This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Paul Farahvar, a touring stand-up comedian based in Chicago who previously worked as a trial lawyer. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
Right out of law school, I started practicing at an insurance defense law firm. I had won a case in the Illinois Supreme Court when I was only 25, which then led to places trying to recruit me.
I went to a firm that allowed me to work part-time, because I was also playing in and managing bands and doing entertainment law on the side. Eventually, one of my partners and I split off and started our own law firm.
Comedy came into the picture by accident. It was never on my radar when I was younger. My friend was a stand-up comedian, and he asked me to go with him when he was opening for Bob Saget. I was backstage and made a joke that got Bob Saget laughing. He said I should use the joke onstage, but I told him I wasn’t performing and that I’d never done stand-up in my life.
His encouragement gave me the confidence to go to an open mic the next day. I won the contest, and that changed my life. I ended up hosting that open mic and then became a host at The Laugh Factory in Chicago. Now I’ve been a full-time comedian for over six years.
A common misconception is that I was burned out as a lawyer. I wasn’t. I loved being a lawyer and practicing law, and I was lucky enough to take cases to trial often since our firm was a specialty trial firm.
I miss it sometimes, but I felt like I did everything I could do with law. I tried over 20 cases, and wanted the challenge of something new. I like to push myself to do things that are hard or uncomfortable.
Comedy is a hustle, but you can make money doing it
As a lawyer, I handled insurance defense and defense work for cities, including election and police cases. I was usually the bad guy.
I kept the comedy under wraps at first. At some point, people started to notice, and surprisingly, everyone was pretty supportive. If I were discussing a trial date with the other side and needed to schedule it around a comedy show, most lawyers were cool with it.
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My last couple of years of law, I was a full-time comedian and part-time lawyer. When my partner and I split our firm, I kept my existing clients but didn’t take new ones. My last trial was late February 2020, and I closed my law firm on March 1, 2020. Comedy has been my job since.
Stand-up comedy is the biggest part of my life. I also do podcasts, writing, and acting. I’m lucky to be doing comedy almost every night, touring, headlining, and supporting bigger shows and theaters. This year, I have tried to force myself to take a day off each week. I still end up doing 6-10 shows weekly.
People assume you can’t make money with comedy, but you can. You have to hustle. In times when I’ve really needed money, I’ve taken corporate gigs, such as shows for organizations like bar associations or unions. Those shows pay very well. There were a few years when I made more as a comedian than as a lawyer.
There are ups and downs. I’m fortunate that I can do comedy, and I don’t have to take a lot of those corporate gigs or cruise ship shows because I’m single and I don’t have any debt.
Even as a lawyer with my own firm, I was trying to generate business, and there were years where it was sink-or-swim. In the first year of our law firm, I didn’t take a salary because we put all this money into starting the firm. That was harder for me than any year of comedy.
Working in comedy requires more than just writing and performing
As a stand-up comic, 90% of it is just sending my availability out and trying to get bookings and opportunities. I hate doing it, but I’m good at it because I used to do it when I worked in music. I don’t have a manager, so if I forget or don’t have time to spend a week making calls for show bookings, that hurts me in two months, when I’m like, “Oh shoot, I have a week, and I don’t have that many shows.”
I’m very driven, almost to an unhealthy degree. I don’t have a personal life. Everything I do revolves around my career. I always say I wasn’t the best lawyer, and I might not be the funniest comedian, but I’m the hardest working.
In comedy, you definitely experience burnout. Like the other day when I flew in on a red eye from Florida and realized I had a show that night. But once I get onstage, I think, “Oh yeah, this is way more fun than whatever else I was going to.”
Now, some of the comedians I’m friends with are people I used to watch on TV as a kid. Every once in a while, I get to pinch myself, like when I’ve opened for my favorite comedian.
Still, I loved practicing law. I didn’t like the mornings, and I hated waking up, but I always say if court was in the afternoon, I might never have quit.
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