A Criminal Lawyer Turned Dog Walker

A high-paying London criminal lawyer quit the courtroom. Now she enjoys her life as a professional dog walker, earning up to £400 daily. For years, Liz East built the kind of career many people associate with ambition and professional success: criminal defence law in London.

But behind the courtroom work and long hours, the 30-year-old from West Sussex increasingly questioned whether the career she had worked so hard for was actually the life she wanted.

Today, her workplace looks very different and has four legs. Liz East left her legal career and built a dog-walking and boarding business, a decision that initially surprised people around her but has since changed both her working hours and income.

According to her account, she now looks after as many as 20 to 30 dogs during a typical day and says she earns thousands of pounds more each month than she earned in her previous corporate work.

Liz East spent four years working in criminal defence after she studied law for six years. Her job involved administrative work, court appearances, prison visits and meetings with clients. The demanding schedule gradually took its toll on her.

She told People, via Kennedy News and Media, that criminal defence was “quite draining” and recalled regularly wondering whether the exhausting routine would define her entire adult life. The pressure did not limit itself to office hours.

Liz East described the wider London work culture, including late evenings and expectations around socialising, as difficult to reconcile with the kind of personal life she wanted.

Her turning point came partly from watching her husband run a dog-walking and boarding business. Unlike her own experience, he genuinely enjoyed going to work. That contrast prompted East to reconsider what she wanted from her career.

Liz East did not simply walk away from law and immediately build a thriving business. After she left, she took shifts at a local pub to cover her expenses while she developed her own customer base. Within a year, the business grew substantially.

She now reportedly organises four group walks a day, caring for between 20 and 30 dogs. At around £14 per hour per dog, her reported daily turnover can reach £300 to £400 — roughly Rs 38,500 to Rs 51,400. That figure represents reported turnover rather than take-home profit, an important distinction because a dog-walking business can involve costs such as transport, insurance, equipment, business expenses and taxes.

East’s experience also fits into a broader pattern of people reassessing what they want from work. In a 2025 Guardian feature, several people described their decisions to leave office-based careers for outdoor jobs. Former banker Steve Kell, for example, retrained as a countryside ranger and said being outdoors gave him a sense of freedom and reduced the workplace stress he had experienced previously.

Another career changer profiled by the newspaper, Jay Rathod, moved from a mobile-phone company into horticulture and park work. He described how he felt healthier and happier after the switch, despite initially taking a salary reduction. Pet care has also emerged as a source of supplementary income for people at different stages of life. The Times reported the case of Helen Simpson, who used dog sitting to generate additional income before accessing her pension.

East says the financial change is only part of the story. She has faced comments from people who believe she wasted her years of legal education by switching to dog walking. Her response is that the skills she gained during those years remain useful. More importantly, she says she now works roughly half the hours she once did while earning more each month.

Liz East has also stressed that dog walking should not be viewed simply as an easy route to money. It requires a genuine interest in animals and a willingness to spend much of the working day outdoors. She can still access her law qualification if she ever wants to return to the profession. For now, however, East appears content with a career that replaced courtrooms and legal files with muddy paths, vans, and a very different set of clients.

Liz East’s story does not suggest that everyone should abandon a professional career for dog walking. Instead, it highlights a question that workers across different industries increasingly ask: what is the value of a successful career if the lifestyle surrounding it becomes unsustainable?

East found the answer through an unconventional career change. The surprising part is not simply that she left law — it is that the move appears to have given her something she had been missing: more control over her time, greater enjoyment of her working day, and, by her account, a higher income as well.

Content contributed by Shawn Dass, reported from London, UK, sourced by, economictimes.indiatimes.com