Law Is For Smart People Who Don't Know What Else To Do

Описание: Jordan Nahmias didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming an entertainment lawyer. He wanted to be an artist. But a professor suggested he write the LSAT. He did well. And suddenly he was on a track.

Once you’re on the track, it’s easy to mistake momentum for destiny.

“It’s a well-worn groove,” Jordan told me. “Once you’ve made the choice… the blinders are on.”

Then he said something that made me wince: “Law is the thing that smart people do when they don’t know what to do.”

For Jordan, there wasn’t one clean “I’m done” moment. It was more like what he calls epistemological dissonance: knowing for a long time, even going back to law school, that something was off, and still staying.

Until 2021.

Jordan got into a fight with a long-term client, and this time, the way he was treated didn’t roll off.

“I ended up firing them,” he said. “And that was really hard… but then I was like, whoa—wait a minute. You can fire people? You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to continually expose yourself to this.”

And that’s when something clicked: if you can fire one client, you can fire them all.

Jordan & I also talk about:

“I used to be a lawyer” and the ghost of an old identity that won’t quite die
Why law is “the thing smart people do when they don’t know what to do”
The midlife crack and what it takes to rebuild from the inside out
How Jordan now coaches lawyers and teams on values, emotional awareness, leadership, and mentorship
A question his therapist asked that changed everything: “Do you want their whole life?”