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. Hi, Alex. Welcome back to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Alex Su: Hey Sarah, I'm so glad to be back. Thanks for having me.

Sarah Cottrell: I am really excited. So for people who've been listening to the podcast all these many years, Alex was on once before a couple of years ago, we'll link that episode in the show notes, talking about moving from practicing law to not practicing law. And Alex now has a substack, where he writes about various things that he has learned or is learning in his non-practicing roles. And maybe like last month at the time that we're recording, he published a post and I read it and basically immediately sent him a message and said, like, hey, do you want to come on the podcast and talk about this? Because the things that he was talking about in that post are things that come up a lot with my clients who are thinking about leaving and are also, I think, things that I think about, in terms of advising clients who are thinking about moving into other roles, in particular roles that are more like sales and marketing focused. All that to say, Alex, let's start with you, introducing yourself to the listeners and just telling them a little bit about who you are and what you do and then we'll talk about what you had to share that I think people need to hear.

Alex Su: Yeah, for sure. I am a former practicing lawyer who's now the chief revenue officer at Latitude Legal. We are a company that provides contract attorneys to law firms and legal departments. And even though I'm still in the legal space, I no longer practice as part of my job. I lead the business function, here, at Latitude. And I think even the last time I was on the show, Sarah, I was relatively early into my transition out of the practice of law. Back then I had a business development role, like a sales role that was essentially pure sales and in tech. And in the year since I've moved to different companies and found myself at Latitude, which is an alternative legal services provider. So the upshot is that basically I've spent the better part of a decade just immersing myself in a business career rather than legal. And so I was just kind of reflecting on our last conversation. I was looking at the page that you put up for my last episode appearance. I was talking a lot about the shift, from big law clerkships to, to legal tech. So yeah, it's really fun to be here, to catch up with you again. I was really excited when you sent me a message, because I think I had written an article about the skills that law didn't teach you. So really happy to be here and share some of my thoughts on the topic.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, you know, it's interesting, because as lawyers, right, there are many skills that you do have, right? And for many lawyers who are thinking about leaving, they often undervalue the skills that they've developed as a lawyer. That said, there are various skills that are very helpful, especially if you're someone who's wanting to move in the direction of more business sales, one of these types of things. And I find that, like, there are certain ways that you're trained to think as a lawyer that shifting out of those ways of thinking, can really help you to succeed in these other types of roles. So, Alex, where do you want to start, in terms of, do you want to sort of like frame up what you were saying and tell people a little bit about sort of like the high-level points?

Alex Su: Yeah, absolutely. So I think many of us relate. When we first started out in law, graduating from law school, we probably worked at a law firm. And the way that it works when you're a junior is that you kind of work really hard and make sure you cover all details and just do everything perfectly. And I think that's a really good fit for some people and probably why they naturally hang around in the law and start doing well over time. But in business, it's just a really different skill set that's rewarded. So in business, it's a lot of times really outcome dependent. How many hours you worked, or how many hours you build doesn't really matter. And I think that the fundamental difference between law and business is that in law, I mean, yes, you have to deliver solid advice. You have to make sure that you research every issue thoroughly. And thoroughness has its virtues, right? But essentially, you're taught almost implicitly that the harder you work, the more you give time you put in, the better everything will be. Whereas in business, you often don't have that luxury. You have to do things that just work. That does require a lot more experimentation, trial and error, adaptability, and a whole host of other things that you probably are not focused on so much, while you're practicing. That was kind of the point of my post, because at Latitude, we have many people, who left the practice of law to take on business roles and there's a lot of common themes among them as well. There is an adjustment where people who have practiced for a while have always thought, if I put in 100 hours a week or something like that, then I'm doing a good job. Well, in business, it's not really about how hard you work. It's really about what revenue you generated, what metrics you've produced, what impact you've had on the business. And so that's kind of a big transition and difference from the traditional practice of law.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, you know and I know I said this to you off mic, but I think one of the things that can be a little bit surprising to people, especially if one of the reasons that they're wanting to leave law is because they don't like the billable hour model, which that is true for many of us, right? Like, you know, I know for me personally, one of the reasons that law was not for me was that the billable hour model does not reward efficiency. So if working efficiently is something that you're good at, then that's not a great model to be working under. But I think the flip side is that even if you're someone who's like, I don't like the billable hour model, I don't want to do that anymore, that creates various kinds of stress. There is a way in which I think those of us who have become lawyers have been… like there is a comfort in knowing, well, if I just work really hard, or like work a lot of hours then I'm like doing something quote-unquote right. And switching from that mindset to like, is there an ROI here? And sometimes I have to do things without knowing what the ROI is yet, because I have to experiment and figure out what has the best ROI. It's just a very different way of thinking. And I think there's a degree to which it feels like the outcomes are less in your control, which can be difficult for people who have been trained as lawyers.

Alex Su: I think that's totally right. And the implication is that when you shift from that kind of value system, the I'll put however many hours in to make sure that the job is done. When you shift from that mindset to, I just need to get this outcome or deliver this result, then your day-to-day looks very different. So for example, you are not in business rewarded for putting in an insane number of hours. What you are rewarded for is producing a result that maybe came from trying 10 different things, but only one of them worked out. Which means 9 out of 10 times, you're spending maybe 90% of your time on something that's failing, that doesn't feel good. But if that one out of 10 things works really well, then you've kind of delivered your result. You can think of examples like this in terms of outreach, like in biz dev, you want to be reaching out to as many people as possible. You don't want to be spending all of your time with one person. You know, maybe you could spend a countless number of hours with that one single person. But if you try talking to 10 different people, maybe nine out of 10 of them are not interested in your offering, but the 10th one, is. And so it requires a lot of resilience. It requires adaptability. It requires a level of, I guess, what I always call cleverness to achieve the result. And I think the takeaway is that when you shift to these types of business roles, these performance-based roles, which I can talk more about as well, you… it's just rewarding a different set of strengths. And so you have to be accountable whether you're in law or in business, but it's just, you're accountable for different things. So that's why I always say, like, if you're practicing and you know, you want to still do something and have an impact. It's not that shifting the business means that none of this stuff matters anymore. It just means that it's different things that matter. And that could be a really good fit for you, especially if you, if you don't feel like you just naturally fit into the practice of law.

Sarah Cottrell: So I'm thinking, for example, of someone who I had on the podcast who was in a chief marketing role and one of the things that they were talking about is, like, just fundamentally you have to have a very different perspective on failure. And even the idea that, like, everything you do is, like, either you succeed or fail. Because the reality is that when the results are dependent upon experimentation and a variety of experimentation, yes, individual experiments may have results that aren't desirable, but ultimately it's doing those different experiments that get you to the point where you do get results. And it's just, I think it's a way of thinking about productivity that is very different from the perfectionist sort of mindset that you can get sort of pushed into by the nature of what legal practice is like. Can you say a bit more about like roles, where the metrics are performance and what that can look like and how maybe some of the things that lawyers run into, that you've seen, that can make it challenging?

Alex Su: I think you hit on it when you said, I don't know if you said perfectionism or, but we'll call like having a very high bar for quality. I think that that's important in many places, but when it comes to performance-based roles, you're trying to optimize for your outcomes, which means often that you do have to know how to prioritize your work. Maybe sometimes it's better to reach out to someone, again, I'm using a business development example, but there were a lot of other examples as well. Like reaching out to someone after you've only researched them for 15 minutes versus 15 hours. There is a cost to getting it to 15 hours, you're just going to be reaching out to fewer people. So your bar for how much, how thoroughly researched you are, has to come down, if you want to be successful. So I think that that, you know, perfectionism mindset can actually be counterproductive in a performance-based role, because you end up spinning your wheels on activities that are ultimately not super valuable. In the practice of law, I think as you become more senior, many of these jobs within law are probably more like performance-based roles. So that's why you have, you know, some rainmakers at law firms, they're probably dividing up their energy. And that's why they're probably spending a lot of time with clients and not so much perfecting, I don't know the grammar and the capitalizations in their emails. Have you ever seen that? You know, a lot of rainmakers, they like, they have like typos in their internal emails. Right. Which I have always thought was very funny, given how important precision is kind of hammered in your head, as a junior associate. But you know, that's kind of a reflection that when you get to a certain level, you do have to prioritize and maybe making sure your internal emails are perfectly formatted is not at the top of the priority list. I mean, that's a silly example, but it's like in business, you're constantly facing these trade-offs. How perfect do I need to get this thing before I get moving on it? And I as somebody who at Latitude like in my current role, we have so many partners or, you know, people who have shifted from the practice of law, who join us for a business role who adjust… we need to adjust to that you know, they want to make sure every single T is crossed and every eyes dotted but what ends up being more of a driver for success is how action oriented are you? How resilient are you? How are you able to deal with new information and incorporate it to kind of achieve a specific result? So not only am I kind of talking about it with regard to my own career and my experiences, but it's a big part of my day job as well.

Sarah Cottrell: Your point about perfectionism and the ways in which these other roles that are not practicing roles, can sometimes be a really, really good fit for someone, who doesn't feel like lawyering is a great fit. You know, there are some of us who became lawyers who are like, yes, let me like research all day every day. I love it. That's great, like that makes me happy. The billable hour makes me sad, but these other things I enjoy. But then there are other people, a lot of people that I work with, who would say, I'm not someone who wants to run to ground 15 hours of research on this person before I talk to them. That's just not the way everyone is wired. And I think if you're someone who's not wired that way and you become a lawyer, you often and I think you and I talked about this the last time you were on the podcast, but you often are made to feel like there's something wrong with you. It's not a good quality, but the reality is, it's just not a quality that is a great fit for the formal practice of law. And it can be a really great fit for these roles, where you do need to be more, like, adaptable. And I'm thinking especially, like, I work with a ton of people who have ADHD, who are undiagnosed and then got diagnosed, like, either as an adult or after they started listening to the podcast, or after we started working together. And one of the strengths of a lot of people who have ADHD, one of the strengths of their neurotype is sort of being able to like bounce from thing to thing to thing. And yet in law, they're often told, like, you need to be more focused. Like, basically, here's the list of like all the things that are wrong with you that in fact work really well in other types of roles.

Alex Su: Yeah, totally. And I've kind of written about this before also, in my newsletter. I call it game selection, because I do think when we're younger, or earlier in our careers, we think, hey, if I could only just change this thing about myself, I'd be better at work. You know, self-improvement is a real thing and useful, right? But a lot of success and failure over time, especially when you enter mid-career and maybe later in your career is, did I choose the right role, given my personality, my mix of strengths and weaknesses? And I didn't really fully appreciate this, when I was practicing and I probably didn't fully appreciate it when I was on this podcast last. But essentially, I think everything is all about game selection now. It's like, okay, there's a lot of people who can be successful at a lot of different things. But what about me? Am I doing the thing that is perfectly designed for my strengths and weaknesses? So, I think that question probably isn't asked enough by many, many people. I would include beyond lawyers. It's always about improving yourself, but I think, if you are thoughtful about, you know, what you bring to the table, that's the first step in figuring out, hey, where do I actually, where should I actually be?

Sarah Cottrell: I agree 1000% and not just because my entire method of working with people is doing basically what you're describing. Which is like, who are you? What are your values? What are your strengths? What is your personality? What do you like and dislike? And by the way, that's not just like, what do you get praise for, that's like, what do you actually enjoy? And then what does that mean about what you should do? Because for so many lawyers, you know, they start out thinking that there's like nothing else they can do. And eventually they realize, in fact, there are lots of things that they can do, but what they do needs to be matched to who they are and not who they think they should be. And I think that I have seen people who move into roles like the kinds of roles you're talking about, like business development and that sort of thing. Like the reason people are successful in those roles, one, when they work on building the skills that they need, but also when they identify that, hey, this role actually plays to my strengths. Unlike this other thing that I'm doing, where the things that are my strengths I'm actually being told are weaknesses. I think especially lawyers, we sometimes have this like, but I'm going to fix myself in this way that is just not ultimately like, like you just, you don't have to do that. Like, you can just find something that's a better fit.

Alex Su: Yeah. And I would even argue that if you find the thing, that's a better fit in the long run, you're better off in so many ways. Like, you know, as again, part of my role, I work with people who pivot out of law. And I remember having these conversations and they would say, well, it sounds like I'd be taking a step back on income. It sounds like I'd be earning a lot less for like this alternative career. That seems true at the beginning, because when you make a pivot, you always take a bit of a step back. But if you're on the right, if you're playing the right game, like to the point of me saying game selection, if you're playing the right game, you will grow very fast and probably do far better than you would if you had stayed at the other more traditional path. Because in that path, you probably end up getting burned out. You probably hate it. But in the new path, you'd find new strengths and new capabilities that you have that you probably didn't even know you had. So that's been the story of my own career. I've seen this play out with so many lawyers who have left the practice. And I think it's a highly underrated part, because the rewards don't always show up the first few years. It usually takes, you know, many years for this to come out. But if you look at some of the lawyers who have been able to find success outside of law, you know, it often takes very many years for that to completely show up.

Sarah Cottrell: I agree completely. In fact, I am planning to record a podcast episode about non-legal salaries and this idea that I think lawyers have, which is like, well, if I do go to this other thing, it's a pay cut. And then like, woe is me, the end is nigh, et cetera. And the reality is that like, when you move to something that you are better matched for, like you are not, it's not like, oh, you don't have to work hard or like, you know, I'm like, yes, let's be realistic. But it's, I think that there is this, especially when you're coming from like a law firm setting, where it's just like, well, it's lockstep and you only do this at this time and this at this time. The reality is that there's like so much more flexibility, when you are moving into a role or an industry that like is a better fit for you in a way that I think is very hard to imagine if all you've ever done is lawyering.

Alex Su: There are so many roles out there and at a certain point, everything is specialized. And in fact, from where I sit, I found that if you have these, what I call unicorn jobs, whether they're for lawyers in alternative careers or anybody else, it really comes down to a unique role that's designed for a specific person. I'm very lucky to have one of them right now, because my job I do feel is designed around my personality. I bring a unique set of strengths to the table. And my CEO recognized that and he created a role for me. And I'm so thankful for that. But that wouldn't have been possible, you know, if I made my first pivot, because I needed to learn a little bit about business, working at startups at scaling companies, learning a little bit of sales, marketing and business development skills. But over time these skills compound to the point, where if it's a really good fit as it was for me, it'll be recognized and somebody may come out and start creating a role for you as well. So I think going off the beaten path is totally all about the long run. It's not just about what you're, you know, your salary is for the first year or even the second year. It's really about constructing a different path for yourself, where you can be your best self. And maybe at some point a role could be created for you. That's designed perfectly for you too.

Sarah Cottrell: Can you talk a little bit, Alex, about, I know you said that at your company you have lawyers who are coming out of practice. I think you said like often it's their first non-practicing job. Can you talk a little bit about sort of like what that looks like and the questions that people have, or like the things that they need to grapple with in, order to go into a role like that?

Alex Su: Absolutely. And I think maybe I'll start by sharing some context about how we're structured, here, at Latitude. We have a bunch of businesses within a business. And so, you know, a normal company has probably like a sales department, a marketing department, whatever department, lots of different groups. But we are a collection of businesses within a single overarching business. We have operating companies that are run by what we call Latitude partners. And these are people who have left the practice of law and have decided that they want to do something more entrepreneurial, do something more with business. And so they're in charge of growing their book of business within their own venture from scratch. So there's a sales component, a business development component, they start bringing in revenue over time. And as time moves on, they shift to becoming a general manager of their own operating company. And so they own a P&L, they are in charge of decisions around hiring, they delegate to their employees. And so we have 15 of those at our company. And so we're constantly looking for new partners to join. And what we search for are basically people who have held senior decision-making roles at law firms or legal departments. So think GCs, CLOs, former senior deputy GCs, or law firm partners. And I think that having been part of this company for a few years and as part of my job, I'm always there to make sure everyone is successful at generating revenue and building up that business. I've seen a lot of patterns, because we hire directly out of the practice of law. We look for people who have practiced law and very often they have never held a business role before, or a pure business role, before. They often have not held a performance-based role. And so there is a bit of a culture shift, a culture adaptation that needs to take place, because they got to move away from kind of doing work that comes to them, billing hours and things like that, to creatively coming up with ways to do outreach, to generate new clients, to keep their clients happy and to hire employees and delegate work to them. So it's a very different job. And the big takeaway that prompted me to write that article and, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about is, well, what are the things that are different between practicing… making you successful at the practice of law versus making you successful in the business world? And I think it comes down to resilience, to flexibility and adaptability. I think that in business, you also have to be able to prioritize ruthlessly. So it's a completely different set of skills, a different set of skills that help you become successful.

Sarah Cottrell: As a lawyer, especially if you're working in a practice, where there's a high volume of work, there is often just this, like, well, you just, like, whatever's in front of you, you do what's in front of you. And I am in a very different role now, right, with Former Lawyer. I mean, yes, I do the podcasting, but also, like, part of my work is, like, the standard, like, entrepreneurial, like, sales and marketing and I tell people like by far the things that were the most difficult for me to adapt to, was the reality that like, for example, you can just do what's in front of you, but really you need to like choose like okay what are the things I want to spend my time on, what are the things that are going to be the most like effective, in terms of achieving the goals that I have. And I think you said something about being able to prioritize. I think you said ruthlessly prioritize, can you talk a little bit more about that?

Alex Su: Yeah. I think there is a tendency to, especially when you're a junior lawyer, you're kind of given this task list, this task list that's like impossible to finish. So you kind of pound through them, right? You go through your list, you check off all the items and that list is unending and you get basically credit for all hours that you work or bill. So you don't have to make any trade-offs, really. I mean, maybe you do have to do some trade-offs, but when it comes to the business world, it's the same thing. You do have an unending list of things to do, but there, you're the person responsible for making the trade-offs. And if you don't get it right, you're not going to produce business results. You're not going to generate revenue or profitability, or whatever metric that you're measured on. And so that's why to be successful in business, you have to ruthlessly prioritize to make sure you focus all of your time, or most of your time and energy on the things that move the needle the most. And then conversely, for things that don't move the needle so much, you spend less time on it. That is the only way to succeed, because if you spend equal amounts of time on everything, you're basically going to run out of time. This is also why I think being able to ruthlessly prioritize opens up a lot of different opportunities, because then you can hire and delegate well. Because if you treat all items on a task list the same, then you won't know what you can hire an employee for and delegate to them, versus doing it yourself. And so there's a lot of really big benefits in business to be able to ruthlessly prioritize. And it's not easy. It's a skill that you learn over time. You have to understand what objectives matter and those objectives can always shift from time to time. But at the end of the day, you are in charge of choosing the order in which the items in your to-do list get done. And you have to make the right decision. You can't just treat everything equally. So that's why I think ruthless prioritization matters so much.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay, I want to talk about the term resilience, because I think when you use that term you're using it sort of with a very specific meaning, because the reality is that we know, right, that like lawyers in general, in certain ways, are quite resilient, right. Because we often have people working in, let's say, less than friendly environments and just grinding. But the resilience that you're talking about, I suspect, is a little bit more like a type of resilience that people don't necessarily get a lot of opportunity to exercise in legal practice, because of what we talked about before with the perfectionism that tends to be endemic in the profession. Can you talk about, when you say resilience, what do you mean and what do you see, in terms of the type of resilience that helps people succeed?

Alex Su: It's the ability to bounce back from setbacks and to almost view setbacks as not problems, but opportunities. So, you know, when you're, when you're dealing with sales BD or business, there is no guaranteed playbook, no, no playbook that guarantees results. So you're often needing to try a lot of things. And a lot of those things won't work to many lawyers who are first in this environment, they think, well, if it's not working, if there's a setback, then I probably need to fix it. But the truth is you kind of want to not always fix everything. You want to basically be able to move on to the next thing because you have to try so many things and just move so quickly that you have to not let the setback or problem stall you from engaging in action. So I'll give you a couple of examples. If you're trying to develop a new marketing channel, you might try LinkedIn, you might try posting something there, you might try going to a bar association event, you might try to paid ad, you might try a whole bunch of different things. And if each one doesn't work, but only one of them does, let's say you're posting on LinkedIn is the only thing that works. You have to be okay with letting go of the fact that maybe you said the wrong thing at the bar association event, or maybe that you invested into the wrong paid ad. You have to be able to kind of get past those setbacks and then double down on the thing that does work like LinkedIn. Again, I'm using a very oversimplified example, but there's a lot of examples of that in other contexts too. Like, you know, in business, you're always dealing with some unexpected thing that happens. And that could be stressful, because you didn't plan for it. You might have an unexpected problem arise. Maybe somebody quits, right, like a key employee that you're dependent on. But you always want to think of those things as an opportunity, because it doesn't really matter what's happened in the past, you just kind of got to keep moving and kind of keep adapting to it. So the resilience I'm talking about is being able to go from setback to setback, incorporate the information you learned and then do better moving forward. That is a continuous process. And it means that you can't dwell on what went wrong. And you just have to learn from your mistakes and then quickly engage in action. So hopefully that provides a little bit of the nuance with what I mean by resilience.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think one of the things, too, for people who are listening, who are still practicing law, I know I talk about this in the podcast a lot, but there is this kind of, like, moralizing around failure in the legal profession, in a way that does not exist in the same way, in other professions and roles, especially business development, sales, marketing. Like, as we're talking I'm imagining like some people might be listening and be like, oh my gosh, I need to like be okay with failure, but like what I'm trying to convey is. I want people to understand that like it is not perceived the same way as you perceive it in your role as a lawyer, because there is, can be this sense of like if you made a mistake, there's something wrong with you, like you're a bad person. And by mistake, I just mean something that didn't have the exact result you were wanting. But the reality is that when we're talking about experimentation, when we're talking about, well, let's try this thing and see if it works, it's a completely different paradigm. And I think recognizing when you're not in the paradigm that you were in practice is also really helpful, because then it makes it easier to not have this, oh, I did this thing and it, like you said, like, oh, I went to this bar event and it didn't seem to have much of a result. You know, okay, whatever, move on, as opposed to like and therefore I'm a terrible person who should like, you know, mentally suffer for my sins.

Alex Su: Right, yeah. And it goes back to what you were saying about this, like self-improvement mindset, or the value that somehow if something doesn't work, it must be something that I've done wrong and I should fix. That's not always the case. It's like, well, it just means that your, the ROI and your time on that particular activity is not as good as the ROI on another activity. And so you just got to shift your energy over to what's working. And that goes back to what I was saying about game selection. Like you have to pick the right games to play, because you don't really get credit for playing a really hard game. You just got to find the place that makes the most sense for you. And that's why you have to keep trying until you find it. And that just involves setbacks and maybe choosing the wrong things and learning from those experiences.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. And if you're listening to this and you're like, that sounds horrible. How would I even get there? Might I suggest what I always suggest on this podcast, which is you should consider therapy, because there are lots of reasons for all of us that we don't like failure, or that it feels really bad. And not that I'm saying anyone's like, oh, failure, it's so fun. But if it feels paralyzing, if the prospect of having to do experimentation and maybe have some things that aren't successful feels paralyzing, then that is a great sign that you should be talking to a therapist. In my opinion, anyway. Alex, what else do you think people need to know about either things that you've observed in people shifting to these roles, or just overall, like, things that people that you've seen that are sort of like distinct as between someone who's lawyering and like the skills that you need for something that is more business focused.

Alex Su: I think that you have to have a hunch about yourself. And I mentioned earlier, we've hired a lot of Latitude partners over the years. And I would say that every single person, who's taken the leap from practicing and by the way, for this role, we really only hire people who have held fairly senior positions when they were practicing. So this is not something that you do a few years out of law school and almost to a person, they all say, well, I always had a hunch that I wanted to do something different or more or something business related, something that wasn't just practicing law. And what Latitude's done is that we've provided this opportunity for you to do that, to try something within guardrails that is kind of entrepreneurial, but also a little bit safer and designed for the former practicing lawyer. I think everyone's had their own unique story, so I can't generalize completely, but I would say that the people who do best, are the ones who know themselves the best and understand what it takes to succeed in that environment. So what I mean by that is, when you're trying out a new thing, you got to keep an open mind, you have to be a constant student. You can't expect that, oh, just because I've practiced law successfully for 10 or 20 years that the next thing I'm automatically going to succeed at. You have to take this craftsman approach where you're like, okay, I'm learning a new thing. Let me try to absorb and learn as much as I can and try to get better every day, knowing that it's different from what I used to do. So that sort of student mindset, that accountability that you kind of put on yourself to learn and get better every day, that tends to be a very strong predictor of success post pivot. And again, I've seen people who have worked out in that pivot, seen people who have not. And there's no, it's not, I would not consider it a failure, even if it doesn't work out, because we're all trying to figure out where we fit in. So I think that everyone's trying to figure out if the pivot is going to be right for them. And it just means that you have to take a student mindset to everything, almost as if you're just starting out over, in a new profession. So the good news is that most lawyers who try to make that jump tend to be successful at it. And so I think I'd say, even though you do have to learn a lot, adapt a lot and just kind of endure the ups and downs of a performance-based role, I would say that, for the most part, the lawyers who have decided to make that leap, have done well. So it's been pretty cool to see.

Sarah Cottrell: You know, it's interesting, because you said, like, you have to have, like, a hunch about yourself and that made me think about intuitive intelligence or, like, instinctual intelligence, because the personality assessment that I use with my clients talks about the fact that there are three kinds of intelligence. There's head intelligence, which, of course, is basically the only intelligence that we're, like, told matters, when we're lawyers. But then there's also emotional intelligence and then there's instinctual intelligence, which is kind of this, like, gut or intuition. And I think for so many lawyers, that ability to even connect to like, what is my intuition? Like, what does my intuition tell me? What is my instinct? Can I trust myself enough to actually follow my instinct, requires some like, like reconnecting, because of the fact that there is such a heavy emphasis in law specifically placed on head intelligence. But I was thinking as you were talking that like for people moving into roles that are like business development, sales, et cetera, you know, emotional intelligence and this instinct that are two other extremes. I think it is hard for lawyers to accept that all the types of intelligence are of equal value, if that makes sense. I think we are conditioned to think that head intelligence must be better than the other two. And I think the reality is that the more you can lean into all three, the better. And like you were describing people who are moving into these roles, who it sounds like are leaning a lot into their instinct, thus having this hunch about themselves. So this is just my PSA for everyone listening that you have more than one kind of intelligence and all of the types of intelligence that you have, matter.

Alex Su: That's totally true, especially when you're in a commercial context. You can call it sales, but you can call it any kind of negotiation. Sometimes the head intelligence can get in the way. Your job is to essentially anticipate what the other person's feeling that they are not saying out loud. That is such a critical ingredient to being successful in negotiations and in sales. And yet, time and time again, we see, I've seen this, the people with the highest LSAT scores are not the ones who are best at that. Conversely, the people who have relatively more normal resumes can be exceptional at that. And so it all comes down to, well, if that's you, you got to figure out where you fit in and where your skills can be most beneficial. So I totally… I am totally with you. And over time, I think I felt this way early on, probably the last time I was on the show, but definitely now that I've seen a lot of lawyers and business people who have been successful, it really is more than just head intelligence. It's so many other things too.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I agree. Okay, Alex, are there other things that you would like to share with the listeners, before we end this call today?

Alex Su: No, I think that for those who are thinking about making the transition, I think totally you got to think about, take stock of yourself, figure out where you can be successful and confidently move in that direction. And if you're somebody who's a, you know, relatively senior in your practicing, if you've practiced law for a while, if you're in a senior role, like I would encourage you to check out Latitude, because we're always hiring for people with that background, who might want to make a pivot to sales, BD or business. Our role offers essentially a quasi-entrepreneurial experience and we're always hiring. So I could share in the notes, Sarah, a link to the job post. But the last time I joined this show, I was talking about my own career having pivoted from law to something different. And now I'm excited to have the opportunity to hire people like that, to look specifically for people like that. Yeah, stay tuned for the notes and reach out to me, if anyone has any questions about making that pivot, or about Latitude or anything else. I would love to hear from lawyers who are thinking about making a move.

Sarah Cottrell: Great. Yeah. And for people who are listening, there will be a link in the show notes and on the blog. And Alex, if people want to reach out to you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Alex Su: Find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there, so you can look me up. And yeah, just drop me a message.

Sarah Cottrell: Amazing. Okay. Well, I really appreciate you joining me on the podcast today. I think this will be super helpful for lots of people, who are thinking about maybe making some sort of pivot in the business development, sales, et cetera, direction, or, you know, just thinking about not practicing the law anymore. So thank you and I hope you have a great day.

Alex Su: Thanks, Sarah. Great to be here. I appreciate you making the time for me as well.

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.