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 leaving the law, when you're already burned out. We talk a lot on the podcast, of course, because of the work that I do with lawyers, who are thinking about leaving and who want to identify something else, about where to start with that process. You know if you listen to the podcast regularly that I think it's very important to start with values. And I have a program that people can join called the Former Lawyer Collaborative where people can go through this framework that I've created. It's like the curriculum is the backbone of the collaborative. And then also I do that work with people one-on-one as well. Well, one of the things that comes up a ton, when people are thinking about the collab or working with me one-on-one, or just listen to the podcast is that, you know, they'll ask me some variation of the question of like, okay, I understand that I need to figure out what it is that I want to do and I'm on board with that. Also, I'm super burnt out, so like, how do I do that? Because I'm like, scraping by as it is energetically. And Of course, on the front end, I would always say that if this is where you are, I strongly, strongly recommend that you see a therapist who can help you, one, assess the state of your burnout and how severe it is, because of course there are overlaps and symptoms with things like clinical anxiety and clinical depression. And I think that it also can just be helpful to get a sense of like, what they think that you need from a professional, like a professional assessment of that. But apart from that, which I think, as always, unsurprisingly, is the thing that I recommend the most. I tell people that when you're really burnt out, but you're also wanting to figure out what's next, it can seem really daunting if you have the sense of like and I need to be putting hours and hours and hours in every week to this. And if I don't, then I'm never going to make progress. It's very easy to just be like, well, I just have no bandwidth for this whatsoever.

So I thought it might be helpful to talk about sort of what I tell people when they're joining the collab, in terms of the time that they might expect to commit to the process. Because it, I think, is instructive for anyone who's sort of asking these questions about like, how do I make progress, when I feel this way? And what I tell people when they're thinking about joining the collab is that really, if they can devote an hour to a week, most weeks, to the framework into the process that I've created for people to walk through, that ultimately you can make a ton of progress in just a couple of months. I think that people often have this sense of like, well, if I'm going to make a move that I need to be devoting like five hours, or ten hours, or whatever per week to like all of this stuff and like resumes and blah, blah, blah. And listen, there are all sorts of things that you have to do in this process, right? Like I'm not saying like it's a breeze, it takes no effort. But consistency is so much more important than like large amounts of time. Most of the people who I work with, most of the people in the collab are still working a full time job as a lawyer, when we're working together.

So, this is not a situation where, like, if you're burnt out and you feel like, well, I don't have hours and hours or, like, whole weekends to devote to this, like, you don't need that. You don't need that to make progress. It's much more important that there is sort of, like, some consistency than that you're putting in these massive amounts of time. So that's the first thing that I will say. It takes less time than you think, especially if you're someone, who's in the collab and following the framework, because you can sit down and be like, okay, this is my one hour of the week, or this is my 90 minutes, or this is my one of two 30-minute blocks this week that I'm devoting to this. And you know exactly where to go and you know exactly what to do and you're not spending a lot of time wondering, like, is this what I should be doing? What should I be doing next? You really can make good ongoing progress towards your goal of leaving with, let's say, two hours a week.

The other thing is that, like, if you're really burnt out, we talk a lot in the podcast about bridge jobs. I talk a lot with my clients about bridge jobs. There are multiple kinds of bridge jobs. There are ones that get you out of a bad situation. There are also ones that position you for a pivot. And if you're someone, who's extremely burnt out, because the environment you're working in is causing that burnout, it can be very helpful to people to take a bridge job that's just not that job, even if it's very similar to that job. Because when you're really burnt out, sometimes just having a change of environment can provide you with some relief, even if it's not ultimately the thing. I think back, this was a very early episode of the podcast, lo these seven years ago. And I remember one of the guests talking about how they left their law firm job for an in-house job. And it took them about 18 months to realize, oh, I don't actually like this much more than what I was doing before, but just the fact that it was different was, like, such a relief and provided, you know, 18 months of, like, relief, before they started thinking about the next thing. And if you're someone who's really burnt out, relief can be a huge benefit.

And so, one, I think it's important if you're thinking about leaving to know that it doesn't take as many hours or as much time like condensed together as a lot of people tend to think, that you can still do it even when you are working. You also can potentially try to get some relief, if you are burnt out by making a move to a bridge job that's just like similar to what you're doing, but not actually what you're doing. And here's the other thing, mental health leave exists for a reason and so many of the people who I work with or who are in the collab, have taken mental health leave. And I think that it's hard to do, because among other things, depending on the environment you're in, it's very stigmatized. And of course, there also are, like if you're in a much smaller firm, where there's like not really HR, or it's like The HR situation is questionable. Some of this stuff can be very difficult. So I'm not suggesting like this is accessible to everyone. But if you are working somewhere that has mental health leave and you are burnt out, that is a very good reason to take a mental health leave.

Which takes me back around to what I said before, I started talking about these couple of things, which is please, please, please get a therapist, because if you want to take mental health leave, then you need to have documentation from your therapist. You can get documentation from your PCP as well. And I actually did a podcast episode with Megan Nogasky, who is someone who I went to law school with, who was a lawyer and now is a therapist. And one of the things, well, we had a whole episode where we talked about taking mental health leave, what that looks like and some of the things that you might think through, if that's something that you're considering. I have had a lot of clients, who have taken mental health leave, because mental health is a real thing. And if you're burnt out, then like you are a prime candidate for mental health leave, which can give you the space that you need to recover, or at least rest, think about what's next and all of those things.

So to recap, If you're thinking about leaving the law and you're already burnt out, one, therapy, please. Two, it doesn't require as much time as you might think. So if you are in a position where you're just kind of like limping along, you can start the process without it requiring an extreme amount of time commitment on your part, especially if you are in something like the collab, where you know what you're supposed to be doing and where you're supposed to go next and et cetera, et cetera. You also definitely can think about a bridge job that's just kind of like a change of scenery for some relief. And you definitely should consider a mental health leave, if that's something that your employer offers, because that's literally why it's there. And I have seen it be incredibly helpful for so many people. I try to talk about it as much as I can, because I do think it is such an important mental health tool. And I know there's a lot of stigma about it, but it really can be a game changer. And also just know that if you're burnt out and everything feels hard, it's not because you're doing something wrong. It's because you're burnt out. And burn out is a real condition. I've talked about it on the podcast before. I have had several different people talk about it, including Ilona Sammons. If you haven't listened to my episodes with her talking about lawyers and burnout, I definitely recommend them, because she provides a lot of education about what it is like and what it looks like and what causes it and what things don't fix it.

But also know that I am sending all of the good vibes out into the universe for all of my listeners who are in this position, where they're working as a lawyer and they don't want to be and they're burnt out. My goal, of course, is always to provide you with as much as I can, to help you figure out what it is that is right for you and to move beyond lawyering, if that is the thing that's right for you. Oh, if you're interested in joining the collab, of course, you can always go to formerlawyer.com/collab. But otherwise, thank you so much for joining me, and I will 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.