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.

I need to talk to you about something this week because I have had no less than three conversations with three different one-on-one clients in the last week about this exact topic.

I always know if it’s something that I'm talking with multiple one-on-one clients about, it is for sure something that is coming up for pretty much all lawyers who are thinking about leaving the law to do something else.

Here's what I want to tell you. I'm going to tell you the thing that I want to tell you, and then I'm going to explain why I know that the thing is true. Trust me, it is not just that you do not want to work.

So many people who I work with, whether it's been in the Collab, one-on-one, or even friends who were lawyers and ended up doing something else. So many people, so many lawyers who are thinking about leaving, especially if they're working in a toxic environment—like a law firm, but also there are other places as well that are toxic—will say to me, or I'll hear them say on a Collab call, something like, “I'm just worried that I just don't want to work.”

Or they'll say, “I literally just don't want to work. Nothing sounds appealing. This job is terrible. It's destroying my mental health, but also everything else is terrible, too. Nothing seems exciting.”

They legitimately are concerned that they basically just don't ever want to work, will never want to work again. Essentially, it's like, “Well, clearly I just don't want to do this and I have to because of life and bills and being human, et cetera. I should just ignore this sense and just accept that I'm never going to really actually want to work.”

Essentially there's almost this sense of like, “Has my ability to work and not hate working been destroyed by my experience in this environment?” I'm here to tell you that it has not.

Also, I have seen so many people go through exactly what you are going through when it comes to this sense of not wanting to work. The number of people who I've worked with one-on-one or who have come into the Collab and have said some variety of like, ”I just am so burnt out, any kind of work sounds terrible, feels terrible,” it is such a huge percentage.

What I've seen working with those lawyers is that it’s generally a sign of pretty intense burnout, which, as we know, makes a lot of sense because these toxic environments are often basically designed to burn you out.

Also, if you care for yourself and give yourself the time and space to recover, you will not always feel that way. But it is so hard when you are in that burnout to feel like that is not just reality, like unchanging reality that will never be different.

As I said, I literally had a conversation about this topic with three different one-on-one clients in the last week, which is why I decided to talk about it here. The thing that is most astonishing about this or what I think would be astonishing to a lot of people who are not lawyers and don't have the experience of being the type of person that many lawyers are which is this like Type-A overachiever is that so often, the people who are most likely to have this sense of like, “I don't like working. I don't want to work. I'm never going to work again. I'm broken basically,” are also people who are incredibly responsible and have been incredibly hard workers for decades and decades, decades, and decades of their lives.

The problem that being such a hard worker can create for many of us is that to the contrary, it's not that you're a person who doesn't want to work or doesn't want to work hard, you are someone who has worked incredibly hard and over-functioned for some period of time, months, years, decades, who knows? There are so many options.

The reality is that recovery from burnout comes from that level of over-functioning takes time. It is really hard when you are a person who is used to being like, “Okay, how do I achieve the thing for the answer to be ‘Well, it's just going to take time’?” And granted, let's be real, there are also other things you can do.

I am not a therapist, so none of this is mental health advice. However, seeing a therapist when you are experiencing this level of burnout is incredibly helpful. There are several episodes, of course, on the podcast where we've talked about this and similar things, one, the episode with Tiffany Rogers from a couple of months ago, the episode with Ilona Salmons. Those are two episodes that you may want to check out if you're someone who thinks that you are experiencing burnout.

But honestly, if you're listening to this and you're like, “Sarah, I completely relate to this idea of maybe I just don't want to work at all. In fact, I don't think I want to work at all. I can't imagine ever wanting to work again, even though I am currently working because that is what I have to do to pay my bills,” I'm not going to diagnose you, but that is the kind of thing that I hear from people when they are often in pretty profound burnout.

Again, I think the thing that is so challenging about that experience and being in that state is that it feels permanent when you're in it. It feels like, “This is just how I'm always going to feel.”

I have worked with so many people at this point who have had that sense and then have left their toxic workplace and done the work and three months, six months, 12 months, sometimes more than that down the road, depending on the person, depending on all sorts of circumstances, are like, “Oh, I actually feel really differently in a way that I didn't think was possible to feel about work.”

But the common denominator in all of those experiences has been giving themselves time to recover, which is challenging, of course, for us humans here in the world who also need to work to pay bills, et cetera, et cetera.

I am not saying, “The quick and easy solution to cure your burnout is blah, blah, blah.” What I am saying is that if you find yourself thinking, “I feel miserable, and I think I'm just anti-work in general. So I might as well just stay here at this place that's making me miserable because I'm going to hate work no matter where I am,” my experience tells me that that is likely not true.

That, in fact, you are not going to feel that way about work forever if you get the chance to recover from your burnout, which especially when you're dealing with a toxic workplace, generally means no longer being in that toxic workplace so that your nervous system knows that it's safe and can dial back.

If those things happen, then eventually, you don't find yourself feeling the same way about work, feeling the same level of disinterest. I think that is one of the reasons why I love the Collab so much because there are lawyers in the Collab who are at every stage of the journey.

Many people who have had this experience have been like, “I don't know that I'll ever be excited about a job again,” then can ultimately say, “Hey, I've been there and I'm not there anymore.”

Again, this is not to be like a shiny, happy, like, “It's so easy to go from complete burnout to being interested in work again.” It's not easy. It's often simple in the sense that it basically requires moving away from a toxic environment and giving yourself time to recover.

But it's not easy and that's why I think it's so important to get support if you are someone in this type of position. Whether that's something like the Collab, whether that's finding a one-on-one coach, whether that's finding a therapist, I mean let's be real, I think every lawyer should have a therapist, just do that either way.

You are not doomed to always feel like work is the worst and you're just never going to like the idea of working again. I promise. I promise that that is not a state that I see the lawyers that I work with stay in forever.

If you would like support going through the process, of course, as always, the Collab is available to you. I also work with people who are inside Collab one-on-one and with some people I work just one-on-one, they don't join the Collab, it depends a lot on what you're looking for.

This episode is releasing on a Monday and the Friday of this week, I'm kicking off the Fall 2024 Guided Track, which is where I meet with a small group of people who have joined the Collab and then also are part of the Guided Track. We're meeting in a small group on a call weekly for eight weeks to talk through your progress as you go through The Former Lawyer Framework.

I am recording this episode before that week, so I don't know whether there will still be spots available. There are six spots available in the Fall Guided Track this year. But if you want to see information about that and it sounds like something that might be helpful or supportive for you, you can go to formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack and see where things are.

Mostly, I just want you to know it is not just that you don't want to work and that you're going to hate work forever. But in order to recover from that kind of burnout, you do need to give yourself time. Also, consider therapy. It's been great talking with you. 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.