You know you can’t stay in this job. It’s time to go. You feel it building in you. If you wait much longer, you’re going to pop. You’re just going to quit one day and walk right out the door.

That’s what I did.

It started off with rational behavior. I was thinking like a lawyer.

Lawyers from another firm approached me and asked whether I’d like to join them. They interviewed me a few times to be sure we’d be a fit. They offered me more money. I said yes, gave notice, and started packing up my stuff. I was planning to make the move in 30 days.

Then people at my firm started working on me. They wanted me to stay. They increased my salary. They offered me a bigger budget for continuing education. They paid more attention to me. I backed out of the offer I’d accepted and stayed at the firm. I burned the bridge to that other firm pretty good. Those folks weren’t happy with me. Oh well.

Six months later, my world turned upside down.

I was in a conference room having a heated discussion with a partner. She was upset, and I got upset. I had this weird, out-of-body experience where I watched myself quit my job. Suddenly, I was unemployed. It was very odd to watch myself making spontaneous decisions without a plan. Who was running this show?

I was not—definitely not—thinking like a lawyer.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I put together a plan and went out on my own. That was 25 years ago.

How to Prepare to Leave Your Current Firm

Hopefully you won’t lose it and quit. Hopefully you will do things over the course of the next year to prepare for your big move.

Of course, when you’re in this situation of planning to leave, you usually can’t go public. You need to stay under the radar. You want to get your ducks in a row, but you want to keep your job. Income is nice, right?

Here are some things you can do to get ready without announcing your intention. Of course, you might get discovered in the same way that weight loss, a better hairstyle, and exercise sometimes says “I’m leaving you.” There’s only so much you can do to hide your intentions.

Here are my suggestions for the next 12 months:

1. Bar association activities.

Get involved in your bar associations. Do it at every level: national, state, and local. Meet more lawyers and get engaged in your practice area. Jump into projects, committees, and whatever else comes along. Think of the bar association as your place for obtaining credentials (chairperson of whatever) and connections. Meet people. Engage. Talk to everyone.

2. Lunch with lawyers.

Take those bar association lawyers to lunch. Get to know them. Follow the plan I’ve detailed in Networking 101 and really connect with these folks. You’re going to need these relationships when it’s time to get clients to start walking through your door. Building your network is the most important thing you can do during the year preceding your move.

3. Build the website and collateral.

You can build a website and have it ready for launch without making it public. You can even buy your domain name and have it ready to go (make sure you pay a little extra for private registration that can’t be discovered). You can also prepare any additional marketing material you’d like, such as e-books, letterhead, business cards, etc. Getting this stuff done uses up nervous energy in the middle of the night, and it’s work you can do now that you’ll be too busy for later.

4. Prepare all documents.

Go ahead and fill out and prepare everything you can do in advance. Get it all ready and let it sit in a folder on your computer. Prepare your malpractice insurance application, business license forms, health insurance application, entity formation documents, etc. There’s no harm in getting everything ready. Just don’t file it yet.

5. Write a business plan.

Start detailing everything you’re going to do once you go public. Create step-by-step checklists for yourself so you’ll be organized and ready to go. Create some financial projections and marketing plans, and go ahead and create systems and plans for handling cases. Of course, your plan won’t survive first contact with the enemy, but it’s better to have a flawed plan than no plan at all.

Now is the time to get ready. Get your preparation work done so you’ll have time to do client work when the move happens. Most importantly, build relationships that will make your phone ring from the very first day of your new adventure.