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 sharing my conversation with Andrew Sohn. I really love this conversation. Andrew actually was a podcast listener. He started listening to the podcast back when he was still practicing law and ultimately decided to transition into career services at a law school and reached out to me and offered to come on the podcast and share his story.

This is just a note to all of you listeners, if you are a lawyer who's become a former lawyer while listening to the podcast, I would love to hear from you. I do try to vary my guess in terms of the careers that they move into and that is generally one of the organizing principles that I keep in mind in terms of deciding who's going to come on the podcast, but yeah, I would love to hear from you if you would be interested in coming on the podcast and sharing your story the way Andrew is going to today.

If you're interested, you can just email [email protected] with the subject line Podcast Guest and we'll chat. I was so glad to have this opportunity to speak with Andrew. He talked about a lot of different themes that come up on the podcast all the time and in particular, we spend a lot of time talking about how important it is to figure out who you actually are as opposed to who you think you're supposed to be.

So many of us as lawyers focus a lot on who we think we're supposed to be and why we're not that way even when we're in a profession that is a really bad fit for us. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Andrew.

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.

Hey, Andrew. Welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Andrew Sohn: Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Cottrell: I am excited to hear your story. You actually emailed me offering to share your story on the podcast and you also are a podcast listener, which I'm always very excited to have someone on the podcast who listens to the podcast because you know what we're all about here. Let's start with you introducing yourself to the listeners and then we'll go from there.

Andrew Sohn: Yeah, Sarah, thanks so much for having me. My name is Andrew Sohn. I'm currently an assistant director of career services at Chapman Law School, I'm supposed to call it Fowler School of Law at Chapman University.

Sarah Cottrell: Very fancy.

Andrew Sohn: Very fancy, big donors. I've been a huge fan of this podcast and I just love the shared community aspect for a while now and so yeah, I'm just excited to be here. I've been practicing since 2014. I recently, in October of last year, transitioned to higher education career services, recruiting and it's been a wonderful change so I'm really excited to share my story today.

Sarah Cottrell: Yay, I am super excited. You listen to the podcast so you know where we typically start and that's where we're going to start today. Tell me, Andrew, what made you decide, “I should go to law school”?

Andrew Sohn: Yeah, just like a lot of the guests that you have on, it was a mix of two things. It was my family, my parents are both entrepreneurs, they're immigrants to this country, and they started small businesses. From a young boy, I always thought what would be a way I can help their businesses and they told me, “We need legal help. We need legal help. Go get a legal education.” So that was always part of me.

Also, I come from a big family and so we have 15 or so cousins and 9 are doctors or lawyers so it was just that natural path. I graduated with a poli-sci degree and it was like, “Okay, it just seemed like the natural move,” although I did have a heart for education and trying to be a teacher, I would say my sophomore and junior years of college, but I had a long talk with my parents and they were like, “Teachers don't make enough money so you might want to reconsider. We're just looking out for you in the future. You're young, you don't know yet.”

That was something I pursued. I was like, “Okay, well, maybe I'll try the law.” It's been fairly competitive. I felt like I was articulate. I felt like it was a natural thing. I loved people, which doesn't necessarily go together but I felt like it was the natural transition to go to law school.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think you're right. That is the experience of so many people, this combination of it seems like a practical option and something about security, stability, financial security, all of these things. I think also for so many of us when we're 17, 18, 21, whatever, whether someone decides they want to go to law school before they actually go to college or while they're in college, I think there's a lot about listening to people who are older than you and have more experience that makes sense.

I think it's easy sometimes to look back at our younger selves and be like, “Oh, you totally should have seen this or that,” but I think there is a lot of value in learning from other people. The only reason I mentioned that is as you were talking, I was just thinking about the fact that it can be really easy I think to judge our younger selves and be like, “What's wrong with you? Obviously, you should have known everything that I know now in my wise old age,” I say as someone who's turning 40 this year, but we know what we know and we know it.

Andrew Sohn: Exactly, exactly. I just felt like there weren't that many options for me and it was just the safe, secure option that ran through our family. All my cousins were older than I was and they trailblazed the path and that's all my parents knew too. In Korea, Sarah, there are literally two occupations, it's for prestige, it's either you go be a doctor or you become a lawyer, prosecutor, judge.

It's the prestige aspect, especially being the only child in my family, being the only one carrying my last name for my generation. That's a whole nother topic. There is a lot of pressure for me to maintain the prestige of my family and to carry that forward and law was that one aspect where they thought, “Oh, you're going to make our family proud.” I think that's for a lot of Asian families, a lot of people in profession, that drives their decision is to pursue law.

You think about the prestige, the money, and the security, all that stuff without thinking for yourself at age 20, 21. For me, I was like, “I wanted to go in education,” I said, “Look, I want to be a teacher,” and it was frowned upon, which was mind-blowing looking back on it now.

I recently had a son and newborn and if he would have told me he wanted to be a teacher or an educator, I think I would be ecstatic for him. That's amazing. You can make so much of an impact being in education. I'm in it now. I think it was just a generational thing. I think it was something that a lot of folks in the prior generation being first-generation immigrants, I think they share that mentality.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it is so interesting how our family or community norms really can have such a significant impact on how we see what the obvious paths are because there are people who might be in a different family or community who everyone's a teacher, for example, and so it's like, “Well, of course, you're going to go into teaching,” versus the doctor, lawyer, engineer.

I know I interviewed Nnamdi Nwaezeapu on the podcast and he wrote a book with that literal title based on his experience of being the child of immigrants and the ways that the expectations of his family formed his ideas about what was a reasonable path for him.

It sounds like it wasn't like you were like, “Being a lawyer is everything I've ever wanted,” or “I watched Law & Order and that made me decide I wanted to be a lawyer.” Can you talk to me a little bit about what were your expectations going into law school? When you got there, were you like, “I'm glad to be here”? Were you like, “This was a horrible mistake but I'm here now,” what happened?

Andrew Sohn: Yeah. My expectations going into law school, I feel like with a lot of people going into law school, you rely on your undergraduate abilities like, “Oh, I could study for finals two weeks before and it will be perfectly fine or I can just do these readings beforehand,” and you feel like you'll be fine but you realize like most law schools, even here at Chapman, you're basically the cream of the crop. You have the highest GPAs, everyone's been successful in undergrad, and they're smart.

Your peers become your competitors. There's this element of we had a median GPA requirement that our attrition rate was really high in my law school so there was this element of competition that I didn't realize would be so fierce before going into law school and the level of dedication to your studies, I've never spent so much time in the library in my life, but that was just the norm.

You know, Sarah, you just spend a lot of time doing readings and prepping, prepping for classes because you're afraid getting called on or being underprepared. I think the competitive aspect, the grind, and the heightened nature of law school weren't something I was prepared for.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, especially I think when you're in a situation where it's being graded on a curve, because I would say my experience of law school, I didn't feel a ton of competitiveness per se amongst the students, at least in my experience, but there was just this simmering anxiety because if you're grading on a curve, then people have to fall along the curve.

The way the system is set up basically necessitates a certain level of anxiety, comparison, and feeling like you're constantly needing to compare yourself with other people because that's literally what's happening when you are being assessed.

Andrew Sohn: Absolutely. I didn't realize what adds to that is there's a lot of chatter, there's a lot of noise. It's a very small-knit, small group, your cohort or your class and so you hear about like, “Oh, this student got this job opportunity or this student is doing this really well and did this in this class.”

It gets in your head. You just get into that mode where you're just listening to all the gossip. I always describe it to my students here, it feels like middle school because that's how big my class was and it just feels like there’s just a lot of chitter-chatter.

Sarah Cottrell: I used to say it was like middle school with drinking.

Andrew Sohn: I completely agree with you.

Sarah Cottrell: Anyway, carry on.

Andrew Sohn: Carry on, yeah.

Sarah Cottrell: I think the environment itself can be, especially when you take a bunch of kids who were the ones who worked hard, sometimes didn't even work that hard and did well in school, that's part of the identity for a lot of us when we go to law school. We're that kid who was smart, did the things, and got the gold stars. You put them in an environment where, by definition, not everyone is going to be that person.

There are so many studies, I was just listening to a whole podcast episode the other day talking about some study of mental health of law students and basically how it degrades over time over the three years and it's almost, to me at this point now with some perspective and hearing about so many other people's experiences, I'm like, “Yes, because look at the system.”

Anyway, you're in law school, you're like, “This is intense and this is way more competitive than I expected,” what were you thinking about what you were going to do with your degree when you got out of law school? I know you mentioned that your parents had talked about needing legal help with their businesses but did you have a particular plan? If so, what was it? And if not, how did you figure out what you were going to do?

Andrew Sohn: I don't think I had a plan. It was just I was in law school and there was the gold standard. You see those students that volunteer in class, that speak up, and that do moot court and mock trial so I always thought that is the gold standard for any attorney without understanding the different areas of law that was available. All you thought was litigator courtroom, what you see on TV and so that was the standard for me.

But it was funny, Sarah, because I think I learned this through practice that you need some moments of self-assessment, introspection. I was trying to pretend because that was the set standard for me to be someone that I wasn't. I'm not competitive by nature. I'm very collaborative. I'm pretty chill, that's how my peers would describe me. It was that like I'm not that student that's going to speak up and try to make a point or argue in moot court or mock trial and I felt like I was like, “Man, I'm not qualified to be an attorney.”

You get into that mindset like I'm not as good as them, I'm not as articulate as they are, or I don't have this ability to not worry about what people think about me, to create arguments, make points, and to be able to do that because for me, knowing this now, I'm very careful with what I say and I don't like speaking in front of a lot of people, which is terrible if you're in litigation because if you're talking in front of your colleagues or you're talking in front of a judge or a jury, it's not going to serve you very well.

I realize I always cared about what other people thought, are they going to think I'm stupid or they're going to think I'm smart? Am I saying this correctly? You start doubting yourself and I think that was created in law school. I thought early on I was like, “Man, maybe I'm not going to make a good attorney,” I knew that but it's like, “What am I going to do? I'm $60,000-$70,000 in, I have to carry this through.” You feel stuck.

I think that's where I was like, “Okay, maybe there's another path. I don't know what that path is but I'm just going to get to the bar, let's pass the exam, and let's be a licensed attorney. Then hopefully something will work out.” There's no real set plan to answer your question for me.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. Literally, everything you said, I relate to. Tell me what happened when you graduated, what did you do?

Andrew Sohn: Yeah. When I graduated, I worked for one of my closest friends, mentors. He mentored me since college. He was the gold standard for what I thought was, literally, Sarah, he was like a James Dean to me, he was just so smooth, he was so articulate. He would invite me to go with him to morning hearings or go to court with him when I was in college for summers and stuff.

He took me under his wing just to mentor me. He was the standard for what I wanted to be. Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew I could never be him because he's so different for me personality-wise, character-wise. He's the unabashed litigator. He's just unafraid to speak his mind. He's the guy that you go to a bar with and he's just talking to everybody, he doesn't care they'll call somebody out when he sees it.

I wanted to learn from him specifically because I wanted to be like him and I thought that's what I had to become to be an attorney. I asked him right at a law school even I clerked in an intern firm during the summers and he was a solo shop but he was somebody that I knew very well and I wanted to model after.

I worked for him right out of law school and after I was licensed. I worked for him for a while. I would say a year, a year and a half I just learned what he did. I would even practice at home little things he would say. It's funny because literally, he was the one person where I thought, “Okay, if I can just be him, don't worry about Andrew, just if I can be this guy, then I'll be fine. I'll have a great career as a litigator.”

But that wasn't as easy as I had planned it to be. It was trying to be somebody else that you're not. At that point, I'm older, I'm mid-20s, late 20s. It didn't serve me very well. But that's what I worked for.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. It's so interesting because I think so many of us who became lawyers have this experience of basically feeling like, “Well, I just need to not be who I am and that's how I'm going to succeed in this career.”

At this point in my life, I have met and worked with many, many, many lawyers and there are a small handful, maybe five or six that I can think of that have what you're describing where you're just like that person was made to be a trial lawyer in a way that even someone who is going to put in a ton of work and is going to be a very, very good lawyer is not necessarily going to hit that particular level because it's just this combination of particular factors that are particular to that person.

But I think there's that ideal out there and then so many of us basically just go around in the profession focusing on all the ways that we aren't this small handful of people and how we should be and spending a lot of time trying to basically be a different person or feeling bad about the fact that we are who we are because it doesn't meet this particular set of criteria.

I can remember just feeling like it's not okay, because, for me, I also don't really want to be that person. That was part of my experience. I think it's amazing. I think their ability is incredible and I don't even want that but I feel like I should because this is the job that I'm doing so I should want to be that person. I think it actually, in many ways, and I'd be interested to hear your experience, but it actually pushes us away even more from really figuring out what it is that might be a better fit for us because we're so focused on not being who we are.

Andrew Sohn: Yeah. I completely resonate with it. I spent most of my career, I'll get to it later until I partnered up with somebody and opened up my practice literally until that point, Sarah, I was striving literally to be somebody else. First of all, I felt like an imposter in the whole thing, that imposter syndrome thing was just always just part of my mentality.

I never felt like I belonged because I wasn't able to become “I'd be this person” and no matter what I did, I would listen to songs to hype me up for stuff and I would seek counseling, I would seek therapy, I would talk to other attorneys and litigators just to see, “Am I missing something? I just feel like this is totally against who I am as a person. I felt like I wasn't this person that loved going to trials and loved arguing.”

It's apparent why a lot of attorneys, I just went to a conference last weekend, attorneys, in terms of suicidal ideations and dealing with substance abuse, we're the top of the class as a profession and it's very clear.

One of the speakers was saying a lot of people might think surgeons, for example, obviously they deal with life and death and it's a very stressful situation but he was saying attorneys, what makes it so stressful—and this resonated with me because it was so stressful for me—was imagine a surgeon that's just the most well-educated, highly trained skilled person and he's operating, and then across from the surgeon is another surgeon that's equally trained, equally skilled and he's undoing everything you're doing literally.

His goal, his main objective is to undo everything you're doing. That whole adversarial confrontational aspect of the profession, I think it wears on you. The moment you start work, we can talk about billables later, that's a whole nother thing but you're literally trying to just battle and argue.

That's why my wife, when we were dating, she would always ask me like, “Why don't you like playing board games, why don't you like playing video games, or why don't you like playing these games?” I'm like, “I feel like I do this all the time. There's a winner and a loser.” I didn't even want to do that. I seriously didn't even want to play Uno or some random game. I don't like winning or losing, even on my free time, I like to do things that can decompress and I can listen to music, go to concerts, or something like that where I don't have to think about that.

That whole aspect of the competition, all that stuff, I mentioned this early in the podcast, I'm not very competitive, I'm not. I play competitive sports and stuff but for me, it was just being a part of a team, I love that. I love the rah-rah, let's go, let's go, and do it. It wasn't necessarily always about winning and losing, which I thought was a problem and that's why I was seeking help like, “Is this okay? Am I just weird? Is this not okay?” I struggled with that a lot.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it's so huge to be able to get to the point where you can see who you are and recognize that might not be compatible with what you're doing. Because people have different personalities, there are some people who find the gamesmanship of practice, at least as a litigator, who are not utterly run down by it. I am not one of those people. A lot of the people who have the podcast are not those people, many people who I work with are not those people.

A big part of it is it is in part a personality match. Not even necessarily like, “Oh, you can't do the job,” but it's like, “How much of a toll does the job take on you?” I think a lot of times when people hear me talk about personality and how your personality matches with the work you're doing, they think that I might be saying, “Oh, if you have a certain type of personality, you can't do the job.”

Honestly, most people who went to law school who became a lawyer, it's not a question of whether you can, it's a question of do you want to put yourself in a situation that for you is particularly exhausting or particularly distressing because of the fact that the way you exist in the world is not really compatible with what you're being expected to do.

I think that it’s so easy to fall into this trap of thinking “This is hard for me because of something about my personality and that means my personality is wrong,” as opposed to “Hey, maybe this thing is not the thing for me.” I just think that that's such a huge part of all of it even with things like billables, which I would love to hear more about billables. Tell me your thoughts.

Andrew Sohn: To your point, just your last point, Sarah, literally, when I think about like you saying we can do the job, I did everything, I went to trial, I did the depos, I did the gamesmanship, I played that game and I did it and it's like, “But was I happy?” No, I was miserable every single day. I had to muster up some courage and like, “Okay, time to put on my lawyer hat and be this litigator.”

My supervisors, supervising attorneys, every time there was an evaluation, they would tell me, “You have to be more aggressive.” One described, “You have to be a pit bull. This personality that you have, it's just not working. I don't know why you don't have that. You have to be more hungry, more aggressive, more competitive.” I would hear that over and over and over again.

Man, it's crazy, Sarah, the things I would do to muster that up thinking like this is something I started doing, started watching more MMA or competitors, it was the weirdest thing. I remember this, someone described to me like “Be more of a man.”

Sarah Cottrell: Oh, my gosh.

Andrew Sohn: And that was very borderline for me because I was very upset, I was like, “I don't know what you mean by that.” It was just constantly wearing on me. That's why it was a really tough time. I think a lot of people may struggle with the same things in the profession, especially, I can't speak for all firms but for me, all the supervising attorneys, the managing partners, they're all Caucasian males and they had a certain personality about them and they were all pit bulls, they're all aggressive, they're all just slam it in their face.

I think those things wore on me. I just wanted to add that point to your last point but billables, going into billables, it was like you don't know what to expect really. I think all attorneys, when they first do billables, they are like every six minutes like what? It was the constant pressure.

I had to meet a 2,100 billing requirement and they put your hours or how many hours you billed against my peers and so it shows you where you are in terms of the billing rankings. It's this whole billing culture. You literally come in and the first thing you're thinking about is, “Okay, how can I plan out my day so that I can maximize the hours and put everything down?”

It's just a lot of work on top of the actual work you're doing. There's a lot of non-billable work that I was doing too. I think constantly just keeping that spreadsheet open or whatever billings, software you're using and just keeping record of everything was like, “Can I bill for this?” then the bills get audited and then partners call you in and just say, “Why are you billing so much for this?”

You just have to deal with that whole conversation, that extra piece, and it takes so much time. It was just something that was so consuming where it's like I was defined by my billables of how valuable you are as an employee and as an attorney. At the same time, I'm dealing with all these doubts about whether I even belong in the industry as an attorney, to begin with.

You're just balancing so many things. Thankfully, I didn't have any major substance abuse or I had broken relationships because I had to commit so much time to meeting the billable hours because if you bill 9 or 10 hours in a day, actually you're not working those hours, you're working more. Everyone can say that. You're putting in more hours to bill that time.

It's just the bane of my existence. It was just the worst thing ever. I hate being measured, I hate being measured by that. But what’s funny, Sarah, is because I felt like I wasn't a pit bull and super aggressive, that litigator type, I felt like, “Okay, then I can show my value and worth by having high billables so that partners can be like, ‘Oh, at least you're producing for the firm, you're generating revenue,’” and so I worked my tail off to be among the highest billable attorneys. I did fairly well on that respect.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I find that a lot of the lawyers who I end up working with—and I'm imagining it's probably true for a lot of the people who are listening to the podcast as well—tend to be the type of person who cares a lot about doing really, really good work.

They care a lot about the substance of the work and it's very difficult for them when, in a certain sense, the substance of the work is not really relevant, cared about, or valued in these contexts because ultimately, the measure is billables and you could be doing utterly trash work for whatever number of hours or you could be doing fantastic work for whatever number of hours, although, beyond a certain point, it is just getting things done.

But that whole idea of “Okay, so everything about me in this role is basically coming down to whatever number is put up and it's not really tied to quality or anything like that, beyond needing to reach a certain threshold,” I think there are a lot of people who really struggle with that because it doesn't feel meaningful or fulfilling if you're someone who is really concerned about doing good work and not just doing work to do work.

Andrew Sohn: Yeah, quality, but it's so hard to achieve quality because you don't have the time for it and it's not within that reasonable billable range for that item. It's like you want to do quality work but sometimes you don't have the bandwidth to do it because everything is moving. I mean I had 50-plus cases within a month so it was just quick like, “Okay, on to the next thing. I don't have time for that.”

Your emails get shorter. Your emotions get more boilerplate let's say. It just becomes that way and the quality, like you said, goes down tremendously. For me, it was a volume business so I just had to get resolved as quickly as I can.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. I'm interested to know at what point in this process of post-law school practicing did you start to think not just like, “Wow, this feels like such a bad fit and I need to make myself into a different person apparently in order to be what I think I should be,” at what point did you start to think, “Hey, maybe I should stop trying to do this because maybe this is just not the thing that I want to be doing”?

Andrew Sohn: Yeah, for me, I had always thought if I get to a bigger firm and I get more compensation, more benefits, I thought I'd be happier. I could withstand the daily, “Oh, you got this, Andrew. You got these daily morning pep talks leading into work, this man I'm miserable going in every day but if the compensation's worth it and my livelihood changes, my standard of living changes, I'm willing to do it.”

I think when I got to, I lateraled up to a bigger midsize firm, and for me, the compensation was great, everything was great, but I remember being there by myself, Sarah, at 9:00 PM one night, we're on the top floor, I looked out, and I saw the city lights and everything was lively, there was some element of like, “God, I'm so depressed.”

I even looked down, I was like, “Wow,” it was weird. I'm suffocating. I feel like everything I'm doing, I don't know what I'm doing it for. The money wasn't as great as I thought it would be. You don't even have time to spend the money, you're just accumulating and it just wasn't enough for me.

I had to have that moment where I was just sitting by myself, and when it's nighttime, you can see your own reflection and I just lost so much weight, I just looked a mess, and I was like, “I hate that person.” It's funny because all my friends, my family, they would always ask me, the first question they would ask me is “Are you all right?” not even how are you doing, it's like, “Are you all right?”

You could see it. I wear my emotions on my sleeves so they can see it. It was literally just eating away at me slowly, slowly just over the years. I had that moment where I was like, “I'm done. Enough is enough.” I put in my notice the next day and I don't know, I had nothing planned, I had nothing set, I was just like, “I needed to get out and I needed it for my own sanity in my own life.” I just took that bold step to let the partners know.

It's funny because once I informed all the partners, that following two weeks, it was crazy because they would all call me in one partner at a time, “Hey, what's going on? Do you need more money? What do you need?” It's like, “Oh, your future started here. What are you doing? You're throwing your career down the drain. You worked so hard to get here. How can you just leave it on us?” Every single time but it was affirmation for me like one after the other. I was like, “Man, this place is like a death trap. I need to get out for sure 100%.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. The number of stories I've heard like that where people are just being absolutely crushed and then they give notice and then everyone's like, “Oh, if you just told us that you are utterly miserable, then somehow we would have made it somehow different.” Anyway, sorry, that's going to be a whole rant that I'm just not going to go on.

For context, can you talk about how far into practice you were and where we are? Because you said you graduated from law school in 2014.

Andrew Sohn: 2013, and then I left in January 2017. I wasn't practicing for a long time but I think it was definitely over three years.

Sarah Cottrell: Long enough.

Andrew Sohn: Yeah. I was like, “Enough is enough.” I just took a month just to connect with people, just connect with attorneys, connect with friends again, family members, just have a moment to just really gather my thoughts and plan out the next steps. It was at that time I connected with a mentor of mine who was subtly seeing from a firm that I worked for before.

She was probably one of very few attorneys that genuinely seemed happy every single day. She always had a smile. She was always laughing. She was coming in when she wanted, leaving when she wanted. It just felt very free. When I saw her, she was just this free spirit just doing what she wants and I was picking her brain about her practice.

At that point, she had her own practice for about 20 years or so. She loved what she was doing. Just in a passing comment she told me, she's like, “I think you'd be really good at what I do.” I was like, “Huh, really?” She's like, “Yeah, you’re good with people, you like meeting people, you're very social. There's this aspect of you're easy to talk to, there are things that there's a strong need for what I do.”

She was inviting me into that space. Long story short, I ended up working for her and observing her, shadowing her to see, I went into client meetings with her and worked for free. I was like an intern again, learning the transactional side. She worked with small business owners locally, small and medium-sized business owners, and she was just doing general counsel, outsourced general counsel work for them.

It could be like contract review, drafting, reviewing, a lot of business counseling, it's a lot of more business stuff, and some tax-related issues. I thought it was really cool. We developed a rapport and I worked there for a year or two and then we decided to partner up and we became partners. I was there for five-plus years. It was honestly a great, great learning experience.

She was always telling me, and this is why she's a great mentor, to just be myself. She was like, “This is what we're doing, we're networking with other types of professionals that might be referral partners, other attorneys, you're counseling business owners. They come in with an issue, you issue spot, and then you do the work.” It was very collaborative, and even opposing counsel, if you're doing an M&A transaction or something, it was very collaborative with opposing counsel.

It was the first time, Sarah, where I really felt like all my soft skills and all these things that I had in me, I started drawing those things out and it was more natural for me to do so. I felt like I thrived. I was like, “Oh, I'm really good at convincing people that they need our services and that we're trustworthy and that they can trust us with their baby,” which is their business and their livelihood.

That was where I was and I was extremely happy for a very long time. No one explains the stresses of all of a sudden becoming your own law firm owner and the business side of things which was both good and terrifying at the same time. You lose a lot of sleep when you have employees, especially during COVID. That was a very trying time for the firm because we had small to medium-sized business owners and some were thriving but most weren't, most were struggling.

They had no traffic or they were thinking about liquidating and closing down and so we spent a lot of time just counseling them, advising them, and helping them wind down or survive. I know way too much about SBA loans more than I should, which was just insane, the amount of homework I had to do. There were times I didn't take-home pay.

I was just like, “That's fine. Let's keep our employees employed, let's keep moving, and keep our firm surviving.” It was really hard. That part was really hard, COVID was hard for everybody and it was a trying time for everyone but as a small business owner, essentially that's what I felt like I was doing more than practicing, I felt like I was just a small business owner. That was something that took a toll on me health-wise. That's what led out of that to seeking other opportunities where I felt like I don't have to worry about payroll taxes, overhead, and surviving.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, it's interesting because I think people have this idea of what it is to work for yourself, there are some things about it that are great and wonderful, and there are some things about it that I think are not so great and wonderful. It is one of those things where I think sometimes when people imagine it, they only see the non-shadow side.

Can you talk a little bit about how you ultimately decided to pursue the current role that you're in and what you're doing there?

Andrew Sohn: Yeah. It ties back to going through COVID and it was dying down and I felt like, “Oh, we made it through. We're good.” At that point, I was so burnt out. Even owning my own business, it was like, “I don't think I’m made for this. I'm too risk-averse.” If I didn't have client consultations scheduled, Sarah, for the next month, I'd be freaking out like, “Oh, my God. Where are we going to get our income from and our revenue?”

I think that took a toll on me. You don't know until you go through it. It was a misconception like this mentor of mine, I thought she didn't work as much but it was actually she was working way more than I was at the time, things you don't necessarily see as a business owner, you are putting in more time.

I think all of that toll and the stress of that, I was like, “Let's have a reassessment.” I had that moment with my wife, whose named Sarah by the way, and I was like, “Okay, Sarah, let's figure this out, what are we going to do in our next steps?” and she's like, “Didn't you always want to teach and like on being education?” I've always been in mentoring groups for those underprivileged groups since college.

I've been doing that literally since high school in all my different organizations and stuff like that and I felt like that was a big part of something that I wanted to do moving forward. I was always looking for university job boards and law schools and there was a position open here at Chapman University Fowler School of Law for an assistant director of career services.

When I read the job description and what they did, in terms of the majority of the job, you're counseling and advising students on careers and you're spending a lot of time connecting, doing employer outreach, and recruiting events and stuff like that. When I read that job description, I was like, “Okay, this is something worth pursuing and that I feel like I would be fairly good at.”

I interviewed here, met with the dean and staff, and my life has not been the same since. I've been here since October. I can tell you this, Sarah, I don't plan to leave anytime soon. It is literally the most amazing feeling waking up and having my students come in and they're just wide-eyed and they're just like, “What should I be looking for summer opportunities?” and just getting basic advice on application materials and how to send professional correspondence.

I feel like I'm making a difference and I feel like some of the mistakes that I've went through and the misconceptions, I can relate to them like, “Look, I understand you're interested in Biglaw but why are you interested in Biglaw? Can you tell me?” a real reason outside of the paycheck. I don't want to hear the whole money situation, which is fine, it's valid for some but beyond that, I want you to have an understanding of what it looks like for real.

I'll connect them with those that are actually practicing in Biglaw or that have practiced Biglaw to be able to really give that perspective, assistance, and help for students. It's literally given me this new life. That's why I'm here today.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it's really hard when you are so miserable as a lawyer to believe that it's possible to feel so differently about a job. I've had multiple clients say something along the lines to me of essentially, “Isn't this how I feel about practicing and how miserable I am? Maybe this is just what it is to be an adult with a job.”

It is hard to describe to someone who is in that place, and I've been there so I get it, how much better it can be because I think if you're in a really miserable place, it seems just completely outrageous like it's a fairy tale. Not to say it's perfect but in comparison, at least that's in my experience, I don't know about you.

Andrew Sohn: Yeah, no, absolutely. There was that moment, knowing who you are first, knowing what you enjoy, knowing you're just sometimes just natural at doing, some days I'm working longer or more than I was before but I don't notice, I don't care and I was like, “That's a new reality for me,” the fact that I'm here and I have 10, 12 student appointments and I'm just so happy. I'm just like, “This is awesome. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I always wanted to do.”

I think as you go in through your career and you start realizing what you are and what you're not, I think that's when you can narrow your focus in terms of finding that right career for everybody. I would encourage everybody to seek that out and not sit in the misery, it's not worth it.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. This is part of the reason why there are lots of different facets to the framework that I work with clients through/the clients work through but a huge part of it, way before the rewrite your resume and all that stuff, which fine, is who are you? No, but really, who are you? No, but really, who are you? Because otherwise, you're just doing what a lot of us did when we picked law school, which is “I'm good at these things and this thing matches that so I'm going to go do that.”

If you really want to make a change that's going to be a better fit, there needs to be more substance and also therapy, just to have my episode plug for therapy, let's just drop that in there. Okay, Andrew, as we're getting towards the end of our conversation, is there anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't touched on yet?

Andrew Sohn: Because you brought up therapy, I went to therapy for two years while I was practicing, and literally, in a lot of ways, it kept me alive and it kept me going and so I would encourage, especially because for example, my culture, they frown upon therapy, they feel like only crazy people or people with serious issues go to therapy but I would encourage therapy to everyone and anyone that really feels like they need a safe place to talk and go through what they're grieving sometimes or what they're actually not fully processing the right way.

I'm the biggest proponent of therapy and I'm unashamed to say I went to therapy for years because it saved my life, Sarah, in so many ways. It helped me understand the misery and help me get out of a very trying situation. I had a lot of grief because life still happens while you're practicing law. Things happen in your personal life and those things, how do you balance all of that with the stressors and everything that is work?

I think speaking to somebody that helps you process, organize, and really ask the right questions, it's not just something where you go and just someone just listens to you for an hour, no, they’re professionals, they lead you into the right state of mind and in a lot of ways, they're more effective than doctors are. I would highly, highly, highly encourage, for those that are struggling with stress, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or anything that entails the legal profession, to seek that out as soon as you can.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I co-sign all of that. If you want an additional selfish reason to go to therapy, I will say that I have multiple clients who decided to go to therapy because I talk about it on the podcast all the time, and just in general were like, “Eh, I don't know but I guess whatever,” and then have come back to me and been like, “That really was the game-changer.”

That was the thing that, for various reasons, opened the pathway to be able to make the types of connections that you need to make and to develop the kind of understanding of themselves that they needed in order to be able to actually figure out what it was that they wanted to be doing next. All of the reasons that Andrew mentioned and then also that bonus reason. If you've been on the fence, check it out.

Okay, well, Andrew, I really appreciate you sharing your story today. Can you tell people if they want to connect with you, where they can find you?

Andrew Sohn: Yeah. If you want to connect, obviously, I'm on LinkedIn, my name is Andrew Sohn, or you can email me at [email protected]. I'd be more than happy to share thoughts. If you just need a soundboard to share in the misery, I was there with you so I know what it feels like.

Sarah Cottrell: Awesome. Thank you so much, Andrew, for sharing your story today.

Andrew Sohn: Thanks, Sarah, for having me and I get to finally be on a podcast I was listening to for a very long time. So thank you.

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.