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.

Well, here we are, the first new episode of 2025, and I thought a good place to start this year would be to just give a quick update on the ways that you can work with me, because I know for many of you who've been listening to the podcast, it rolls over to a new year, and you're like, “Oh my goodness, I'm still at this law firm or in this law job and I really don't want to be here. I definitely don't want to be here next year at this time.”

Plus I have simplified things a little bit in terms of the ways that you can work with me. So I want to make sure that everyone is updated on the latest. Let's start with the Former Lawyer Collab. As you know, if you've been listening for any length of time, the Collab is my self-paced group program for lawyers who are like, "I don't want to be doing what I'm doing, but I really don't know what it is that I want to do."

The Collab is designed around a curriculum, which I call The Former Lawyer Framework. The framework grew out of my work with individual lawyers, the interviews I do for the podcast, and the things that I've observed in terms of watching lawyers figure out what it is that they want to do. I've taken all of that and put it into a framework so that you can join the Collab. You can come into the Collab and you can work through the framework in order to move yourself through that process.

One of the biggest challenges that lawyers often have when they start thinking about doing something else and especially when they get really serious about figuring it out is there's often this sense of like, “I literally don't even know where to start like I don't know how to articulate my transferable skills. I don't even really know what I like. I don't know what options are out there so it makes it hard to brainstorm,” and all of that, and lots of other things, of course, are addressed inside the framework.

There are five modules and you go through the modules and they move you through the steps. There are also, as of last summer, the curriculum was updated to include fillable workbooks, so that's just an additional way of applying the material and helping you really make concrete decisions and choices about the direction that you want to go.

The Collab is built around the framework, but there's also a community, it's hosted on Circle, so you can ask questions there, of other lawyers. Then also we have a monthly group call once a month. The time varies because there are people in all sorts of different time zones in the US and Canada and also outside of the US and Canada.

We have a call once a month where anyone who's in the Collab is welcome to come and ask questions or share experiences, ask for health brainstorming, or just vent about the many things that can make it very difficult to be a lawyer who does not want to be a lawyer but is still being a lawyer.

The other thing that we have in the Collab is we have a replay library. I have hosted quite a few panels over the years inside the Collab of former lawyers who have moved on to other types of jobs and we have recordings of those panels available for you to watch or listen to in the Collab. Things like higher ed, HR, DEI, recruiting, legal tech, legal ops, and many others.

If you go to the Collab, the main Collab page where you can enroll, which is you can just go to formerlawyer.com/collab, there is a place where there is more detail about the different panels, recordings, and other workshops that are in there that are related to things like resume or how to update your LinkedIn, which is of course, your LinkedIn profile has become incredibly important for anyone who's looking for another job.

I answer questions in the Collab. I host the group calls each month, but the Collab itself is self-paced, meaning you can join and you can progress as quickly or as slowly as your life and circumstances allow. There's a lot of flexibility which for many people is very helpful, so that's the Former Lawyer Collab.

If that all sounds appealing but also you're like, “I also really feel like I need some one-on-one accountability or I feel like I need to be able to have calls that I know I'm going to show up to and someone is going to say, “Where are things in terms of your progress?” That option is what I call the Collab Plus One-on-one.

Basically, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one and you're interested in the Collab, the Collab Plus one-on-one is the place to go. When you enroll in the Collab Plus One-on-one, you are enrolling the Collab and in addition, you get a series of one-on-one calls with me.

Currently, you get six calls that you use over three months. Basically, we're talking every other week and the structure and cadence of those calls is basically structured around, ideally, hopefully, you being able to move through a significant part of the process in those three months.

If you're someone who feels like you fit the profile of someone who would benefit from the Collab or you fit the profile of someone for whom the framework sounds like a good fit, but you also want that one-on-one component and you'd like to work with me one-on-one, the Collab Plus One-on-one is your option.

In the past, I have run a small group program a couple of times a year called The Guided Track. I currently do not have any plans to run The Guided Track in 2025. What does that mean for you?

It basically means that if you're thinking about the Collab versus the Collab Plus One-on-one, or if you want some number of more frequent live calls, then the Collab Plus One-on-one is going to be your option because in the Collab by itself, we do have a monthly group call, but obviously it's not geared around any particular structure in terms of people who are coming to the call or in all sorts of different parts of the process, and it's only once a month.

If you are looking for more regular calls, or if you are looking for more one-on-one input and a sounding board, then your option in 2025 is going to be the Collab Plus one-on-one. To recap, we are keeping it simple in 2025. There are two options for you if you're interested in working with me.

One is the Collab that is self-paced. You can go to formerlawyer.com/collab and enroll straight off the sales page at any time. The other option is Collab Plus One-on-one and that is where you come into the Collab but you also work one-on-one with me over six sessions in three months.

The information for the one-on-one work with me is at formerlawyer.com/collab-plus. When you go to that page, you'll see all the information about Collab Plus, and at the bottom, there is a button to book a free consult. If you're interested in the self-paced program in the Collab, you can enroll off the sales page at any time as I said.

However, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, that does require a free consult so that we make sure that it's a good fit both for you and for me. I don't ever want anyone spending money to work with me if they don't need to or if it would be better to work with someone else or you're in a different place or the Collab meets your needs and that's basically what we talk about on the consult.

Again, two options in 2025, the Collab or the Collab Plus One-on-one, formerlawyer.com/collab to enroll in the Collab, formerlawyer.com/collab-plus to book your consult if you want to work with me one-on-one. I'm really looking forward to working with some of you in 2025, and I can't wait to help support more people to become former lawyers. 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.