.
There have been difficult cases and difficult days since I started Beck Law Center. There have also been extraordinary ones. I've had the opportunity to build a practice around work that matters deeply to me and to represent individuals facing opponents with vastly greater resources.
I don't know that I would have had the courage to do it at 25.
At 40, I had something more useful than youthful certainty: I had evidence.
I knew I could learn difficult things. I knew I could withstand professional pressure. I knew how sophisticated litigation worked. I knew that I could sit across the table from formidable lawyers and hold my own.
I had spent almost two decades accumulating proof that I was capable—even if I hadn't been accumulating it for the purpose I ultimately chose.
Your Career Does Not Have to Be a Straight Line
Today, Beck Law Center represents individuals in product liability, serious personal injury, wrongful death, and other complex civil cases throughout Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia.
One of the phrases we use at the firm is:
"13 years on the other side. Now I'm on yours."
It's a marketing line, certainly. But to me, it means something more.
The 13 years weren't a detour. They are part of the reason I can do what I do today.
Careers don't have to make perfect sense while we're living them. Sometimes the experience that seems to have taken you in the wrong direction turns out to be exactly what prepares you for the right one.
So, particularly to women who have reached the point in their careers when changing course seems impractical, I would offer this:
Don't confuse experience with obligation.
You are allowed to take everything you've learned and do something different with it.
You are allowed to discover at 40—or 50 or 60—that what got you here isn't where you want to stay.
And if you decide to begin again, remember:
You aren't starting from scratch. You're starting from experience.
