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.

Today, I'm talking with Megan Nogasky about what it takes to take a mental health leave from your law firm. Megan, if you missed it, she was on the podcast last week talking about her transition from practicing as a lawyer to working as a therapist.

I asked Megan if she would come on and share some of the details about both the logistics of what is involved when you decide you want to take a mental health leave but also some of the biggest barriers that people face when they're thinking about doing something like this, which as she shares early in our conversation, often it's not really the logistics, it's other pieces including how you feel about taking a leave and some of the things that you may need to work through in order to get to the point of taking a leave.

This episode is for anyone who has thought about taking a mental health leave from their law firm. Here is my conversation with Megan.

Okay, Megan and I are here to talk about something that comes up quite a bit, many of my clients have taken mental health leaves from their jobs, primarily law firms. I know that it's something that a lot of people who listen to the podcast consider because I hear from people who are thinking about it.

I asked Megan if she would be willing to have a conversation with me about just how to take a mental health leave. Obviously, each employer, there's going to be some little differences so we're going to be talking a little bit more at the broad strokes and meta-level. Megan, where would you like to start off this conversation?

Megan Nogasky: You know what, I think the biggest message and where to start is this is nowhere near as big a deal as you are thinking it is. Think about how many folks, and I know there's going to be, inside your brain, if you're considering this, there will be all kinds of yeah-buts about this, but think about how many people have to care for an ailing parent, who take leave after having a child or adopting a child, it is normal for people to have events in their life.

Even if the only ones you know of at your law firm are maternity leaves, brief bereavement leaves, or whatever, it's probably not a broad spectrum of things that you hear about. But people get sick, people need help. This is logistically a whole lot easier than your brain is making it. What is hard is dealing with all of the thoughts and emotions that you have about doing this in the first place. That's what makes it challenging. As just a starting point, it really isn't as big a deal as you think.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. It's interesting too, the podcast has been going since August of 2019, and even in that period from then until now, we're recording at the end of January 2023, proportionally, there are so many more people who email me or people who I've worked with who have taken some sort of leave.

I think for a lot of reasons, the last couple of years in particular, have necessitated a lot more people being more vocal about the need for mental health leave. People may have developed this idea of how rare it is or how infrequent it is based on something that is not our current reality.

Megan Nogasky: Yeah. I have seen attorneys at my work, and that is often something that they're coming in with is how significant, huge, and earth-shattering it is to take a leave from work. Very likely, if you are in this position, your firm probably doesn't feel super safe to be vulnerable or to share very much about exactly why you're going on leave.

The great part about going on leave like this is that you don't have to share a thing except that you are going on a medical leave. Really, the biggest point of communication is not going to be your supervisors, it's going to be HR, which again, folks are probably aware of but really what this takes is just getting in touch with HR and requesting whatever paperwork you need to fill out to take a leave and going from there, you will have to tell people you work with something but medical leave is all you need to do truly. You are not obligated to share anything else.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it's a bit of a testament to the unhealth of many of our work environments that a lot of lawyers feel like they will be expected or will feel pressure to justify and give more information to co-workers than is necessary.

Megan Nogasky: Right. Think about the fact that you are a lawyer. That means you have certain skills, some of them are communication-related. You are very likely good with words in the English language so all it's about, at its core, is being able to set the boundary in some kind of professional way where it's a medical leave and I'd prefer not to discuss it.

Whatever it is that feels okay to you, everybody in this situation that you would be talking to aside from HR is a lawyer, they're going to know to not push too hard. That's actually a benefit of being in this profession is they're probably going to want to not put a foot wrong either.

Now, I'm sure that there are places that folks work where that's not the case, but if you are in Biglaw, the response is probably going to be more of a hands-off step away now you're communicating with HR because no one wants to mess that up.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think one of both mental hurdles and also just for people thinking about the logistics, I think one of the concerns is this sense that it wouldn't be as straightforward as it actually is. Especially, like you said, if you're at a big firm, I guarantee you are not the first person who is going to be doing something like this, 100%, you are not the first person.

Let's say someone is thinking about something like this and they have a general practitioner, a PCP that they see but they either don't see a therapist or psychiatrist or they haven't seen one recently that they have an ongoing relationship with.

I've had people email me and say, “I think I need to find someone in order to be able to have someone to support a claim,” although this is their own conjecture, and I realize this again might be different place to place, but can you talk a little bit about ideas that people might have about what they're actually going to need to present in order to take a leave like this?

Megan Nogasky: Yeah. Normally, if you've been at a job for 12 months, then you are eligible for FMLA, so leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act at most places. Make sure that that's the case but for most folks, that's going to be the case. There will be paperwork that you need to fill out a brief amount and then a physician needs to fill out a form or part of a form, and the same goes for something like short-term disability, which you will also need to do, and if you're at Biglaw, you probably have this already, but making sure that you are covered in terms of your wages, your payment, your income, that you get that pay or you get a portion of it.

That's why it's important to do the Family and Medical Leave Act, which says, “Okay, you're taking leave for this amount of time and you have this position. We're not going to discriminate against you because of that position or because of that condition. Up until the end of this 12-week leave, your position will be here.”

I think that our conversation will probably gloss over the fact that in very, very poor work environments, there could be retaliation, there could be discrimination, there could be all kinds of different things happening. But by and large, especially if you're at a well-established or big firm, this is not something that you need to be super concerned about because this is a big machine that you're a cog in and you are one of many people who have taken a leave for some kind of medical condition.

You need a physician to fill out part of this paperwork. I am mostly in communication and working with folks who are having us fill out this type of paperwork because they're coming to us. I think that should give a little bit of maybe reassurance to folks that you don't have to have absolutely everything taken care of before you step out the door.

There are folks coming to a day program like this and they are asking us to help them fill out this paperwork and they're already on leave. You can fill out this stuff even after, and check with your HR, check with where you work, but it's not an “I have to have all my ducks in a row before I stop going to work.” You have a little bit of time to fill this stuff out after you stop going to work.

Again, because I work mainly on this side of things, I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be acceptable for a PCP to fill out the initial paperwork, especially if you can indicate “I've referred this person to therapy, at a psychiatry,” whatever is needed, I can't think of a reason why that wouldn't be appropriate or acceptable, but you never know because it just really has to be an MD saying that in my professional opinion, this person is unable to work for these reasons. It might even be better to have a provider who knows you better like your PCP or your general practitioner at that point.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. The other thing is speaking to the short-term disability piece, with both of my pregnancies, I had hyperemesis, which for anyone listening who doesn't know what that is, it's severe nausea and vomiting for at least the first two trimesters.

Actually, with my second pregnancy, I had to take medical leave because of how I couldn't read without barfing. That's challenging, at that point, I was an appellate court attorney who read stuff and wrote things all day. Anyway, it was very glamorous.

The point of all of this is to say that a short-term disability typically is something that's contracted with through a third-party company outside of your firm. When you're doing all of the short-term disability piece of things, not the FMLA stuff, generally, you're talking to someone who has basically no connection to your actual place of work.

It's someone working for the company that handles disability insurance. I think sometimes short-term disability can be a little bit more particular about what you need but like you said, it's not something that has to be all figured out up front but also it's not like you're going to be going back and forth with your place of business, you're dealing with this third-party provider.

Megan Nogasky: Yes. I do think that for the most part, employers really want to be as hands-off and know as little as possible. Now again, of course, that varies and even if you're at a big firm, there may be people who are engaging in gossip or nosy about what's going on with you, but Sarah is completely right that aside from just these initial communications and the FMLA, they don't need to know anything. You're just working with the insurance company to give them the information they need. That really varies from company to company.

Sarah Cottrell: Well, to that point about concerns people might have about what people might say or whatever, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Biglaw, and I think this is true in other law firms as well, I'm just speaking from my own experience, very much perpetuates this myth that you could somehow do something so perfectly that no one could react badly.

If someone reacts badly, it's not on them for their inappropriate behavior, it's on you for failing to manage up in the appropriate way. It can create a ton of anxiety I think in situations like this because a lot of times, one of their underlying questions is how can I prevent someone from being an a-hole about this?

Megan Nogasky: And you can't.

Sarah Cottrell: And you can’t but you work in an environment that tells you that you can. I just want to name that and say if you're trying to do this process in a way that means no one has any negative thoughts or feelings about you, that's not possible. It's actually good to know that's not possible because I think part of what creates so much anxiety about it is this idea that you could control it if you did everything “correctly,” whatever that means.

Megan Nogasky: Right, yeah. It's very simple to do, like I said before, to do everything “correctly,” to do what you need to do to take a leave, but yeah, you can't control what other people think and feel and the things that they say about you.

If this is where you start to learn that lesson and that truth, great, because it will serve you well because you can't control anyone's reaction at all. It's like a little first lesson about relinquishing control and just finding out that perfection is (a) not possible and (b) won't always give you the intended results.

Sarah Cottrell: Right. It's so hard in an environment that tells you, “Perfection is possible and if you haven't achieved it, it's because there's something wrong with you.” That goes to the whole mental piece. Logistically, as we've discussed, it is fairly straightforward but then there's the piece, among other things, and we talked about this a bit before we started recording, but feeling like you actually deserve this kind of care, I think that is a huge problem for so many lawyers.

People feel like it has to get so bad before they deserve to care for themselves in this way, especially when it comes to mental health because a lot of lawyers have been conditioned to think, “Oh, it's just mind over matter, I just decide to do something and then I do it. How I feel or what my nervous system is doing should be irrelevant,” and that's just not true but we have been so conditioned to think that way.

Can you talk a little bit to people, from your experience as both a lawyer and now a therapist, to people who might be having this idea of “Well, I'm thinking about maybe taking a leave but do I really deserve it? Do I really need it? Is it really “that bad?”

Megan Nogasky: I think if you're having those thoughts, if you're thinking about taking a leave, then that thought alone gives you information. You may need it and you need a break from what you're doing. You have those two pieces of information in front of you.

I think what makes all of this easier to work through and it makes the paperwork side of things easier as well is if you have an outpatient team early. If you have a therapist and if you need medication that you have a psychiatrist, you're set up with that even before you need any of this, that can make it smoother.

Again, not necessary, but it can make things a little bit smoother. But in terms of deserving, there are tons and tons to unpack there but I will say you are a human being, you have wants, desires, needs, and responsibilities just like every other human out there, and as a human, you have worth and you are deserving of care.

You don't need to get achievement badges, good grades, or anything like that to deserve mental health care. If you are in the position where you have a short-term disability, you have a financial cushion, you have access to resources, use those resources, use those benefits and privileges because they're there for you to use. Regardless of what anybody else says, you deserve them.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it's so true. I will say having now interviewed many people for the podcast over the last three and a half years, former lawyers, and work with many lawyers moving to be former lawyers, there were a lot of us who were drawn to law school and the legal profession because of how much external motivation was present in terms of you knew you were doing the right thing if you got the gold star or whatever the brass ring was or the metaphorical A-plus.

For a lot of people who are drawn to that type of thing, those people often, not always, but often, were raised in an environment where they were either told expressly or it was just implied that emotional needs aren't real needs. I think that is a big part of why so many people, so many lawyers when they come to this point of feeling, “I need a break. I need to take a mental health leave” struggle so much to actually feel like it's “justified.”

I think for a lot of us, we’re not taught to identify our own emotional needs as needs even if you respond to other people's emotional needs as needs. For example, by coddling whatever partner you work for, who is probably abusive in 1 or 10 different ways, that person's emotional needs, you will jump through hoops for but your emotional needs, you're like, “Is this really a real thing?” I don't know.

Megan Nogasky: I don’t know is charitable. It’s probably no, of course, not you, idiot. Shape up, come on.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, yes, it's true. I just think that's a really important thing to recognize as well. For people who are listening, if this is something that you're going through, if you found this podcast because you're thinking about trying to take a mental health leave and this is one of the things that you're struggling with, when Megan was talking about “You're a human being and you deserve care,” also as part of that, there are physical needs and there are emotional needs.

There are all different types of needs and all of them are equally valid regardless of how you have been trained to think about them or trained to think about your own in comparison to others because often, I see lawyers worrying a lot about the effects that, for example, taking a leave might have on the emotional health of the people around them and simultaneously ignoring the impacts on their own emotional health. This is why everyone should be in therapy.

Megan Nogasky: It is. It's so interesting that there is that “I need to honor these needs. It's okay to have these needs,” it just means that you're a person, it really, really does. I don't like it or I like it, that's a sentence, that is a complete idea. You don't need evidence for everything. You don't need citations for everything, and certainly, certainly, certainly not this. The only evidence you need is whatever the requirement is on a form, you need to meet a standard, not exceed it.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think another piece of it is recognizing that a lot of us I think by the environments that we work in and lots of other things have been conditioned to feel like we have to let it get really, really bad in order to provide that evidence that it's necessary if that makes sense.

Megan Nogasky: It absolutely makes sense, yeah.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think another piece of it for people is just recognizing you don't have to wait until it's as bad as you can possibly imagine for this to be something that you are worthy of doing.

Megan Nogasky: Yeah, absolutely not. If you’re listening and you're thinking about taking a leave or you're worried about it, just pause for a minute and think about what it is that you're demanding of yourself or some kind of imaginary standards, whether they're put there by your workplace or just by your own experiences, none of these things are prerequisites to taking care of yourself.

You can take a break and that is okay. Everything will be fine. If you need some time and you are at the point where you're really struggling with your mental health and you need to address it, take care of yourself, take the leave. Practically speaking, it is not going to be as intimidating as you might think.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay, Megan, is there anything else that you think people who are thinking about taking mental health leave from their law firm, anything else that they should be thinking about or no?

Megan Nogasky: Some things, there are lots of resources available online, and some of them, I am thinking about in terms of people who are dealing with physical illnesses and taking leaves, but there's information on the FMLA on the Department of Labor's website.

If you're thinking about returning from leave and are looking at maybe getting some accommodations at your job, there's also a government website called The Job Accommodation Network where there are examples of letters to request accommodations, there are just examples of accommodations if you need to brainstorm or you think it might be worth approaching your HR with a request like that.

There is also an organization, and this is locally based so this is Illinois, called Equip for Equality. They provide legal advice to folks who are dealing with things like taking leaves from work or requesting accommodations. They might be a resource for anyone who is in the Illinois area.

More than likely, you'll be able to find information, but this is like leaving the law, it's a mini version of that where at a certain point, you will need to take the step or you'll need to take the leap. It's a smaller version of that and it can honestly help prepare you for that bigger decision.

Because I imagine that tons of people use a leave like this to get their mental and emotional health as in order as they can and try to fight some of those messages that say, “I'm not worthy. I'm not deserving.” It's starting a process of dismantling that will take a while.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, it will, and therapy. Not to come back to a theme too much, but it is pretty much my brand at this point. It’s one of the many reasons that I just think if you are a lawyer and you're listening to this, please, get a therapist.

Because even if you don't feel like you're in a place that's particularly dire, you can see through these conversations that we have, with my conversation with Megan and then, of course, all the other conversations on the podcast, how much of this stuff seeps into very core parts of your identity and your emotional health. A therapist can help you start to untangle some of that.

Megan Nogasky: Yeah. It's like sleeping, eating, and moving, all that stuff takes care of your body, this is just the same upkeep for your mind.

Sarah Cottrell: I love it. Okay, well, I hope this has been helpful for anyone who's listening who's thinking about doing something like this. We'll put the links to the resources that Megan mentioned in the show notes. If you're listening, you can always go to the show notes and get those links there. But otherwise, Megan, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I know it's going to be really helpful for a lot of lawyers who are thinking about doing something like this.

Megan Nogasky: I'm so glad and thank you 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.