Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I practiced law for 10 years and now I help unhappy lawyers ditch their soul-sucking jobs. On this show, I share advice and strategies for aspiring former lawyers, and interviews with former lawyers who have left the law behind to find careers and lives that they love.

Today I want to talk about a phenomenon that I have observed in clients that I work with. I have worked with lawyers at all different stages of their career. I have worked with lawyers who are in literally their first year of being a lawyer. I have worked with people who are 20, 25 years in.

Today, I want to talk to you if you are a lawyer who's around 20 years, 20 plus years into your career, because I have seen something consistently from the people who I work with who are at that tenure, that I think is really important to talk about. Almost without fail, every single time someone who is 18, 22, 25 years into practicing law, every time they join the Collab and come into the Collab, one of the first things that I see them coming about, either in a post in the Collab or on one of our group calls is that they were concerned they were going to be the only one who is at that level of tenure.

Pretty much every lawyer who is around two decades plus into practicing law, even more so than lawyers who are earlier in their career, really seem to feel like they must be the only one who is dissatisfied and wanting to get out. A lot of those people who are 20-ish years in, many of them have basically wanted to do something different or been unhappy being a lawyer for their entire career. Many will tell me that they knew within their first year of practice, or even in law school that practicing law was not going to be for them.

For a variety of different reasons, they ended up staying in, and all of a sudden, they are looking around and two decades-ish have passed and they're still unhappy. They still don't want to be doing what they're doing. Like I said, most lawyers in that position really seem to feel like they are the only one of their tenure or there's a very limited number of people at that time period that want out of being a lawyer. If you're one of those people, if you're a lawyer who is about 20 years into your career, and you want out of the law, and you've maybe wanted out since the beginning, please hear me, you are not alone. Far from it.

You are not alone. There are so many people who I have worked with who are at that tenure, and like I said, I have seen multiple conversations amongst my clients who both, or a group of them, are at that 20-ish year mark and they're saying to each other, “Wow, I really thought I was going to be the only one but actually I'm not. It's shocking.” I mean, that is one of the things that I love so much about the Collab and the community that is created there. You really do get to see that you are not some exception that doesn't fit and that doesn't make sense.

Whether you are 2 years, 12 years, or 20 years into practicing law, if you want out and you want to do something else, I guarantee you, there are so many lawyers who are in the same position. I know that me telling you that is probably not quite enough evidence for you as a skeptical lawyer to really believe it. Definitely go check out the episode with my client Jamie who's in the Collab, who joined the Collab when she was around 18 years into practice. She talks some about this. We will put the link to that episode in the show notes.

I want to close by talking a little bit about why I wanted to talk about this specifically. I find that for many lawyers who are at this tenure, their belief that they're the only one, that somehow the fact that they don't want to be doing what they're doing and have been doing it in their mind for so long, they feel like that somehow disqualifies them from looking for something else, from trying to figure out what they could be doing with their time that would be a better fit for them. There is a unique challenge when you are a couple decades in plus, where you start to feel like, “Well, this is what I've always done and I should probably just keep doing it.”

If that's how you feel, I just want you to know, 20 plus years in or not, you absolutely can figure out something else to do career-wise that will be a better fit for you. If you want help doing that, there's a community of lawyers ready to connect with you inside the Former Lawyer Collaborative. I also have worked with some lawyers at this stage one-on-one so if you prefer the idea of working one-on-one, that's another option. Both of those things, you can go to the website and look at the Work With Me tab and all of the info is there for both the Collab and one-on-one. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening. I absolutely love getting to share this podcast with you. If you haven't yet, I invite you to download my free guide: First Steps to Leaving the Law at formerlawyer.com/first. Until next time, have a great week.