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 want to talk a little bit about something that is true for me when it comes to Former Lawyer and that I also think has parallels to something that is probably true for you as a lawyer who's thinking about leaving law. So, sometimes I will talk with people, either lawyers who are happy in their work or people who are asking, “Do all the lawyers who you work with end up leaving law?” I sometimes get this sense that people think that I want to convince people to leave the law.

One of the things that has been really important for me from the very beginning of Former Lawyer is fundamentally, I believe that people are the experts on their own experience and that I am not here to convince anyone of anything. I definitely get fired up about some of the truly problematic parts of the legal profession. I certainly have some things to say about many of these aspects that I see as very problematic, but the reality is for me, and this has been true from the very beginning of Former Lawyer, I created this podcast for lawyers who will hear it and say, "Oh that person is talking to me or that person is saying things that I feel are true."

Because the reality is when you're a lawyer practicing law around a bunch of other lawyers, many of whom seem unhappy, but ultimately aren't really taking steps to do something else, it can feel very isolating. When I have people on the podcast, I tell them there are a couple of main goals that I have for the podcast, and one of them is to help lawyers feel less alone. By that, I really mean to help lawyers who are unhappy in their jobs, to help lawyers for whom the profession does not feel like a good fit, to help them feel less alone.

Fundamentally, it's not a question of when I produce an episode, whether I'm having a conversation with someone, or it's just me talking about something by myself, fundamentally, I am not trying to convince lawyers who disagree with me or lawyers who don't think there are these problems in the profession. I mean, I disagree with them but I am not here to change their minds.

I think there definitely have been lawyers whose minds have been changed listening to conversations on this podcast, which is amazing. But I see my role more so as just saying things that are true, in particular, saying things that I believe to be true that are very hard to say when you're a lawyer who is still embedded in the profession because there are so many incentives that push against people being able to be honest about the problems of the profession, the nature of the profession.

There are also some real structural problems, which we've talked about many times on the podcast. But among other things, it means that people who are in the positions of least power within the profession who are most likely experiencing the, well, I wouldn't say the majority, who are experiencing a significant amount of the problematic behavior and abuse that occurs in the profession are also people who are not in a position to be able to talk about it.

So, yeah, just FYI, for example, if you're listening and you have thought about leaving, but you're not really sure, and maybe you agree with some of the things, some of the characterizations that I make on the podcast, but other ones you don't, I am not like, “Oh, my goodness, I can't believe you don't agree with me,” like my goal is to convert people to the church of leaving law, that is not at all my goal. My goal is not for you to leave the law.

You've heard people talk on the podcast, people that I've worked with, for example, Ann Marie, one of my former one-on-one clients comes to mind, people who I've worked with to help them figure out what it is that they want to do that is not practicing law, but sometimes it turns out that they do want to practice law, they just want to do it very differently than they have in the past.

As far as I'm concerned that is a win because for me, the goal in terms of when I'm working with people, whether you're in the Collab or we're doing one-on-one, the goal is always figuring out what is the right fit for you. Here's the thing, I think one of the things that having this perspective allows is that I do not have a lot of anxiety about how people, lawyers who don't agree with the things that I share on the podcast, about how they will react to what I have to say.

Because in all honesty, if someone doesn't agree that our profession has significant problems or doesn't agree that a lot of the behavior that we see from partners in large law firms is highly problematic, if they don't agree with those things, okay, I can't make them nor do I want to try to make them believe what I believe about those things.

I think if I were to feel this sense of like, “I need to convince people,” that would create a lot of anxiety and that would make it a lot harder to just say the things that need to be said. Again, that doesn't mean that people don't listen and ultimately change their view or see something that they didn't previously see about a problem in our profession. But for me, coming from a place of, “This is what I know to be true” allows me to simply present that as opposed to mentally scurrying around in anxiety about whether it's convincing enough.

From my view, I'm just saying things that are. The way this connects to you as a lawyer who's thinking about leaving is that I think a lot of you are in similar positions and here's what I mean, I think a lot of lawyers who are thinking about leaving law have a lot of anxiety, understandably, about convincing other people that it's a good choice or it's the right choice for them.

I get it. This is not me saying, “That's so ridiculous. I can't believe you care what other people think, especially if they're the important people in your life.” But I think one of the things that really serves lawyers who are thinking about leaving is being able to be really clear about what you've experienced and what is true about your experience in the profession, such that when you're talking to someone about your decision to leave, you don't feel like you're coming from this place of "I'm feeling anxious because I need to convince this person that this is accurate."

Instead, you're simply saying, “Here are the things that are true, and this is why I have made this decision.” It can be a subtle shift, but I think it's a really important one because so many of us who ended up in a profession that was so externally focused, that was so prestige oriented, have learned to judge the value of what we're saying and doing by how other people react.

I think the more that you can root yourself in what is true, what is reality, the reality of your experience, which if you've listened to this podcast at all you know is real and is not just your own experience, it is pervasive across the profession, that allows you to approach these conversations with a sense of groundedness, and without this sense of, “I need everyone to think exactly as I do about the legal profession or my experience of the legal profession in order to be okay.”

I am not here to convince anyone to leave the law. However, if you're someone who thinks that you want to leave the law, then I am here to tell you that's extremely valid, that the reasons that you have for that are shared by so many other people, that it's not all in your head, it's not just that you can't hack it, that leaving the legal profession is the right decision for so many people, for so many reasons. If I'm able to communicate that to you, then I feel like I've done my job. Thank you for joining me today. I'll talk to 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.