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.

Welcome back to our summer series where you are getting to hear directly from some of my clients about their experiences in the Collab and the Guided Track, figuring out what it is that they want to do that is not practicing law. Today we're going to hear responses to the question: What is one thing that felt obvious or elementary that was really transformative for you?

Again, I want to remind you that if you are interested in getting the kind of support that my clients talk about in this episode, you are always welcome to join us in the Former Lawyer Collab. That is my entry-level program for lawyers who are trying to figure out what it is they want to do next that is not practicing law. You can go to formerlawyer.com/collab to see all the information about the program and to enroll.

As you'll hear in this episode, sometimes you need that additional support to really recognize when something is going to make a big difference for you even if it's something that feels quite obvious. Without further ado, let's hear from my clients what is one thing that is obvious or elementary to them but was really transformative.

Client 1: The values assessment and CliftonStrengths Assessment were incredibly eye-opening and transformative for me. I think while I did have an idea of my values and my strengths, I think being able to put them into the words that were provided by these tests that are steps in the Former Lawyer Collaborative was really honestly life-changing.

Being able to see in concrete terms what my motivators and demotivators were that I can then use that knowledge to do my due diligence in any potential new careers to see whether they conflict or would play to my strengths. I think that those tools that are provided with the Collaborative really were just very self-affirming, but also very transformative.

That may seem very basic, knowing your values and knowing your strengths, but the ability to see it in concrete terms and to know what you need in order to operate at your most successful based on your strengths and your personality type is just immensely, immensely helpful.

Client 2: Something really transformative for me was realizing that it was okay not to like what I was doing. I was a litigation attorney despite having a personality that didn't really fit litigation and for the longest time, I felt, “No, there are plenty of people that don't like their jobs, both lawyers and non-lawyers. You're just one of those people. Keep muddling through.”

I think when I finally came to grips with the fact that I did not like it and was never going to like it, that really changed things for me. I think I had gone through the first couple of years thinking, “Oh, it's new. It's a brand-new experience. It's meant to be challenging. You'll eventually settle in.” I think about three years in for me, two to three years in, I realized, “You're not settling in the way you should.” Allowing myself to be okay with that was a major step that, in retrospect, was a lot simpler than I thought it would be.

Client 3: One thing that was really transformative but felt obvious at the time was to look at things from a values-based approach and not a skills-based approach. If someone had just said that to me, I would have thought, “Yeah, that's pretty obvious.” But it's a lot easier said than done. It's amazing how much it can change anything from your intuition about a possible job opportunity to really just what you want your life to look like.

It's something that I still struggle with, but I'm glad that I have this framework of using a values-based approach as opposed to a skills-based approach to be able to look at career options this way. What you're good at doesn't mean that it's something that you like, gives you purpose, or aligns with your values.

Even from a values-based approach, for me, it allowed me to realize that working in a law firm is just not something that aligns with my values, and having worked in a law firm, in various law firms for a decade, that was pretty transformative for me. I'm very glad to have gained this knowledge from the Collab and from the Guided Track.

Client 4: The idea that my work environment should and could match my needs, a concept that perhaps a shortcoming was not mine, or really that the fact that I was feeling like a square peg in a round hole was not a deficiency or something I needed to fix within myself, that was really transformative.

The Guided Track was a safe space of individuals with whom I felt mutual respect and trust so that I could be vulnerable and honest. I had been doing my work in therapy for years before joining the Guided Track, but legal practice is a very specific and unique experience.

Sarah and the folks in the Guided Track understood that experience at its core, which allowed for these light bulb moments of personal insight. I think the experience of law school, which for me, was mostly white-knuckling my way through to graduation and my experiences leading up to law school, had really conditioned me to ignore what my body and emotions were trying to tell me.

I thought that the anxiety and discomfort were my fault, that there was some deficiency that I needed to bridge, some aspects of myself that I needed to change. I'm now empowered with the self-knowledge gained through the curriculum of the Guided Track. I know that when I am presented with an opportunity, I don't have to take it simply because it's the perceived right step.

By the time I joined the Guided Track, my life had been a series of right steps, but shockingly, professional success had not yielded happiness. Knowing that there was not anything I needed to change about myself, and learning through the exercises we did in the Guided Track allowed me to analyze the past career moves I had made with clarity.

That perspective that I gained led to the understanding that for my practice area, simply moving firms was not going to be the answer. I had already worked at smaller firms, I had also experienced life at one of the largest firms in the market, and neither of those desperately different experiences was a match according to the framework that I have now been equipped with.

I've been able to make peace with myself and with the work experiences I've been through to understand that ultimately, that would not have resulted in my happiness or fulfillment because there's not a match between my needs and those environments. I felt empowered to turn down job opportunities that came my way after leaving the last firm I was at with the knowledge that those opportunities were inherently not a fit with what I need to feel fulfilled at work.

I've been able to fully dedicate my efforts to starting my own practice equipped with the lessons from the Guided Track, which have helped in moments of self-doubt. I've gone back over the materials to remind myself that what I'm doing feels scary because it's new and something I haven't done before, but I'm fully capable, and that this venture is aligned with who I am.

Client 5: I think a lot of things on this journey fall into this category of things that, in retrospect, I'd look back and I'm like, “Oh my gosh, that's like duh.” But while I was moving through this path and while I was on this journey, I just couldn't see it. But once I realized it, it really changed the way that I saw my relationship with my job and with myself.

I think the biggest one is that there's nothing wrong with me for wanting to leave this job that everyone else on the outside, at least, thinks is so great, and that I've worked so hard to achieve that has all these like bells and whistles, all these perks, and all this prestige, but to me as the person that's experiencing the job, the workplace, and the work day in and day out, to me, it was like a nightmare.

To acknowledge that parts of it, many parts of it were very toxic, and that's not unlike my wanting to leave the situation doesn't mean that I was like a failure or that I was broken, I couldn't hack it, I couldn't withstand it, those are things that came up for me a lot. I constantly felt like I was quitting and being a quitter. It's always like a bad thing.

But once my thinking started to shift and I realized there's nothing wrong with a person for leaving a bad situation, you wouldn't sit in like toxic gas but somehow, when you're working in Biglaw, it feels like everyone should be able to just sit in this toxic gas and be able to withstand it, that's like a test of your mettle, that's how you know that you're really making it is just how long you can sit there and suffer.

Sarah Cottrell: Thanks to each of my clients for sharing their answers and responses to this question: What's one thing that felt obvious or elementary but was really transformative?

I think it's so important to hear from people about something that can make such a big difference even though it seems like perhaps it is very obvious because it can be so easy to overlook the things that are going to be really helpful for us.

Of course, as we've discussed before, if you're looking for support to help you in making the decisions that you need to make about what it is that you want to do, or what it is that you could do that is not practicing law, please consider joining us in the Former Lawyer Collab that is the place that you get access to the Former Lawyer Framework and all of the replays of the workshops and panels that we've hosted as well as the community of lawyers who are all working towards that similar goal.

You can go to formerlawyer.com/collab to see all the information about the program. That's all for me for this week. Next week, you are going to hear from my clients answering the question: What's one thing that you thought was true that you've realized is actually not true? In other words, what is a myth that, in some way, impeded their progress in terms of figuring out what it was that they wanted to do or what they could do that was not being a lawyer? I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for listening. I absolutely love getting to share this podcast with you. If you haven't yet, I invite you to download my free guide: First Steps to Leaving the Law at formerlawyer.com/first. Until next time, have a great week.