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.

The next episode in our summer re-release series is Burnout is a Feature, Not a Bug. This is one of the things that I honestly think is the most important for you to realize if you are working in a toxic workplace, if you're working in a large law firm, or in Biglaw, burnout is a feature of the way that work is organized in these organizations, it is not something that inexplicably happens that you could have some of life hacked your way out of.

Again, this is an episode that I hear about from people all the time. It's one of the episodes that is the most downloaded. Frankly, I don't think you can hear enough that burnout is a feature and not a bug. Here is the episode.

Hello, everyone. This week on the podcast, I want to talk to you about Biglaw and burnout. We all know that the subject of burnout among lawyers is often talked about. We also know that the subject of burnout specifically in Biglaw lawyers is talked about a lot.

There have been a bunch of articles recently talking about particularly associates in Biglaw and how burnt out they are from the way that many of these firms were operating in 2020 and into 2021.

I want to talk a little bit about this because often people who are experiencing burnout in Biglaw have a common set of erroneous beliefs about what they're experiencing and it honestly bothers me quite a bit. This is going to be a bit of a rant. You are forewarned. Here we go.

Here's the thing that I think is most important to remember if you're someone who's in this position. The system is designed to burn you out. Often people who are experiencing burnout in Biglaw, associates who are burnout will feel like, “Oh, I'm just weak. I can't hack it like whoever else, this person and that person. The fact that I'm feeling burnt out, the fact that I'm feeling exhausted, the fact that this is way too much and I actually want to have a personal life, and I actually want to be able to take care of my mental and physical health, that's just somehow a weakness in me. If I could just figure out the right combination of life hacks, then this wouldn't be a problem. So the fact that I'm feeling this way is really some sort of moral failing on my part.”

That's not true. The truth is—I'm going to say it again, I know I said this before—but the system is designed to burn you out. The system will take everything that you can give it. The reality is that even if you're someone with very good boundaries, the Biglaw system is not particularly amenable to people who actually have good boundaries.

It's been my experience that most of the people who have good boundaries more or less end up either being pushed out or leaving because the system is just not set up in a way that makes it realistic for them to stay.

You're not weak. The system is working the way it is designed to work. I'm not saying that any particular person is sitting in their evil lair, cackling because they've created a system that will burn you out. The reality is that the structure of large law firms and the way that they’re set up is beyond what any individual person or even leader of a firm can affect or transform on their own.

The whole system has to be reworked in order for this to not be the case. It's a feature, not a bug. You being burned out as a Biglaw associate, you feeling burned out, you get to the place of burnout, that's a feature of the way Biglaw works.

It's not a bug. The way it's often approached, the way it's talked about, the messaging is like, “Well, do this or that thing to help yourself, you'll feel less stressed, to avoid burnout.”

All of the obligation, the responsibility, or most of it, is put on the individual person, the individual associate. But the reality is that the system is created in such a way, is designed, and exists in such a way that it ultimately will cause burnout because that is the way that it's designed.

Again, there's this idea perpetuated that like, “Oh, you're feeling burned out. Well, that's something that has gone awry in the system. That's not an intended result.” The thing is, it's irrelevant if every partner in your firm is going around thinking, “I don't want associates to be burnt out.”

If the system is designed in such a way that it's going to cause burnout, the individual intentions of the individual people, the various platitudes, the emails about how you should do five minutes of meditation, yoga, or whatever, those things cannot change the reality of the structures of that system.

I think we're somewhat resistant to this, and by we, I mean lawyers, and in particular lawyers who are in the system of Biglaw, because this is a structural problem. This isn't a problem that can be fixed by individual lawyers just like meditating more or doing more yoga.

I mentioned those things because those things come up all the time. We just had lawyer mental health week or whatever a couple of weeks ago when I'm recording this. There was lots of discussion about how Biglaw firms were sending emails saying, “We care about lawyer mental well-being, wellness, and whatnot.” At the same time, associates are being pushed to give even more hours than, in some cases, they have in the past.

In these circumstances where we're coming out of this pandemic that has been very grueling in many ways, emotionally, physically, and mentally for everyone, yeah. The challenge is that it cannot be fixed just by individual people somehow learning a different type of life within the system.

The challenge is that I think we have to have an imagination for a different way of doing what we're doing. To be honest, I'm not overly optimistic about that in Biglaw in the near term.

But I do think that it's something that we need to seriously consider if we really want this profession to be a place where human beings can thrive and where we're actually able to contribute in a positive way to the world, but also not completely burn ourselves out in the meantime.

If you're an associate in Biglaw and you're having an experience that mirrors at all what I'm talking about, I'd love to hear from you and to hear what you think about this and to hear if this connects with the experience that you've had. That is my rant on Biglaw burnout. I will talk to you all 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.