Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I've 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 about tolerating your lawyer job while you're preparing to leave. So I think a really important place to start, when you're thinking about this question, is whether where you are is very toxic, or is just really not good for you on a mental, physical, emotional health level, or if it's just, you know, this isn't for me and I want to get out. Because what you do, in terms of what you tolerate, is generally going to be pretty different in those two circumstances. So if you are in a situation where you're in a toxic job, most of the people, who I work with, who are in that situation end up doing some sort of bridge job out of the particular toxicity into often another law job that they look at not as like a long-term transition, but just some relief from the particular toxicity that is causing mental, physical, and emotional damage to them.

One of the things that you want to be thinking about if you're a person who's in that position, where you're working, some place that's very toxic, is what it is that you're expecting from that job that you're going to. We've talked in the podcast before about the idea of a bridge job. And the thing about a bridge job is that a bridge job generally serves very specific purposes, right? You're not necessarily looking for something that's going to like tick every single one of your boxes. You're looking for something that's going to tick the specific boxes that you've decided needed to be ticked. And that in some cases is just not at this hellhole that I'm currently in. If you're someone who is in a position like that, I definitely recommend that you go and listen to the episode about bridge jobs, because I talked a lot more about ways to think about it. But I just wanted to say upfront, as we're talking about tolerating your job, while you're looking to leave, or while you're thinking about leaving, or while you're in the process of figuring out what you're going to do when you leave law, that does not mean that I'm saying stay in a job that is dangerous and harmful for you, right. Like, if there are other options for you, even if they are not ideal, it can often be a good move to just get out of the place that you are. And I've seen that be very helpful for many of my clients. And of course, you've heard people on the podcast talk about it as well in their interviews.

The other situation, which many lawyers find themselves in, is like, yeah, I don't love this job. Yeah, I don't love all the things about it. I definitely don't want to do it long term, but I'm also not in a terribly damaging environment. If that's the case, then there are some things that you can do to help make the time that you're still there feel as productive and as not painful as possible. So one of the things is being aware of what work it is that you need to do, in order to figure out what it is that is next for you and to be realistic about your timeline. For a lot of people, just knowing that they're working towards leaving can be very helpful, because it gives them this sense of like, okay, this is not permanent. I'm not going to be here forever. But you also want to think about whether you are giving yourself a realistic timeline. I'll use the collab as an example because, of course, I've seen a lot of lawyers go through the framework in the collab at this point, which is going from I have no idea what it is that I want to do, other than I don't want to be doing this job, all the way to moving into something different, or identifying a bridge job that will then move them into something different.

I generally tell people, when they are thinking about joining a collab and ask me something like, how long does the process take? I generally tell them that working through the framework, if you give a couple of hours a week to it consistently, you can make very good progress in 3 to 4 months. And most people with consistent effort are essentially through the process and into the point where they are either narrowing things down, or actually applying within somewhere between the four- to nine-month range. And that is very dependent on so many things. Of course, it's the lawyerly answer. It depends. It depends on how much time. It depends on how many options you're thinking about. And considering it depends on how aggressive you are in terms of doing like… and by aggressive I just mean like how many informational interviews you're taking on at one time and how many different areas you're exploring at one time.

But one of the things that I think is very important for you to know if you're someone who's listening and thinking about leaving and we've talked about this before, is that the day that you are able to leave, is not the day to start thinking about what it is that you want to do when you leave. Because there is a process there and that process does take time. The people who I see who come to me after they've made a move that ended up not being a great move for them, are generally people who waited to start thinking about what they really were wanting to move to until very close to the time that they made the move. And it just doesn't allow you a lot of time for reflection. Now, that doesn't mean, like, don't make a move quickly, because again, as I said at the top of the episode, sometimes you just need to, like, GTFO and that is 100% okay. Not only do I think that's okay, I think that's good and in a lot of cases, I think it's necessary, depending on the environment that you're in.

But one of the things that makes it easier to tolerate your lawyer job, when you're preparing to leave, is if you are consistently moving through this process, so that you can see yourself making progress, in terms of gaining clarity. And one of the reasons that I'm an advocate for people doing that while they are still working in their lawyer job, if it's something that works for them, is the fact that you cannot predict exactly how long it will take to get the clarity that you want, to get the clarity that you need and to ultimately identify the direction that you want to go in. The good news, I think, is that as people are going through this process, you're developing this skill set that a lot of us were never taught, right? Which was, who am I, how do I identify what I actually enjoy and how do I identify a job that actually fits those things? As opposed to what people tell me I should do, or what I think I should do, or blah, blah, blah. And as you develop those skills going through this process, you don't just develop them for the initial question that you're answering, as you're working in your law job and preparing to leave. You also have those skills as you move forward.

So even if you do move to a bridge job, or to a job that you think is like the job and then you're kind of like, oh, maybe this wasn't exactly the perfect thing for me, you already have those skills that you developed in the initial process to then use to figure out what it is that you want to do next. If you're someone who is working in a law job and you don't foresee yourself leaving particularly soon, but you do see yourself leaving eventually, I think that it's really helpful to know that there are lots of things that you can be doing now that will help you to prepare for ultimately leaving. Because the goal, right, ideally, the goal is that when you reach the point where you're like, I'm ready to go, or I can go, whether it's financial or otherwise, ideally, you already have done that work, and you know the trajectory that you want to be on and you don't have to delay, once you hit that point.

I've talked about my story on the podcast and one of the things that I've talked about is that I told myself, once I pay off my student loans, then I can do something else. Well, it was coming up, we're going to pay off our loans and then we paid off our loans and then I was like, okay, great. I have some vague ideas about what I'm interested in doing, but I had not done a lot of the work that I now talk about, the work that I have put into the structure of the framework for people to do, so that you aren't like me and you don't get to that point, where you've paid off your student loans and you're like, Oh, well, what am I going to do now? Or not necessarily that you will have paid off your student loans, but just when you reach that point, whatever point it is that you've told yourself, that is a point I can leave. I think it is super helpful if you've used the time leading up to that, if you're able to do that, to think through these questions.

There are a lot of ways that you can help yourself feel like that period, when you're still in your lawyer job is useful and is moving you towards the future career that you ultimately want. And using that time to move yourself in that direction and to just give yourself time, so that you aren't under a lot of time pressure and stress. You're not having to rush. And you can really explore and figure out what is really something that is compelling for you, is a very good use of the time that you're in your lawyer job and can make it much more tolerable, right? Because again, as I said at the beginning, many people who I've worked with have found that just being in the process of figuring out what's next, makes being in a job that you don't love feel a little bit more tolerable. And that's always a good thing. So thanks so much for listening. 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.