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Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. On this show, I interview former lawyers to hear their inspiring stories about how they left law behind to find careers and lives that they love. Let's get right to the show.

Hello everyone. Today, I want to talk about something that might make some people mad. Maybe it won't. Unclear. We'll get into it and we'll see. What I want to talk about is the fact that you are a widget. What does that mean? Often, I find that there are lawyers who are afraid of or concerned about leaving their job. A big motivation for them, even if they're incredibly miserable and know they need to leave, is, “Well, I don't want to leave my colleagues in the lurch. I feel bad leaving because this or that thing is going on,” or there's some big case or whatnot happening. Granted it's something, in most cases, that's going to be going on and on. I'm talking about things that are going to be extending for months, not like, “Oh, there's something that's going on for the next three days.” They struggle with leaving because it's like, “Well, but I'm doing all this stuff. Could they even function without me?” Let me just tell you. I understand this feeling. I've seen many people have this feeling. I myself at times, when I was in Biglaw, had this feeling of like, “There are things happening in this case that literally couldn't happen if I wasn't here because I'm the only one who understands it, blah-blah-blah.” There's a sense in which that's true. It often is true that you're the only person on a case who really understands certain aspects of it.

But here's the thing that I pretty quickly learned as I watched person after person leave Biglaw. There is no person who leaves and they're like, “Oh, we gotta shut it down. We can no longer function. We can no longer serve our clients.” Like this third year associate, first year associate, eighth year associate, junior partner, whatever, senior partner left and like, “All is lost, we might as well just pack it up and go home.” No, that's not what happens. It is a machine. The machine rolls on. They find another widget, they put the widget in place, and things keep going.

Hey, it's Sarah. I'm popping in here to remind you that I have created a free guide, First Steps to Leaving the Law for anyone out there who is just like, “Ugh! This job is the worst. I need out. Where do I start?” Which is exactly where I was when I realized that I didn't want to be a lawyer. You can go to formerlawyer.com/guide, sign up, and get the guide in your inbox today. When you grab that guide, you get on my email list, which is the way I keep everyone the most up to date about everything that's happening with Former Lawyer. It's also the best way to get in contact with me because I read and respond to every email. If you are ready to figure out what's next for you, go to formerlawyer.com/guide, download the free guide, First Steps to Leaving the Law, and get started today.

I think once you see that happen over and over, you start to realize like, ”I know I'm having this internal felt sense of like without me, this would be so problematic. If I left, I'd be leaving people in the lurch, etc., etc.” Then you realize that is not actually true. It feels true but you are a widget. You are replaceable. For me, for someone who graduated in 2008 and experienced the great recession, firms laying off people, and multiple rounds of layoffs, there can often be what I personally believe as a misguided sense of loyalty to your firm. There can often be a misguided sense of loyalty that you somehow owe the firm something when in reality, if they need to cut you, they will do it in a heartbeat.

The reality is that the people making those decisions, in most cases, you are just a number on a piece of paper. Maybe the individual people who interact with you, they'll feel something like sadness. But often, I find there is this sense of obligation that often builds up around your individual relationships with people. Those people are not the people in any kind of decision making position. They are not the ones who ultimately decide how the machine is going to be run.

Really, to bring it back to the original theme, I just want to say to those of you who are in a work environment, like the one I'm describing—which not everyone is but many people are—and you are feeling this like, “Oh, but everyone's already so overworked. If I leave, then I'll just be even more overworked. I need to be loyal.” Loyalty and integrity, all of those things are incredibly important. But I think those things are used and manipulated by these systems in order to keep us doing what they want, which is humming along with the system. But if we leave and that stops, then they just replace you because you are a widget. Someone else comes along and the machine rolls on. Just remember, you are a widget in that machine but you are a human being in the world. If what you are doing is not working for you, please don't hold yourself back because of some misguided sense of loyalty or that you are the thing on which your entire firm stands and falls. That's just not true. That is my thought on that. 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.