Sarah Cottrell: 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.

Hello, everyone. Today I am sharing my conversation with Heather Moulder. Heather practiced law for 18 years. When she left legal practice she was a partner in a Biglaw firm and she has an interesting story about thinking about leaving law earlier in her career realizing that she could make it work for her and then having a big life event occur and realizing that it shifted a lot of the ways that she was thinking about her values and ultimately, that led her to leave legal practice. I am excited for you to hear Heather's story. Let's get into this conversation.

Hey, it's Sarah. I want to remind you that I am now working with a very limited number of lawyers one-on-one who are trying to figure out what it is that they want to do that isn't practicing law. What we'll do when we work together one-on-one is we will meet for 12 weeks and you and I will walk through the framework that I've created to help lawyers do exactly that. On top of personalizing that and making individualized choices about which pieces of that you need to focus on, spend more time on, spend less time on, I also have the capacity to lend my brain to your situation.

When we're working together one-on-one, I'm able to look at cover letters, resumes, and other things that you may be putting together, cold outreach emails, figuring out who you might want to reach out to, figuring out, “Okay, I have all this information about who I am, values, personality, strengths, etc., from these various assessments, but how do I put that together into a picture of what it is that I actually want to be doing? How do I figure out what I actually want my life and career to look like?” all of those things.

If that sounds like something that would be helpful to you, I would love to talk with you about whether or not working with me one-on-one is the right fit for you. Go to the website, the Work With Me drop-down, there's a link to information about working with me one-on-one. You can see more details and the price as well as the button to book a free consult with me so that we can talk through whether working with me in this capacity would be the right fit for you. I onboard one new one-on-one client per month so if this is something that you're interested in, definitely schedule that call as soon as you can because I fill the spots on a first-come-first-served basis. I look forward to talking with you about whether working together one-on-one could be a good fit.

Hi, Heather. Welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Heather Moulder: Well, hello there. It's so exciting to be here. I'm really, really happy to be here today.

Sarah Cottrell: I'm excited that you're here too. I really love talking with you for your podcast. I think your story is so helpful and interesting in so many ways. Let's start with you introducing yourself to the listeners and then we'll go from there.

Heather Moulder: Okay, great. I'm Heather Moulder. I am a recovering lawyer, which I'm starting to hear people say this more often. I think when I first started saying it, people looked at me a little funny. I practiced corporate finance law for over 18 years until a little over five years ago when I decided to leave my thriving law practice and start a new business. I didn't know what that business was going to look like initially but over time it has morphed into me helping lawyers succeed in law and life, so to have a more balanced life for private practice lawyers, to grow their practices, and really have successful practices but without the overwhelm, burnout, and all that jazz that so many lawyers seem to fall prey to.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, for sure. We know burnout amongst lawyers is rampant but there also are lawyers who genuinely enjoy being lawyers. I know for a good number of years that it was you, Heather, so let's start where we start pretty much all the time on this podcast which is tell me what made you decide to become a lawyer.

Heather Moulder: I was one of those really strange kids who wanted to be a lawyer from a very early age. What's weird is I had nobody in my family that was a lawyer, and you're probably way too young to know this show, but there's a show that started as a movie and ended up a show on I think it was HBO for a number of years called The Paper Chase. It was about some law students and this crotchety old professor that they had, that they hated at first but ended up really liking as time went on.

I was fascinated by the legal banter and all of the lawyerly stuff that went on there. That started my interest. Then my mom knew somebody a couple years later who was going to law school and he took me to classes with him and that really piqued my interest. I knew from a very young age that I think this is what I want to do. I liked the law part of it, just learning it and being able to argue it and all of that jazz. It was something that was really on the forefront ever since I was probably 11 years old. As I got older, I realized, “Yeah, I have certain skills that would probably be really good at this,” and so I stayed focused on that for pretty much forever.

Sarah Cottrell: It's so interesting because there are a lot of people who have come on the podcast, and like you said, literally have known or knew from a very early age like, “Oh, yeah, I want to be a lawyer,” and a lot of them, one component of that is they watched Law & Order or some other legal show where lawyers were represented, which I think as practicing lawyers then becomes hilarious because, I don't know about you but for me, it's very hard to watch almost any show that involves anything legal because I'm just like, “That's not how it goes.” Anyway, that's my own issue.

Heather Moulder: Yeah, I think for me it was different in that I didn't fall in love with the way lawyers were represented as to how they worked. I fell in love with the legal theories and the stuff you get in law school really and the law itself, and started looking more into that. That probably served me better than people who fell in love with, “Oh, I'm going to be in a courtroom,” and what that looks like.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, totally. When you got to law school, were you just like, “This is my happy place. This is everything I've ever dreamed of”?

Heather Moulder: Yes and no. I loved it in many ways. I did really love the law, I did love learning about it, I did love arguing over it. I'm one of those really weird people who did not mind law school exams. [inaudible] I really liked taking them. I thought they were challenging and fun so I'm a bit geeky in that way.

What I didn't like, which was I think foreshadowing for some of the things I didn't like about practicing law later on, I didn't like the hyper competitiveness amongst some of the students and I made law review. There were two people on law review I actually liked. One was a really good friend and another was somebody else that was really pretty wonderful too, who I got along with really well and most everybody else was crazy as far as I was concerned and I didn't love that aspect of it. I loved parts of law school but not others.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. It's so interesting because there is this, well, you mentioned The Paper Chase which I've never seen, read, or whatever but that's the thing that people always talk about like, “Oh, it shows how intense some of that part of law school can be,” and it's interesting because I think that that still is true in some places but it's not so true in other places, but in general, even if you don't feel a lot of a sense of competition amongst your peers, I think there is a way in which the way that grading happens in most law schools creates this stressful environment even if the individual people are not trying to be competitive simply because that is the nature of grading on a curve.

I think it's interesting because I wonder if it's very different between law schools that some are more competitive than others. I suppose that may be true but regardless, I think that there can be a little bit of a pressure-cooker feeling even if an individual person isn't super bought into the competitiveness.

Heather Moulder: Right. I think it somewhat depends on the personalities, I would say, those in my class that year, especially those of us who made law review, the vast majority were typical litigator-type personalities who were very, not just hyper competitive because I'm competitive, but in a gamesmanship-type way. They loved games. I find that a lot of litigators are that way in general because they kind of have to be, at least from my experience with litigators in the big firm environment that a lot of them were like that, not all but many. We just had an overabundance of those folks in our class.

Sarah Cottrell: It's so interesting because I've had multiple conversations with clients in the last two weeks who are litigators in various places like big firms, small firms, etc., and the word gamesmanship has come up over and over as one of the things that they really dislike about it. I think you're right to a pretty great degree, in order for someone to actually enjoy being a litigator, you have to be the type of person who enjoys gamesmanship. My experience is that many of the people who I work with, and myself, are not those people.

Heather Moulder: Yeah. That's exactly why I did not become a litigator. People kept telling me, “You should be a litigator, you'd be great at it.” I'm like, “Yeah, but I would hate it. There's just no way I would ultimately stick with it and enjoy it, so no, thank you.”

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Talk to me about, you graduate from law school, what did you do next?

Heather Moulder: After I graduated, I started working for a large Texas firm, and technically they're not considered Biglaw but a lot of the Texas firms at the time were the preeminent firms in Texas. I'm in Dallas, Texas and they were Biglaw for Texas, they certainly acted like Biglaw and treated everybody like Biglaw does.

Sarah Cottrell: I was going to say there's a certain Biglaw attitude.

Heather Moulder: That was them and they considered themselves Biglaw in many ways. This was before other firms came into Texas. They were really the places to go within Texas if you wanted a good practice. I went to one of the preeminent Texas firms to start my career and I was one of those typical naive lawyers who thought I was going to change the world in some way, shape, or form, which was funny given that I was a corporate finance lawyer.

But needless to say, I still was like that. We all have these big ideals. I just remember it wasn't anything that I thought it would be. A couple years in, I was working 80, 90-plus hour weeks very regularly. We were crazy busy and I remember just thinking, “Why did I want this? Why?” Law firms are broken, the profession is broken, everybody's unhappy, and I kept putting up with it though because it's what I always wanted, it's what I thought I wanted.

I could not fathom doing anything else, number one, number two, most of that, well, there were two reasons, most of that, at least I thought, had to do with what people would think. This is what you always wanted. You can't make a change and you've invested all this time, money, and add all this debt. We all got caught in that so I couldn't even fathom leaving. It was part of my identity at that point because I'd wanted it for so long and I'd done it.

I was the first in my family to be a lawyer, I'm still the only lawyer in my family. What would people know me as? How could I leave? There was that going on. But then there's also that I liked practicing law, I actually liked the practice, it was more the demands, the unreasonableness, the face time, all these things that went into what I didn't like and what were making me miserable.

There was this moment where I pretty much put up with it for several years feeling like this and I remember that it was Christmas time and I was coming home late, very late at night, and the most wonderful time of the year was playing in the background which certainly did not feel like the most wonderful time of year at the time. There were all these twinkling lights and I just remembered how I felt completely empty and just overwhelmed. I cannot keep doing this but I didn't really know what I was going to do.

I went home and I started complaining to my husband for the millionth time that year and he had pretty much had enough of it. He was tired of me complaining and not doing anything about it. He looked at me, he was like, “You have a choice.” I guess it was really that moment, that moment I got really ticked off and we fought but I went to bed and then I woke up the next morning, I was like, “Ugh, he's right. I do have a choice.”

That was the turning point for me for taking ownership and responsibility for my own happiness and how my career was going and realizing there were aspects of the law I really love so how can I make this work? What I did at the time is I looked around and I realized, “Okay, not everybody is unhappy, there are happy lawyers out there, let's start paying attention to them instead of the majority, sadly, of unhappy lawyers, start paying attention to the ones who seem to have a life who are happy with it, who still have decent practices and pay attention to what it is they're doing.”

I didn't have language around it at the time because I wasn't a coach and this is coach speak, although I think more and more people are talking about it now, what I realized was they followed their own values, and again, that's not what I called it at the time but they had very clear principles or standards that they followed that were very important to them.

Their whole practices were built around that from the type of law they practiced, to the clients they accepted, to the people they hired, and it guided everything they did and they had very clear boundaries because of those values and actually upheld them. That was the ding-ding-ding, I needed to go, “Oh I've created this, I said yes to everything. I put myself out there for everything, I've become this person that's just this ball that's being thrown around by other people and I have no control.” That's my real problem, it's not the law, it's how I chose to approach it. I started changing things at that point forward.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I would love to talk just briefly about your husband being like, “You have a choice,” and you were like, “How dare you?” and I think most lawyers listening would understand that feeling and why that feeling would exist. First, I'm going to say caveat, there are some people who are in situations where they don't really have the choice to do something else so I don't want to suggest that everyone, no matter the circumstance, has infinite choices. But I think it is true that there are a lot of lawyers who are either telling themselves that they don't have a choice or don't even think about the the idea that they have a choice, it just doesn't occur to them. Can you talk a little bit about why you think that is?

Heather Moulder: I think it's a couple of things. First, I think we think that choice means the perfect choice and if there's not the perfect choice out there, then we have none, which is not true. Oftentimes, there are plenty of choices, it's just that not one of them is perfect. This is where my values started to come into play, they were my guiding principle for, “Okay, given the choices I currently have, what's the best choice given who I am, what I want, who I want to become?” that kind of thing, what my values are.

That made it easier for me to then understand the trade-offs more clearly and make a very intentional decision about which trade-offs I was willing to make. Because I think people don't like trade-offs, I think especially lawyers don't like trade-offs but trade-offs exist with every major choice you make, whether you acknowledge them or not.

The other thing I would say is I think we tend to, when we're looking at our choices and the trade-offs that are involved—and this is certainly what I had been doing and what that moment changed for me—I kept looking at it from one perspective only, from how other people perceived me from a paper success type of definition.

What I realized after having that fight was I was starting to show up in a way where I wasn't fully there, I wasn't a very good partner to my husband, I wasn't a very good daughter to my parents, sister to my siblings, or friend to my friends because I was always complaining and always thinking about “Woe is me, work sucks.” It was changing who I was. We often don't think about the internal changes that are going on by putting up with whatever it is we're putting up with.

Once I started realizing that that was actually a choice I was making and realized that choice, I can't make anymore because I'm becoming somebody I don't want to be and it will have massive ripple effects and repercussions in my life, in my relationships in very negative ways that I didn't want to see happen. Once I got there, it was easier for me than to be realistic about the real trade-offs of everything that that was a trade-off I've been making, one I didn't want to make.

It allowed me to realize, “Okay, maybe there are other choices and maybe it's not the perfect thing, but I can start somewhere to make better choices which will then open up more possibilities as I go.” That's the other thing, sometimes you just have to take small steps in the right direction, you don't necessarily have to take one big leap.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Sometimes you just have to take some type of action, which lawyers mostly hate when I tell them that. I understand because I totally hate that advice as well, but it's also 100% accurate. Tell me, once you had this realization, what did you do next?

Heather Moulder: What I realized was I had created my own monster where I was. Isaid yes to everything. I created a situation where they expected certain things of me. I had a choice: I could stay and try to change that which was doable but would probably take a while and might not work as well as I wanted, or I could leave. I decided that I would start looking around.

I didn't actually leave immediately because I was really picky about where I wanted to go. But eventually it led me to another firm which was a Biglaw firm that had just opened up in Texas. It was a law firm that was promising to be more entrepreneurial than the traditional firms that left you alone as long as you did a good job, did your work, and did your business.

There was a lot of opportunity there that I really liked and I was like, “Well, if I'm going to make it work at a law firm, this is how I'm going to do it.” So I did move firms as an associate. I was a fifth year associate by the time I moved and ended up staying at that firm. That's where I made partner and grew my own book of business.

Sarah Cottrell: I'm sure there are some lawyers listening who maybe made a move hoping that it would be a better situation for them and it didn't necessarily pan out that way. I would love to hear from you if there are specific things that helped make that move the right fit for you if that makes sense.

Heather Moulder: Yes, absolutely. The problem is oftentimes we think the problem is the firm, and yes, that's probably part of the problem, but oftentimes we are part of the problem too. What helped me tremendously was I had already identified I was a large part of that problem. I said yes all the time. I never took care of myself. I had zero boundaries and I needed to create more boundaries. I was in the process of doing that at my first firm when the second firm opportunity came about.

The reason I left was because I figured, “Well, this is a fresh start and I can start from scratch. I haven't created this monster of everybody expecting me to drop everything all the time for them.” I went in eyes wide open, that was an issue I had had in the past and I wasn't going to do it again.

I was going to have real boundaries and I was going to, not to say I said no to everything because I didn't, but I had very clear standards for myself and knew when I needed to say no and when I wanted to step up and work a little harder so that I could make a name of myself. Because I had very clear standards for myself and rules around that, I knew and was able then to stay on the right path of that balancing act of when to say yes, when to say no, when to work a little more, when to know, when to step back and say I need a break, that kind of thing. That helped me tremendously.

Then also I knew from a standards perspective what I was looking for in a firm and I did not want a traditional law firm that had a million different committees and everything had to go through a million different people to get permission, I wanted to run my own practice my own way. That's what the benefit with this particular firm was; they promised to be much more entrepreneurial in that way. Thankfully, they did not lie. I was able even as an associate to start building my own business once I became a partner to do my own thing and really be left alone.

There's pros and cons to that because you're left alone if you want to do your own thing, that's great, but you're also left alone and you have to go make your own pretty much by yourself or really reach out more and ask for help more. There's always pros and cons but that is what I wanted so that's what I looked for.

Sarah Cottrell: You mentioned that when you went to the new firm, you had rules, standards, and guidelines for yourself in terms of putting better boundaries in place, could you give an example for the listeners of one rule that you hadn't had before that you did put in place that was helpful in terms of setting those boundaries?

Heather Moulder: Yeah. A couple of rules that I had, number one was I would not work for complete a-hole clients. Never would I put up with it, and yes, it's harder to have control over that when you're early on but I also knew very quickly how to identify those clients. You intuitively know, you've got to listen to yourself on that and how to identify those partners with those clients and then just steer clear of them and really gravitate towards the people you want to work with more and offer yourself up to the right people like crazy.

That I did. Then I had very hard requirements around hours per week. Never again was I going to be in a 90-plus hour work week without absolutely choosing to do it, which almost never happened by the way, in the future, I'm willing to put in long hours when real emergencies happen and/or a real exciting deal that I wanted to be on and chose to be on with care. But if I was going to go over 55 billable hours in a week, I had rules around, “Okay, let's step back and look at why do I want to do this, why do I want to say yes. Is there a real reason? Is it forwarding my goals? How is it hurting other things that are important to me?” so that I could really sit there and weigh the cost-benefit realistically and then make a decision. Both of those rules were with me forever.

Later as a partner I still had those rules. I remember, I was a corporate finance partner, we're the busiest by far from October through the end of the year, everything has to close by end of year and there was a year in particular where I was crazy busy and there was no way I could take on more work. My biggest and best client called me and said, “Heather, I need you to take another deal,” and this was right before Thanksgiving, he was like, “And this has to close by the end of the year.” I said no.

A lot of people won't do that. They would say yes to their biggest and best client because, of course, serve clients first. I was very honest with them like, “Look, I've got X number deals for you, I've got other deals for clients. If I took this, it would be malpractice. I would not be able to do a good job for you on this deal or the others I'm already working on so I just can't do it. We do not have the capacity for it.” He took a deep breath and was like, “You know what, I really respect that. Thank you for being honest with me.” It's funny because a lot of lawyers are afraid to have those types of boundaries but my business with that client grew even more the next year. I think if you do it right, you can absolutely have boundaries.

But then on the other side, this was also after I made partner, there was a dip financing, do you know what a dip financing is? That is in possession when a company is going through bankruptcy and they need financing. Those are not as common as they used to be and they were fun to work on, but there were crazy constraints around them that usually at a very short time frame, you work a crazy amount for four to six weeks to get it done.

One came in and because I hadn't worked on one in a while, and it was the same client, my biggest and best client, and they asked me, I was like, “You know what? Yeah. I am willing to do this because it's for a very short time period and there's a purpose around it and a goal. This is something I've gotten to do in a long time and I want to.”

Then I set very specific boundaries around that: I would not work Friday nights, would not work Saturday nights, would have Sunday mornings with my kids. For five weeks, I worked crazy hours but I kept those time constraints around. I did not work Friday nights, did not work Saturday nights, did not work Sunday morning so that I could spend it with my kids and my husband. That's the thing I'm talking about.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about your experience. You're at this firm, you came in as an associate, then you made partner. Can you talk to me about your progression and then what happened next?

Heather Moulder: I'm a partner in 2008, and if anybody remembers 2008--

Sarah Cottrell: I graduated from law school in 2008.

Heather Moulder: Yeah. Well, as a corporate finance partner in 2008, it was not a good time. I was super happy that I had this tiny little book of business because not a lot of associates had their own books of business but I had a little bit and I was made partner and all of it was completely gone by the end of that year and those clients never came back. I was doing a lot of structured finance work at the time which never came back the same way and still really isn't the same as it used to be. It used to be more interesting, it's a lot more cookie cutter now and so I knew I got to do something else, I gotta pivot.

I spent 2009 pivoting, making new relationships, and trying to grow a brand new business as a young partner. It finally started to click later that year and into 2010 and I felt like, “Oh my god, this is going to work. I'm going to have this great practice. I'm going to build a team.” I was just trucking along quite happily and then I guess when my second kid was two, I got some really devastating news and that was that I had aggressive breast cancer.

That was a shock to say the least and I am here to say, ladies who are listening, please make sure you go to all your appointments, but even more importantly, that you do administer self exams of yourself every month because those are really how most people catch it. We don't think about that but that is how most people catch it.

The way I caught mine was actually a surprise. It was almost accidental but it was a whirlwind of activity when it happened. I found a lump, I called my doctor, they got me the next day. She examined me and I knew I was in trouble when I heard this, “Huh,” and I'm like, “Oh, no, what?” She's like, “Well, if I know you, you want to make sure this is nothing so I'm going to send you across the street now to get a mammogram.” I'm like, “Okay, great.” So I went and did that and I'm like, “Well, this is inconclusive. We need to do a sonogram,” so they did that and then we're still not sure. “We need to do a biopsy but we can't do it today, this was on a Friday, and it was MLK weekend, we need you back Tuesday.”

On Tuesday, I went in and had that. They told me, “Well, it's usually five to seven-business days so you'll probably hear something next week.” Two days later, I woke up, I don't know how I knew this but I knew I was getting the call and that I had cancer. In fact, I did get the call that afternoon and found out I had breast cancer and it was super aggressive. It was one of those moments where you feel like life just stops and you're watching from afar and you can't believe it's you but that was me. My kids were six and two, I was only 38.

It's certainly not what I expected but I was lucky with where I was and the practice that I built because it was so values-based and because I had clients who really clicked with me well, they were incredibly wonderful to me. They did not leave me. They allowed me to hand everything off to fellow partners in my firm to handle everything. I basically walked away that day not knowing what was going to happen and ended up taking a couple of weeks off without doing any work at all because I needed to focus on my treatment and all of that.

Within 11 days, I was actually in treatment, it was a whirlwind crazy time but then I decided I'm not really going to work and I allowed other people to do all my work for me. I just got on the phone once a week with my big clients and with the partners who are handling it to answer any big picture questions that they had about “How do you handle X or Y?” I did no actual work. I did that for almost a year because I was in treatment for seven months and then I had to have surgery. My body had to recover and so I couldn't work full time. I came back part-time that fall but really didn't work, hardly at all for the next six months and then started easing into it after that.

Sarah Cottrell: What year was that?

Heather Moulder: I was diagnosed in January 2012 so by the time I started working again, it was mid-2013, fully working. I went through a period where I was just—and this is somewhat common I think in cancer patients and possibly other people who deal with this type of severe illness or some type of life or death where you think you might die situation—while you're going through treatment, all you think about is “I just can't wait till it gets back to normal. I want it to go back to normal,” and then it all ends and it's not normal. It's something new because that experience and that journey that you've been on really has changed you but you don't understand how. You have to go through a period of figuring that out.

A lot of us—and this was definitely me—fight it for a while. I just kept trying to go back to normal for several years until I got to the point where I didn't feel like me anymore, again, like that time before, it was for a different reason but I felt completely out of sync, I felt like I was watching my life from afar, it wasn't even me there. It didn't feel like me. I didn't like who I was becoming. It was impacting my relationship with my husband. There was this moment where he even asked me, “Do you want to be married to me anymore?” which absolutely yes, I did, but obviously there was so much going on inside of my head that he didn't think I did because I was really, really removed from everything.

That was the impetus for me to, “Okay, Heather, you need to step back and figure out what's going on again and how have you changed and what does this mean for you and what you want to do moving forward.” When I first started that, I didn't necessarily think I wasn't going to practice law anymore but eventually, it led me away from my legal career and into what I do now.

Sarah Cottrell: Can you talk a little bit more about what it was that you found was leading you away?

Heather Moulder: My values have always been pretty much the same. Family, service, and connection are my top three values. That experience, what I didn't realize then and have since discovered, changed how I defined some of them and introduced a new one. That's what was making me feel so out of sync because I was living as though I was this pre-cancer Heather where service meant doing the best job I could possibly do for my clients and that was it. Well, service had morphed into I lived through something big, a lot of people served me and my family in amazing ways when I went through all of this. Now I want to give back and do more and really impact people on a more individual level as opposed to just as a lawyer for finance deals.

But I didn't know that yet. That whole going in there and trying to figure that out made me realize that that whole definition had just changed. It wasn't good enough for me to just do a good job to serve people, I needed to make a bigger impact. The connection piece was a little different too. I wanted to connect and be more one-to-one and present with people so that I could make that impact and serve them. My family became more important too. I realized my kids were getting older and they weren't going to be around that long. Even though I'd had this thriving career that I loved, I wasn't able to spend the time with them that I now wanted to spend with them.

That experience just really changed how I viewed motherhood and the time that I actually have with them because I'd spent so much time with them in that year and a half period where I was home more. I wanted more of that. I didn't want to go back to that normal lawyer job where you're away as much as I was.

Then there was that new value which I ran away from for a really long time, Sarah, because it was so foreign to me and I kept thinking, “Who do you think you are to have this value?” That was to inspire. People would tell me, “Oh, your story is so inspiring and you've inspired me to do X or Y,” and I would run away from it and hated hearing it because I felt like “I'm not anybody special. Why would you learn from me?”

I tried to push that away but eventually, I realized, “No, this is an actual value that I need to lean into,” and since have in starting my podcast and doing other things in my current business, but I felt like I couldn't live out that value or align much to that value within my career as a lawyer. That was really, once I started getting real about what that value was and what it meant, the impetus for “You're going to have to leave and there's something new for you to do.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think that values peace is so important and I know that that's something that you work with your clients on a lot and I do as well. I think one of the really significant two things that you mentioned that I think are super important—and this is something that I talk with my clients about a lot—one is, like you said, different people can mean different things using the same word when they're talking about value. It's not enough to say, for example, so for me, I value honesty. Well, what does that mean? What does that look like? What does that look like in different contexts? There are aspects of that that if someone else, even if they have the same value, it could look very different, it could express itself very differently, and that really matters.

The other thing—and this is a thing that I think so many lawyers struggle with, again, speaking from experience—is the fact that your values can change over time. It's not bad. There are lots of great values, literally every value cannot be your top value. I think a lot of times, the mismatch we see in our experience of our career as lawyers is that we made the decision to go into law with one set of values and then various things, whether it's life circumstances, who knows? Personal growth, all kinds of things shift your values and then you find yourself in a situation that you thought you would like or that would feel like the right fit and it doesn't. It's very confusing why it doesn't feel like a fit. It's because you value different things but sometimes, it's hard to see that in ourselves.

Heather Moulder: It is, and I think there's a couple of things that you've highlighted. One is that most lawyers want a challenge. We like to learn, we like to be challenged, we like to grow. Of course, as you traverse along your career and you grow and you learn, you're changing and circumstances change you. You also enter different seasons of life. What you want at 30 without kids is different from what you want at 40 with kids, and what you want at 55 when your kids are gone or whatever your story is. It's not going to be the same and so it's really important to check in, and all of those experiences and the change of seasons are going to change how you view your values, which then change what your priorities are.

Then we also are so attached to the path that's before us. We set out thinking, “Well, I'm going to be a lawyer. I'm going to make partner. I'm going to become head of my section,” whatever it is, the next step. It's this path that's set out before us and maybe we do want it at a particular age, but then of course, life happens, circumstances happen, we change our priorities, but we don't ever go back and check in with that. Then if we do, and we realize, “Well, that's not what I want,” we think something's wrong but nothing's wrong, it's normal to change those things.

I think part of the problem is we got really, really focused on the end result of where we're supposed to be as opposed to stepping back and paying attention to, “Well, where am I right now? Because that's where I'm actually doing all my living. Am I happy? What's going on?” and checking in with that, that part is actually more important than the end result and the achievement of the goal.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, completely. There are plenty of people who are continuing in a job because they feel like they need to achieve some particular goal that's 12 years down the line and essentially completely discounting the fact that presently they're utterly miserable. No shame, many of us have been there but I think that's a big part of it as well.

Heather, can you tell me, so you're going through this experience of trying to make it work, trying to get back to normal and it's not happening and then you realize, “Oh, that's because there have been these big shifts and I don't think that I want to practice law anymore,” tell me a little bit about that like how you went about doing that, what the reactions were, how you felt about it, all the things.

Heather Moulder: I know people were very surprised. My husband wasn't because he'd seen me struggling, and I would say this, if you're really thinking “I need a change, I don't even know what it is yet, so I have to keep it to myself,” don't. Share it with at least one person who you really trust because it's so helpful to get it out and then have somebody you can confide in.

Now that doesn't mean you go telling everybody because I don't think that's necessarily a great idea either but you should hopefully, I very much hope you have somebody in your life you can share it with and that's good because it really takes off some of the pressure that you feel and they can also then be as supportive and help you accept all of the mind stuff that's going on.

I was very worried about the money because, of course, I was a partner and how our family was going to handle it. It was really, really helpful when I told my husband because he's like, “We'll figure it out, don't worry.” It was a big pressure off me. Then I started sharing with just a couple of friends and one happened to be a coach. I didn't even know what I wanted to do yet. This was back when I was like, “I don't know what I'm going to do,” and she's like, “You know, thought of coaching, you'd actually be really good at that.” I stumbled into it, I was like, “Okay, well I'll check that out.” I took some courses and I fell in love with it.

As I traversed along that and decided, “Yeah, I do love coaching. I'm going to do something with that, I don't know what but something,” I then sat down with my husband and said, “Okay, I have a two-year plan, this was long, we want to make sure we save enough money for us to be okay for a while with me making nothing because we don't know how this is going to go. I've never run my own business,” and so we made a plan and I stayed for another two years while practicing coaching on the side before I even announced to everybody what I was doing. Only a few key select people like family and very close friends knew. They were not all that surprised given everything I'd been through and being there along that journey.

When I announced it to people at work, they were initially shocked. I think when they stopped and thought about it and looked back, they were like, “Ah,” but they were initially really, really shocked. What surprised me and I found really heartbreaking were the number of people that said, “god, I wish I was you,” not necessarily going to coach but “I wish I were brave enough to step away, leave the practice, and do something that I really am wanting to do.”

There were a lot of attorneys and I was a partner and so the vast majority of these conversations I was having were with fellow partners who were very successful in the law, they make great money and yet they were saying that. That to me was very sad and surprising, probably not surprising to you, Sarah, surprisingly.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I would say not surprising but I do think it's incredibly sad. That's part of why I do the work that I do because I think, and I can't remember if this is something you and I talked about on your podcast or if it was a conversation I had with someone else but we tend to think, “Oh, when I get to that spot,” and I'm thinking specifically of my time at a Biglaw firm and my experience with other associates there, I think there's a sense of “Oh, but when I get to that spot, whatever that spot is, partner, a certain type of partner, a certain tenure, or a certain position in the firm, then this will feel good and right,” and it feels completely off now, but those people in those places, those positions must feel like it's totally right.

I think the thing that is generally true is that many of those people feel not that dissimilarly from the people who are looking at them thinking, “Well, when I'm there, then I've arrived and it will feel right.”

Heather Moulder: Yeah, no, that's definitely true.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. The moral of the story is go to therapy, that's just a side thing that I generally like to talk about on this podcast. Also, if you feel like it's not right, that actually means something and you're allowed to listen, and that doesn't mean like, “Hey, go quit tomorrow,” it just means listen and explore, try to figure out what that means. You don't have that thought or those feelings, they're coming from somewhere and you probably want to figure out where they're coming from.

Heather, is there anything else that you think people should know about your journey from the point that you actually left that you'd like to share now as we're getting close to the end of the conversation?

Heather Moulder: I would just say it's an example of not tying yourself to a straight path or exactly where you think you're going to go. When I left, I thought I was not going to work with lawyers. I needed a break from lawyers. I took a year sabbatical and then I started doing work-life balance coaching. Over the course of a couple of years, lawyers started coming back to me and then finally a little over a year ago, I decided to totally rebrand and go full bore into coaching for lawyers. Now I coach lawyers both on work-life balance, mindset, leadership-type coaching and then also business development coaching, so how to build a practice that's profitable that doesn't burn you out.

I absolutely love it and it's something I never ever would have thought I would have wanted. If I had stuck to that, “No, no, no, I said I didn't want that,” I wouldn't be here serving the people I'm serving and making the difference I can make in their lives. Because I do believe strongly that there are a lot of lawyers who chose to be lawyers for a reason and they deserve to be happy, they don't deserve to have to sacrifice so much to do what they do.

I just think that we all get tied to, “Well, this is what I'm going to do or this is what I'm not going to do,” and we fight it too much. It's fine for you to change. I'm fully confident that five years from now, my current business is going to look very different and that's okay too. I've embraced that.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think as lawyers, we tend to have this sense that we need to always appear as though we have everything figured out and that is one of the things that will get in your way the most. If you're really trying to figure out what it is that you want to be doing career-wise, you have to be willing to sometimes look like you don't have everything all figured out. It's really scary so I'm not trying to say like, “And it's such a breeze. I'm totally great at that.”

Heather Moulder: Well, that's part of life. Life's not easy and it's full of discomfort. It's okay to feel fearful and worry about things. I think sometimes we think that something's wrong with this, we shouldn't feel that way, and that's absolutely normal. Give yourself permission to feel those things and then maybe go out on a limb a little bit more often.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, okay, Heather, if people want to listen to your podcast, find you on the internet, hire you, where can they find you online?

Heather Moulder: The podcast is the Life & Law Podcast. You can find it at lifeandlawpodcast.com. From a coaching perspective, I can be found at coursecorrectioncoaching.com. Then I'm also on LinkedIn and Instagram as Heather Moulder.

Sarah Cottrell: Awesome. Heather, I really appreciate you sharing your story with me today and I'm excited for everyone to hear it.

Heather Moulder: Well, thank you so much for having me.

Sarah Cottrell: 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.