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.

Okay, so today I want to talk about the fact that your law firm is not a meritocracy, or let's caveat, your law firm is probably not a meritocracy. Here's what I mean when I say that.

There tends to be this sense amongst highly responsible, consistent people who are very committed to doing their best and producing high-quality work products and doing a really good job, which is basically the profile of every lawyer that I've ever worked with and is the profile of many, many people who choose to become lawyers.

There is this sense often in a toxic environment, like a law firm where certain things are said about how they make promotion decisions, and how they decide who's doing a good job versus not. There's this illusion often that there are very objective criteria, and that there have always been very objective criteria.

I think it's really important to remember that sort of line is never fully true. It has always been true that the decisions around a promotion or even bonus to the extent that it's not based on objective criteria has always been highly subjective and has never, never been just like, “Hey, this is based on merit.”

There has always been this element of people and senior leadership in law firms promoting, championing, giving work, giving business to junior lawyers who they relate to, who they see as similar to themselves.

Of course, as we know, because of various structural inequities, in our broader society and also in law firms, as we talked about in the podcast before, that is of course going to create dynamics that are, in fact, not primarily based on merit even though it's been presented and still is presented very often as like, “Oh, this is a meritocracy.”

Here's why I think the allusion that a law firm is a meritocracy is so damaging. You have lawyers, again, who are highly responsible and care a lot about doing a good job, are really doing all of the things that they are told they “should do” and yet within these environments, you will often see people either being promoted or even not just promoted but brought into the inner circle not based on whether are they doing the things that that are being said or the things that are wanted.

This can create this situation for a highly responsible, very hardworking, excellent lawyer to feel like they are in fact excellent, they aren't, in fact, the things that they actually are because the environment is such that you're being told, “Well, if this is true about you, then these are the things that will happen.”

When you have these failures within the law firm system, especially the more toxic that it is, when you have these failures where people are not actually being promoted or supported in the same ways, especially for someone who is very highly responsible and always wants to take on any failures as something that comes from them, you end up in a situation as a lawyer where you feel like you're not doing a good enough job.

It honestly is often to the benefit of these toxic environments to have you feel that way because, one, it keeps you working, but two, it masks the reality which is that in fact the decisions that are being made about whether it's promotion, whether it's including who's it being included on what deals and what calls and what whatever, if a highly responsible person is made to feel like those decisions are all being objectively made based on some sort of merit of one lawyer versus another, then it is less likely that that lawyer will see it for what it really is, which is in many cases, just situations of biased favoritism or something that has very little to do with merit.

The problem becomes that highly accomplished lawyers, even lawyers who are promoted through the law firm ranks can end up even in positions of seniority as partners and to feel like they don't really deserve it or they don't deserve it as much as other people or somehow everyone else is better at it than they are.

If a highly responsible person who's a lawyer sees other people within their organization being given more opportunities, often that highly responsible person is much more likely to say, “Oh, I must be doing something wrong because it's a meritocracy,” versus being able to see when there are things that are happening that are in fact not based on merit and are often in many situations very unjust or if not unjust, just to a certain extent, random decisions.

The way that I see this really playing out often with people who I've worked with is that it can really ramp up imposter syndrome. It can really ramp up the sense that I'm not that good at my job or there's nothing else I could ever be good at or people wouldn’t want to hire me for anything else. Not because those things are true, but because the environment that you're in, which is very toxic and is in fact not a meritocracy, has conspired to make you feel that way.

It does many things. That dynamic does many things. But one of the things that it does is it makes people feel like they should just be grateful to be where they are. They certainly shouldn't think about leaving.

It all is based around this illusion that whether it's formal promotion decisions or even just the more informal decisions that are made day to day, the sense that “Oh, this is a meritocracy” can really prevent people, lawyers, especially again, those who are highly responsible and they care a lot about doing a good job and taking a lot of personal responsibility for their own work, it can make it difficult for them to see that, in fact, they are very good lawyers, they are doing very good work.

Even though the system tells them that if that is true, then certain things will result in that system, that is not actually true about the system because it's not actually a meritocracy.

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So I think it's really important to be aware of this dynamic because it is very possible if you're a lawyer working in a law firm like this to be in a position where you feel like you are basically not as good as you are.

You can have the sense of “I'm not that great at this job,” or “I don't deserve as much as some other person,” or “I shouldn't think about leaving because I'm not a desirable candidate,” when in reality, none of those things are true and you're just being made to feel that way because of what your law firm is saying is true about how things work there within that system versus what is actually true.

I think it's really important just to remember that firms generally will hold themselves out as we are meritocracies based on very specific criteria, and that is almost never true. It can be really helpful to identify ways in which you have seen that not be true within your law firm, especially if you're someone who's thinking about wanting to go do something else.

Because the more that you can identify things that might be contributing to this sense of imposter syndrome that you don't deserve to be where you are or that you're not as good of a lawyer as you are or any of these things, the more you're able to see stuff that creates that sense and the more you're able to combat it and actually remind yourself of what is really true about your environment, the more you will be able to see yourself for who you actually are and also be able to think about “Is this actually where I want to be or do I want to be doing something else?”

So yeah, your law firm is not a meritocracy and don't let the way that your firm functions, especially if you know that it's a very toxic system—which let's be real, most of them are—don't let the way that it functions define how you think about yourself as a lawyer, as a worker, as a person, and of course, this is why I'm always going on and on about therapy because it is one thing to say, “Don't let this happen” and it's another thing to actually do it, can be really helpful to be working with a professional to tease out what is reality, what is actually true, and what you actually want, how you want to think about your own self-concept and the influence your work environment may be having on that. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great 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.