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.

Hello, so today I want to talk to you about why I donated to The Legal Accountability Project. If you're on my email list, you may have seen—this was a couple months ago now at the time that I'm recording—but it was announced some time in the last, I don't know, month or two. Time has lost all meaning, that I, Former Lawyer—that I, by Former Lawyer—donated to The Legal Accountability Project, which is, to remind you, the nonprofit that was started by Aliza Shatzman, who's been on the podcast to talk about the importance of judicial behavior. And more specifically, clerks and other court personnel being able to have meaningful redress against problematic behavior by judges.

Which, if you are a lawyer or a law student, you know that there are lots of judges who are known—or in the past were judges and were known—for having highly problematic behavior, much of which never got addressed for all kinds of reasons. But a huge part of it being that a judge has a lot of influence over a young lawyer's career, and therefore people were highly disincentivized from speaking out about their mistreatment, especially because in most cases there was no mechanism to really do anything about it.

And yeah, The Legal Accountability Project, which Aliza started or co-founded, among other things, has this database initiative that basically allows clerks to share their experiences with judges and then potential clerks to access that information so that they have some clue what they're getting into.

Some people have approached or greeted this initiative with more enthusiasm than others. And I think it's probably not a huge surprise to anyone who's listening—first of all, if you've listened to my conversations with Aliza on the podcast, you already know this—but even if you're just a lawyer in the world who "knows what the legal profession is like," it's probably not surprising that there are lots of law schools in particular that are kind of resistant to the idea of this database.

Because, of course, there is this heavy emphasis on placing students into clerkships, and the most clerkships possible, and the most prestigious clerkships possible. And frankly, caring about whether a judge’s behavior is okay and whether or not a student is going to be mistreated by a judge can affect how many people you place. And can also potentially, depending on the judge's position on it, because some judges are in favor and some are not, because not all judges really want someone to be able to have anything to say about their behavior, anyway, as a result, there is some resistance, right?

So, some law schools are very supportive of this and have subscribed. So essentially, it's like a subscription model that allows students who are in that cohort of students who might be applying to clerkships to access the database. And many schools are not.

I don't talk a ton about where I went to law school on the podcast, but I went to the University of Chicago Law School. And if you know anything about the University of Chicago Law School, you probably are not surprised to learn that they are not wildly enthusiastic about this particular initiative, or at least they have not indicated that they are, thus far.

And so, yeah. But you know me if you've listened to this podcast at all. And one of the things that, for me, one of the values that really drives the podcast and how I think about "even like what the heck is Former Lawyer doing in this world" is giving people information.

And not just giving them information, but talking about things that maybe not everyone feels comfortable talking about. Talking about the parts of our profession that are really hard to talk about when you're someone who's continuing to try to make a living in the profession.

You know, I hear a lot from people, especially any episode that I ever do where I talk about bad behavior in Biglaw. I hear from so many people about how grateful they are and also just, "No one else is saying this." Which is, I mean, it's not literally no one. I have no illusions that I'm the only person in the world who is making commentary about the many problems of Biglaw.

But to me, this whole question of accountability for judges and schools taking a vested interest in making sure that their students are being placed in environments that are not going to traumatize them and cause workplace PTSD—which is in fact a real thing, which we all know and is very prevalent in the legal profession—I think something that exists to try to combat that is a good thing. And that is what The Legal Accountability Project is designed to do.

So, all of that to say, when Aliza reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested in donating to allow students from my alma mater to access the database—since it was not otherwise going to be made available to them—I pretty much didn't have to think about it and said yes.

Because, again, hello, more information is better. I think a huge part of the problem in our industry is that the incentives are so jacked up that you end up in a situation where it feels more sensible to pursue a course of action that may place people into positions in which they're going to be abused than it is to try to make an effort to make sure that that doesn't happen.

And that's super messed up. It's certainly not anything that's unique to any one institution or organization in our profession because, let's be real, it is pervasive across the profession. And that is part of why this podcast exists.

So yeah, I donated on behalf of Former Lawyer to The Legal Accountability Project so that Chicago students who are looking at clerkships in the next year can access the database, and that's covered. And I also talked with Aliza about, to the extent that the donation is not needed to cover just Chicago students, making sure that other students who are needing access and are not being given access by their schools get access. Because I think that this information needs to be available as widely as possible.

And I think it's a really important thing to support if you care about our profession doing better, which, "how can you not want our profession to do better?" Like, people, come on. Anyway.

So yeah, that is why I donated to The Legal Accountability Project. I think that the work that they're doing is really important. Frankly, I think that any initiative that is requiring more transparency into behavior of people in positions of authority in the legal profession is a good thing.

And yeah, I don't really have much else to say other than the truth is important to me. And if that feels like a crazy position for someone who is trained as a lawyer to take, then I don't know what to tell you.

Okay, well, this was a good chat. And I really appreciate you being here. 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.