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 something that comes up for a lot of my clients when they're thinking about leaving. Usually a law firm, not always, but most frequently this is in the law firm setting. And to start, I'm going to talk about my own experience. So when I was working at the law firm, I was doing well and I was extremely unhappy. It was terrible for my nervous system I recognize now. The hypervigilance that was required was just not at all good. Well, it's not really good for anyone's nervous system, but it was definitely not good for mine. But one of the things that I was super aware of was that women are underrepresented in the higher echelons of big law, right? And so as a woman, one of the things that I felt like that weighed really heavily on me was this sense of like having a responsibility to do my part to advance, not just for me, but in order to be able to help other women who would come behind me. And also to add more evidence to the like, I don’t know, brief… showing that achieving in these environments was something that women were capable of.

So I'm at the firm and I'm miserable, like crying on the way to work. Like every time I get an email, I'm like practically having a panic attack, although I didn't know at the time that I had panic disorder. But anyway, that's a story for another day. But one of the big things for me that loomed really large was, but if I leave when I'm doing well, like I'm letting other women down. And the reason I'm telling this story is that this comes up for many of my clients in many different scenarios. So, like, my clients who are first-gen, my clients who are people of color, my clients who are women, my clients who are a historically underrepresented minority of basically any type, which when we're talking about big law is the whole gamut, essentially, right? There is this sense of like, my existence in this space is not just about me. My existence in this space is also about other people like me, who share this trait that has been historically marginalized. And it's something that contributes to people feeling like they need to keep going in these environments, even if they're extremely toxic, because there is this sense of like communal responsibility. There is this sense of like, my achievement in this arena is not just about me.

So I told the story about my own experience, because I want you to know that I really understand. I really understand some of what it is to feel that. I mean, obviously, there are many different identities. I don't share all of them. But the overall dynamic of feeling like one of the reasons I shouldn't leave is basically for what it will do for other people. I really feel that. And like I said, it comes up with my clients a lot. And I think one of the things that is very difficult about this dynamic is it results in people having to get to a very bad place, in order to be able to prioritize themselves. If you are a highly responsible person and you also have this sense of needing to be a representative, it tends to mean that you have to get to a place where you are, basically where you feel like you cannot continue in that vein, before you're willing to look at the harm that it's doing to you and consider that harm to be important. A lot of what will happen is I'm working with clients who, for a long time, their experience in the law firm was extremely detrimental to their mental, physical, emotional health, their relational health, all sorts of things. But they discount all of that and focus on just the reasons that they feel like they should stay and in particular, some of these responsibilities that they feel. Because it's very hard for those of us who are highly responsible to actually value our own pain, our own suffering.

So I just wanted to talk about this separately today from some of the other episodes where I've talked about this idea of feeling highly responsible in general, because this is a very specific dynamic that I see often and it's very strong and I really, I know that it's so hard, because it's real, right? This isn't like, oh, this is just in your brain, it doesn't matter. These things do matter. But also, in my experience, the lawyers who I work with and just lawyers in general, the thing that they need to be told is you matter. You matter. Your well-being matters and you're not a bad person if you prioritize your own well-being. You're not letting people down. I think we need to think about having a broader perspective on what it is to like show people what's possible. Because if the reality is that you are driving yourself further and further into crushing misery with this idea of like, but I'm doing it to like, in part to, like, represent others well, other people who share my identity. That, as I describe it, it's clear that that is not a recipe for, like, emotional wellness, right? Or mental wellness for you.

And I think that it is important for all of us to learn how to value our own mental and emotional wellness, as much as we think of the mental and emotional wellness of others. You know, I think often we're told, like, everyone's selfish and what you need to do is try to be less selfish. But the reality is that there are a lot of people and a lot of them became lawyers, who then don't like being lawyers, who are highly responsible, who are, in fact, very unselfish to the point where they will do harm to themselves in order to help others. And so if you're someone who's in this position, where you feel a lot of pressure to be representative of people who share your identity, I just want you to know that you matter and you're not letting people down, if you recognize that your mental, emotional, physical health, wellness, relational health, all of that, you're not letting people down. You're recognizing your own humanity. And that is something that we all need to be able to do. And I know that it's difficult, but to the extent that you need a permission slip to take care of you, this is me giving you that permission slip to take care of yourself. 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.