Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the sharp turn I took in my career and decided to write a post about it.
There’s a certain expectation in life that if you work hard, follow the rules, and do everything right, you’ll eventually reach your goal. That’s what I believed when I set out to become a judge. Five years of grinding, all for a minimum wage, but I told myself it would be worth it in the end. Late nights in the courtroom, barely enough time to go home for a shower and a couple of hours of sleep before heading back in. I wrote legal drafts, studied cases, did everything required to finally take the exam that would make me a judge.
Then, when the moment came, I was told something that wasn’t written in any law book or regulation. “Unofficially, you need to be 30.”
What the...?
It wasn’t a legal requirement, it was not written down anywhere. But this was just how things were done. I was 26 at the time and the idea of doing the same job, for the same low salary, for another four years before I could even take the exam was soul-crushing.
I didn’t want that and decided to change something in my life, stating to my judges that I will leave the job at court. I remember the conversation vividly as they actively tried to talk me out of leaving: “You’re too valuable. You’ve worked too hard. You’re throwing away everything you’ve built.” And when that didn’t work, they switched to fear tactics: “You’ll regret it. Do you really think you can start over?”
For a moment, I hesitated.
It did feel like I was about to throw away ten years of my life - five years of studying, five years of practice - for what exactly? A complete unknown. I was terrified of making a mistake I couldn’t take back. But deep down, I also knew I couldn’t stay.
Thankfully, not everyone doubted me. My wife and my best friend were the only ones who believed I was making the right call. That belief, plus my own gut instinct, was enough. I considered all the possible outcomes once again, all the pros and cons, and then walked away, ignoring the guilt-tripping and fear. And I have never regretted it for a second.
Over the years, I’ve looked back at my former colleagues who stayed and I see what my life would have been like if I had listened to that fear. Many of them are still there, still waiting, still following the unspoken rules of a system that never truly rewarded them. Meanwhile, I took a leap and it led me to something far greater than I had ever imagined.
The law years were not wasted at all. Quite the opposite - the experience I gained proved useful in many situations in management. Moreover, those experiences shaped me as a person and the approach I take at work.
Working in court isn’t just about interpreting the law - it’s about witnessing human nature in its rawest form. Every day, I sat in a front-row seat to some of the most extreme moments in people’s lives. You see desperation, cruelty, greed, treason, ridiculous dumbness, heartbreak. You see manipulation, regret and, sometimes, moments of unexpected kindness. But most of all, you see just how unfair life can be.
The civil cases were always the hardest. One, in particular, is still a bright memory until today. Three children were taken away from their parents, not because of abuse or neglect but because the family was too poor to support a minimum level quality of life for them. I remember standing in the corridor as the parents - sober, kind but helpless - whispered their goodbyes to their kids, telling them that this was for the best. Imagine having to give up your children, not because you don’t love them but because the circumstances led to you not being able to give them good life conditions. They felt this was the solution that would give kids a better life in another family.
That moment taught me a hard truth: sometimes, doing the "right thing" doesn’t feel right at all. I had to learn detachment, not because I didn’t care, but because if I let every case consume me, it would have broken me.
Then there were the criminal cases. Here, I learned something different: never assume you know the full story. I watched as judges picked apart testimony, challenging both prosecution and defense, pushing for contradictions, exposing gaps in logic. It was a masterclass in critical thinking and reading between the lines. I saw cases that looked airtight at first glance but fell apart once challenged properly. There were others where the so-called "obvious" criminal turned out to be nothing more than a scapegoat.
The skill of withholding judgment until I had all the facts became one of the most valuable lessons I carried into my later career. In game development, just like in court, things are never as simple as they first appear. A missed deadline, a failing feature, a conflict between team members - there’s always more to the story than what’s on the surface. The ability to pause, ask the right questions and uncover the real problem before jumping to conclusions is what separates a good leader from an impulsive one.
Those five years in court taught me patience (and I still had a lo-o-ong way to go with that). They taught me how to control my emotions, how to read between the lines and how to stay calm when the stakes were high. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were shaping me into the producer I would one day become.
My first real step into the gaming industry wasn’t glamorous. I became a copyright lawyer, diving into intellectual property disputes, contracts and licensing agreements. It was still law, still rules and regulations but this time I was dealing with games, developers and creative minds instead of judges, prosecutors and defendants.
Then came my first major challenge: moving IPs and company funds to EU legal entity for tax optimization and asset protection. It was like drinking from a firehose as I had to learn British business law, financial structuring and corporate regulations all at once. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this trial by fire would become invaluable later. Years later, when I had to set up a new studio in Cyprus for Tactile Games, that experience gave me an edge. What seemed like an isolated challenge turned out to be an important stepping stone.
That is a lesson until today: be open to experiences as it can be applied later again in an unexpected way (for example, the same happened to my hobby of writing hip-hop).
Over time, I found myself drawn deeper into the production side of game development despite my focus on legal aspects. That is what happens in smaller teams where you have to wear different hats to push the company forward. I started analyzing product roadmaps, suggesting process improvements and challenging inefficient workflows not because it was my job, but because I couldn’t ignore it. The structured, analytical mindset that I had developed in court allowed me to see bottlenecks and inefficiencies in ways others didn’t. The more I got involved, the more I realized that I wasn’t just a lawyer working in a gaming company anymore. Funny enough, only after a couple of years in production management I felt more like a producer than a lawyer who happened to work in games.
The leap from law to games wasn’t sudden. It was a slow evolution, shaped by challenges I hadn’t expected and skills I didn’t realize I had. Looking back, I can confidently say that the courtroom prepared me for the chaos of game development better than I ever could have imagined.
At first glance, law and game production seem like worlds apart. One is built on centuries of tradition, rigid structure and careful wording, while the other thrives on creativity, iteration, and fast-paced innovation. But the more I knew, the more I realized how the courtroom trained me for this.
One of the most important skills I brought with me was mediation. Courtrooms are essentially conflict arenas with two opposing sides, each convinced they’re right. The job was to cut through the noise, strip away emotional outbursts and get to the facts. As a producer, I found myself doing the exact same thing: mediating between teams, executives, and stakeholders, ensuring everyone stayed focused on the bigger picture rather than getting lost in ego clashes or miscommunication.
The ability to sense tension before it escalates became another invaluable tool. In court, you learn to read the room quickly - who’s bluffing, who’s holding back, who’s on the verge of an emotional outburst. That same instinct carried over into game production. I could spot when someone was holding a grudge, felt unheard or was on the edge of burning out, and address it before it blew up.
Risk management was another skill that transferred almost seamlessly. In law, you’re trained to anticipate worst-case scenarios: what could go wrong, who might challenge you, where loopholes might be exploited. In game development, projects are packed with unknowns - shifting priorities, evolving designs, changing market trends, and technical limitations. My legal background hardwired me to predict issues before they happened, whether it was a production bottleneck, a compliance risk with platform guidelines, or a feature that was about to spiral out of scope.
And then there was documentation and structure. Lawyers live and breathe documentation, turning sprawling, chaotic information into concise, clear, actionable summaries, which became a backbone of how I organized production pipelines, wrote up postmortems, and, eventually, how I approached prompt engineering and AI-driven workflows. In fast-moving game teams, no one has time to read walls of text - we need clarity, fast.
In the end, I stopped seeing my legal background as a past life that didn’t matter anymore. It became my competitive edge, a unique combination of skills that gave me an advantage in this creative industry.
The moment everything clicked for me wasn’t some grand victory or major promotion. It was a quiet realization that snuck up on me. I was 29 years old, living in Copenhagen, working for an international game studio, leading projects and helping teams thrive - and I was happy. Not just “satisfied” or “content”.
That’s when it hit me: if I had stayed in the court system, I’d still be waiting. Still stuck in the same role, grinding away, hoping for a shot at the exam that might or might not lead to becoming a judge. Meanwhile, my old colleagues were exactly where I left them, doing the same tasks they’d been doing for years. I wasn’t better than them but I made a different choice and that choice opened up an entirely new world for me.
Beyond the personal wins, the bigger reward was seeing the impact of my work. When I convinced the company to switch task-tracking systems, or optimized flows via VSM sessions, or introduced educational workshops - I didn’t think it was a big deal. But my teams did. Seeing the improvement, the relief, the growth, hearing their thanks - it felt better than any solved case ever did.
In the end, I didn’t just change careers. I changed who I am as a leader. I promised myself when I left law that I wouldn’t become “that kind of manager” - the one people dread working under, the one who micromanages or pushes teams to burnout. I think I kept that promise. I’m proud of the fact that the teams I’ve led are among the happiest, healthiest and most productive in the company.
If you’re sitting there, wondering if it’s too late to switch careers or if you’re too far down one path to start over, let me tell you this: it’s never too late.
You’re not throwing away your past experience - you’re bringing it with you. The skills you’ve built, even in an entirely different industry, are more transferable than you realize. I took courtroom conflict resolution and turned it into team mediation. I took legal risk assessment and transformed it into project risk management. I took legal briefs and turned them into efficient production documentation. Your skills might look different, but the idea is the same: experience is adaptable.
Yes, it’s scary. Yes, you’ll doubt yourself. Yes, people will tell you you’re making a mistake. But pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is where the real exponential growth happens. Believe in yourself and nothing will be able to stop you.
