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.

Today I want to talk about some things to expect if you are thinking about leaving the law and you are wondering, "What will it be like out there in the world when I'm not doing this thing right now that I'm doing that I really, really don't enjoy?" There are a couple of things that I've observed, and the idea for this episode actually came from a conversation that happened on a group call for the Collab recently. Let's get into it.

Basically, there are a couple of things that I see that are very commonly true for many of the people who I work with, for lots of my clients. There are three things that I typically see people experience in that first year after they leave. The first one is that they are more burnt out than they realize. A lot of people who are lawyers who are thinking about doing something else have some sense that they're burnt out, right?

There is some sense of, "My nervous system is not operating optimally, and my mental/emotional/physical health is being affected at least to some extent by this job, by the burnout that is caused by this job." But the thing that I think often surprises people is you can be aware of it, but when the environment that is causing that—when you remove yourself from that environment—very often people are like, "Oh, first of all, I did not realize how pervasive it was, how visceral it was." Also, there is a sense of, "Wow, I didn't realize how extensive it was."

For many people, it takes them more time than they anticipate to recover from the burnout. There is sometimes a sense of, "Well, if I leave this job and don't work for a couple of weeks or something, a month, maybe a few months, I'll be fixed." It's very common that for most people, it takes longer than that to fully emerge from burnout. That's complicated, right? Because if you listen to the podcast, I am not someone who's just like, "Just quit your job today, who cares about the practicalities?"

Here in the real world, we all have jobs because we need to make money to be able to pay our bills. Many of us have dependents. Even if you don't have dependents, you have all sorts of things that you require money for. Most people are not in the position to just 100% focus on burnout recovery, although sometimes people are, and that is incredible if they are. But the thing about it is that if you're aware that you're burnt out and that this is a reality for you, then you can approach your transition in a way that accounts for that, that lets you set yourself up as much as possible to be able to experience the kind of recovery that you need.

Because it is possible to recover from burnout. It often feels like it's impossible. If you feel like, "I think maybe I just never want to work again," or, "I just think I don't want to work," if you have any feelings like that, that is burnout. That is burnout. Yeah, so for a lot of people, when they make a transition to a different type of job, when they leave whatever legal environment they're in, they are surprised by how burned out they are. Also, just by the absence of that environment, how different it feels, and how they often realize how much of a toll it was taking on them.

So that's the first thing that I see in that first year after they leave the law. The other thing that I think is very common for people, for people who I work with, there is generally a pretty good awareness of this because it's something that I talk about a lot, both in the Collab, in the curriculum, which is the Former Lawyer Framework, and also with my one-on-one clients, but for many people in that first year after they leave, it's really crystallized for them that there is no final destination that you're going to arrive at.

In many cases, people are identifying a job or a role to go to that's a bridge job, right? So that they're leaving practice and going to something that's a bridge that they recognize is not going to be the thing they're going to do forever. Even if you're someone who identifies something and you're like, "This is a great fit," and it's an indefinite shift in the sense of they're not going to something thinking it's a bridge job, the reality is that there are so many things in your life that have nothing to do with your job that affect what role your job needs to play and what your job needs to look like.

So I think this also can be really helpful for people who have this fear of, "But what if I go somewhere else and it's not good or it's worse? And then I just screwed myself because I should have just stayed and blah, blah, blah." The reality is that I have worked with a number of people who left their legal role, went to some other role, and ultimately decided it wasn't the right fit for them. But the thing is that once you have developed the skill set to be able to recognize why something doesn't work and what does work for you and how to identify that, it's not as scary.

You don't feel like you're taking a pass-fail test. You feel like you're engaging in a series of experiments, and that's much less fraught. There's much less anxiety. Ultimately, it means you are more able to be responsive to the needs in your life as they arise, as opposed to making a decision at one point and then being like, "And this is how it will be forever." It is a super annoying thing when you're someone who's still practicing law and you want to leave to have someone say, "There is no right job, there is no right time to leave."

That doesn't feel comforting because you're like, "But I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing." That feels abstract and unhelpful. I get it. Also, I have seen many, many, many people who have transitioned to something else. One of the things that they realize in that period of time, like that first year after leaving practice, is that there is no right job, there is no right time. You can make a good decision with the information available to you, and that information might change over time, and that is okay.

So that's the second thing. The third thing is I find that a lot of people, when they leave practice, realize they have a lot more agency than they think. This is something that's talked about frequently about the legal profession, which is that because of the structure of our profession, especially how law firms work and how the law works, the entire system, many lawyers do not feel like they have a lot of agency. This is something that I think is hard for people who aren't lawyers to understand when they're looking in from the outside.

They look at someone who's, say, a Biglaw lawyer who's making an objectively large amount of money, and people who aren't having that experience think, "How could you possibly feel like you don't have agency? You're in this really high-powered job. You're making all this money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You have these connections. You're very educated." But the reality is, especially within those systems, you have very little agency, by which I mean you have very little control over what happens to you and when and how, for lots of different reasons.

Some of it is the function of the job. So if you are a litigator and you're dealing with filing stuff in trial and the court schedule and when someone else files and what gets produced and who produces what. If you're on the corporate side, there are other factors like when a deal is happening, why it's happening, what needs to happen in order for that deal to happen. All of those external things that you don't have control over. You're the person who just has to get the thing done by the deadline.

Then within organizations, especially law firms, you also have this problem of a lack of agency because you see things happening that are unjust. You see the assholes. You see the ways that the organization functions that are not actually tied to reality in the sense of you'll see them say, "We care about your mental health," then the expectation is that you're doing things that actually are not good for your mental health.

But then if you were to say, "Well, I'm staying up until 5:00 AM, seven days a week to whatever, because of the things that are being asked from me," it would be like, "Oh, well, you're not supposed to do that." But also, if you don't do that, you're going to be perceived as not caring about your job. Do you see what I'm saying? There is a real sense of the only agency that you have in that situation is to leave.

So within those organizations, if you're someone in an organization like that, you really do experience a real loss of agency by being someone who is within that organizational structure. For lawyers, I think we already have this often innate sense of, "I went to law school and then I took the bar and then I went to practice, and I'm on the path, and it's a structure, and changing things feels like, but there's a path. If I change it, then I just don't have any idea what I'm doing. I could do anything." That feels overwhelming.

Feeling like you can do anything and nothing at the same time, it's a very common thing to feel. One of the things that I see for people who do end up leaving, making a move out of their practicing role, is that they realize, "Oh, I can change things and things will actually change. I can do something, and then a result will happen," because there's so much within our profession where that's not necessarily the case, honestly.

If you're a litigator, especially if you're working on certain types of matters, you do the endless discovery and the endless whatever, and then it settles, it impacts your ability to believe that doing things actually makes a difference or can make a difference. So for people who leave practice, just the mere leaving and going to do something else in and of itself, I think, is a very visceral reminder of, oh, you do have agency.

But then I think also being out of those types of environments allows people to see, "Oh, I do things, and it has some impact." Probably not surprising, but I, the host of this podcast, think it is very important for you to have a sense of agency. Among other things, not having a sense of agency is one of the factors that lead to burnout. That takes us right back to the first point that I made.

All of this to say, there is this concern of, "Well, if I leave, what if I think the grass is greener on the other side and it actually isn't? What if the parade of horribles happens?" And first of all, I completely get you. I am with you. I understand. I have been there. I have worked with so many people who have similar concerns and fears.

And I'm not the person who's going to be like, "Everything will be completely great and there will be no problems ever again. All you need to do is leave the law." That's not life. But I do think that it is important to know that some of the emotional bumps that are going to come up in that first year are also very common. Things that many, many, many lawyers inside the Collab have experienced before.

If you've listened to the podcast, you've heard a lot of people talking about their experiences as well. There are so many common themes. So even though that first year can feel a little like, "What am I doing? This is new, and that feels weird and scary and difficult. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing," all of those feelings are going to be part of doing something new, which is what leaving the law is for many of us.

But it doesn't mean it's bad or wrong. Ultimately, the things that I talked about today are things that I think learning these things really helps you be able to function better in the world and in your life, and for your own good and the good of other people. Those are some of the realities of the year after you leave the law.

Also, I will just say it's glorious. It's glorious. I never will get over having people come on a call for the Collab or our one-on-one calls or just randomly talking to someone who listened to the podcast and ended up doing something else and having them say, "I didn't even realize how bad it was, and I didn't even realize how good it could be."

That's with all of the complications and difficulties and things that come with any big life transition. Just so many people saying, "I couldn't see that it was as bad as it was. I had no idea it could be as good as it is." That's what I want for you. If you're a listener of this podcast, that is why I make this podcast.

So thank you for listening today. I hope this is helpful for those of you who are thinking about potentially doing something else. As always, if you're thinking about doing something else and you want support, the best place to get that is inside the Collab, which is my self-paced program for lawyers.

It's the baseline offer that I have for everyone who is a lawyer who is thinking about doing something else but has no idea what to do and probably feels like they don't even really know how to figure it out, because that is how most people feel. We would love to have you in the Collab, formerlawyer.com/collab. That's it for me. I hope you have a great week, and 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.