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.

Next up in the re-release series this summer is the episode called "Not Fitting In at Your Law Firm is a Good Thing. The reason that I recorded this episode originally is that so often when lawyers are thinking about leaving, one of the things that holds them back from leaving especially if they work in a law firm is that other people are going to look down on them and think that they're making a terrible decision, et cetera.

Very often the people I work with will come to this realization of, “Why am I making all of these decisions based on what people who are doing a thing that I don't actually want to be doing would think about me and who I often don't feel I really fit in with or that I just don't feel like we are ultimately wanting the same things in life?” It can be really isolating when you're in a law firm and you feel like you're the only one who feels the way that you do.

I think it's really important to remember, as I talk about in this episode, especially if you are not wanting to be in a law firm long term, that not fitting in is actually a good thing. Let's get into this episode, which is one of the most popular episodes of the podcast.

Well, in classic lawyer style, I re-listened to this audio after it was edited for the podcast and realized that I wanted to make a caveat, which I did in the original recording, but just wanted to make extra sure that it is clear that I make some broad statements in this conversation. But of course, there are exceptions. There are absolutely exceptions to the rule that I'm talking about in terms of who ends up staying in Biglaw and why.

I think it's fair to say that for the most part, the trends that I have observed and talked about in this conversation are accurate, but I do think that it's for me to also be clear that I am talking about trends and what I see overall and not trying to make any definitive statement about every single lawyer in Biglaw or every single partner in Biglaw.

Your mileage may vary, but also in my experience, it doesn't necessarily vary a ton. Well, now that I have lawyered the crap out of myself, let's get to the rest of this conversation.

Today on the podcast, I want to talk about why feeling like you don't fit in at your law firm, feeling like there's something wrong with you in terms of you just feeling like it's not working for you, but it seems to be working for everyone else, and what's the deal, I'm going to tell you why I think that's actually a good thing, why I think it suggests something good about you, and what I think you need to know if that's how you feel.

Before we talk about that, I want to let you know, I just finished enrolling for the fall cohort of the Guided Track, so the Guided Track enrollment is now closed. There will be another Guided Track coming in the spring, but in the meantime, I have opened my calendar for one-on-one bookings and consults.

There are two ways that you can work with me one-on-one. One is essentially you come into the Collab and then we also have a series of one-on-one meetings that's called the Collab Plus One-on-One.

It is, in many ways, the schedule is similar to the Guided Track, but instead of meeting with a group, you're meeting with me one-on-one for eight weeks and going through an action plan to move through the framework.

The other option is to work with me for six months, which involves 12 60-minute one-on-one calls, and we can organize those various ways for you, depending on the particular goals that you have for yourself during those six months.

If you're interested in either of those options, like I said, my calendar is now open for consults. Just go to the website, the work with me dropdown, you'll see the options for one-on-one. If you go there, there is a link to book a consult. There's a button to book a consult. You also can read all the information about the various ways that I work with people one-on-one.

I'm looking forward to getting to work with some of you one-on-one this fall. Most likely I will close consults again later in the year before going into the next year. If you're interested in working together one-on-one, now is a great time to book a consult so we can chat about whether or not it would be the right fit for you.

As always, I never want anyone to feel pressured. Please don't feel like “I can't get on this call with Sarah because it's going to be some weird hard sale situation,” because it is not.

Okay, let's go back to the topic for today, which is if you feel like a weirdo or like you don't fit in at your law firm, that's probably actually a good thing. I think I want to kick this off with a little bit of a storytime situation.

I have observed over the years and Ed, my husband, who's been on the podcast before, who's also a former lawyer and I have had many conversations now having had experience with many different people at many different law firms in many different contexts, one of the conversations that we've had more than once is that you generally can predict who is going to leave a law firm and not stay long-term by how likable they are.

And by likable, I don't mean socially or whatever because let's be real, I'm extremely nerdy and uncool and always have been. I mean more, who are the people who treat other people with respect? Who are the people who are compassionate? Who are the people who are kind and enjoyable to be around because of the way they interact with other humans as humans?

There's almost a graph of those traits and the likelihood this person will stay in Biglaw. I have had multiple conversations recently with people who are working in law firms who feel like, “I just don't feel like I fit in. I feel like the way that people are here is so different from how I am.”

But the thing about lawyers is that most often we're like, “Oh, well, there must be something wrong with me. The fact that I don't fit in here must be proof that there's something wrong with me that I need to fix because I'm supposed to be a lawyer and I'm supposed to be a certain way and I'm not that way. It must be me.”

The reality is yes, the fact that you feel like you don't fit in in these environments, in a certain sense, probably is you, but it's also probably actually a good thing. Anecdotally, I recently learned that someone who I interacted with during my legal career was elevated to a very high position within a law firm.

I'm just going to be totally honest with you, I was 100% unsurprised because this person was deeply unpleasant, probably one of the more unpleasant lawyers with whom I have had to interact, and therefore completely checked out that this person was elevated to a high position within a large law firm. Not only was I not surprised, but I can remember when I was still a baby lawyer, having interactions with people who were like this person, who was not someone who showed a great deal of respect for other people, especially those who this person perceived as less important than them.

I can remember at the time interacting with this person and thinking what I now recognize was a quite naive thought, which was, "Could it be possible that this person is going to excel because there's so much about this person that makes working with them unpleasant or working opposite them unpleasant?"

I think a lot of us who come into law have this inherent sense of rightness and justice. There is this sense of like, “It just can't be true that someone who is grossly disrespectful and generally a terrible person to be around for various reasons,” I think we have sometimes this internal sense that someone with those characteristics shouldn't ultimately have success.

The reality is that I have seen over and over and over now, I graduated from law school in 2008, and I worked in a large law firm, my husband worked in several large law firms, I have friends who have worked in many, many large law firms, clients, et cetera, consistently what I have observed is that in fact, this particular situation that I'm talking about where this particular person was elevated is the norm.

It's the norm that the people who you would think are probably the least well-suited to be leading groups of people or organizations, being responsible for groups of people or organizations in law firms, especially large law firms, are probably going to be the ones who end up in those positions.

I think it would have been really easy for me to spend even longer than I did in a state of denial of like, “It can’t just be that this is the way that you need to be in order to survive here, in order to have success. It must be that there's some inherent justice, fairness, and reasonableness, baked into the system so that ultimately, unkindness and cowardice are not rewarded.”

The reality is, for most of you who are working in these kinds of systems, especially these large law firms, the system you're working in does reward the people who do not prioritize kindness, humility, or compassion.

If you are someone for whom those are significant values, you probably feel like you don't fit in because the system values something different than the things that you value, the system, the structure within your workplace. That's not a sign that you're doing something wrong. Also, without significant internal work, it's unlikely that that structure, that system is going to change.

I think it's really important for lawyers who are in these contexts where they're so immersed in the lawyer bubble that this kind of structure, these values are so normalized that they think there's something wrong with them because they don't share them.

I think it's important for those of you in those situations to hear that this is real. This is the real situation. The real situation is that you can predict who's going to ultimately end up leaving by how they treat the people who work with them and for them.

The more badly behaved someone is, the more likely it is that they will have longevity in these systems. If you're someone who feels like you don't fit in, I want you to hear that because one, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. In fact, in my opinion—of course, this is 100% just my opinion—it actually means there's something right with you.

It's evidence to me that your values have not been subverted by a system that ultimately elevates those with the least desirable character traits, those with the least amount of humility and compassion, and a lot of qualities that to me are some of the most important qualities a person can have.

If you're in one of these systems and you feel like you don't fit in, what I would say to you is congratulations. Also, there are way better places for you to be if and when you're ready. That's why Former Lawyer is here.

As I mentioned at the beginning, if you're someone who's interested in potentially working with me one-on-one, just go to the website. The work with me dropdown, you'll see the options for one-on-one, and you can schedule a consult with me.

As always, if you want to start with my entry-level program, that's the Collab, you can join at any time, you can go to formerlawyer.com/collab to see all of the information and to enroll and join our group of 220-something lawyers and growing who are all like-minded in wanting to remove themselves from these types of toxic environments and find the thing that is the right path to them.

Thank you so much for listening. It’s episodes like this that I think of the most as episodes that I wish young Sarah, baby lawyer Sarah could hear and know that she’s not alone and she’s not crazy, and making the effort to figure out something else that works better for her is going to be worth it. I'm so grateful that I get to make this podcast and share it with you. Thanks for listening, and I hope you have a great week.

Thanks so much for listening. If you would like to learn more about the framework that I use with all my clients to help them figure out what it is that they want to do that is not practicing law, then go watch my free masterclass, The Simple Five-Step Framework For Identifying An Alternative Career That You Actually Like. You can get the link to watch at formerlawyer.com/masterclass. Until next time, have a great week.