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 want to talk today about the way in which working as a lawyer, especially if you're a lawyer who works in Biglaw or another lawyer job where you make a lot of money, actually makes it harder for you to make a career change. So, of course, there's the traditional golden handcuffs idea, which is something I'm sure everyone who's listening is familiar with. It's basically the idea that when you get into a position where you're making a lot of money, relatively, you often end up spending more money because of some combination of you having it and there's social pressure to do certain kinds of spending or have certain kinds of things or send your kids to certain kinds of schools, etc., etc.

There is the reality that for many lawyers, even lawyers that really hate what they're doing, they can end up in a position where they are spending to the level of their salary, and it makes leaving very difficult to contemplate. But here's the thing. Even if you aren't in a position where you are experiencing golden handcuffs, there are still lots of ways in which you are most likely suffering from some level of scarcity mindset, even if you're a lawyer in a job that makes a lot of money.

I think this is very counterintuitive. It's definitely something that people who aren't lawyers do not understand about lawyers. When I talk with non-lawyers about the work that I do, about my experience as a lawyer, and about my work with lawyers, one of the things that people are most surprised by is the fact that many lawyers feel like they don't have other options. Because I think the perception of most people who are not lawyers is that someone who's a lawyer has a lot of options.

There are several different reasons why lawyers feel this way. But one of them is often this sense of scarcity, like, “I have to hold on to this because if I don't, then there might not be anything else for me.” Listen, on one level, that is realistic if you are in a certain type of position making a certain amount of money. If you are a [inaudible] associate in Biglaw, the likelihood that you can go somewhere else and make the exact same amount of money, unless it's a very similar job, obviously, is fairly low.

But that's not really what I'm talking about when I say that people often have a scarcity mindset. It's more that often, lawyers who are in a position where they're making significantly more money than average have this sense of scarcity. It's partially financial in the sense of feeling like they can't consider other options or assuming that there aren't other options that would allow them to maintain their quality of life, to a degree that I have found is not present in people who aren't lawyers.

I think this is important because if you're someone who is working as a lawyer, especially if you're in a position where you make much more money than average, I think often there's a sense of, “Well, I couldn’t possibly have a scarcity mindset issue because look how much money I’m making.” I personally am someone who thinks that mindset is really important, and also mindset is limited in the sense that I think our profession has many real systemic problems and that you cannot fix all of your problems or challenges with practicing law just by changing your mindset.

However, there are certain mindset issues that come up a lot and are really beneficial to examine if you're a lawyer thinking about leaving, and scarcity mindset is one of them. So what is scarcity mindset? As many of you know, I'm sure, scarcity mindset is basically having this idea that you have to hoard what you have, that what you have is in danger, that there's not more out there. It's some combination, depending on the person, of feeling like you really have to hold on to what you have and also feeling like there isn't a lot else out there for you.

It's a weird position to be in if you're a lawyer who is working in a job where you make a lot more money than typical, because you often aren't really aware that you're operating with a scarcity mindset because you objectively know—you look at your paycheck, and you know the amount of money that's deposited in your direct deposit—and you know that is more money than the average person is making.

Many lawyers therefore don’t realize that they have a scarcity mindset because, financially, they’re in a good place. The thing is, scarcity mindset can apply to money, but it can also apply to other things. When you're a lawyer who's thinking about doing something else, a big part of being able to get yourself to the point where you're actually willing to look at what you might do otherwise is having a sense of possibility. It’s having this sense of opportunity, of openness to the different options that might exist for you.

If you are someone who struggles with scarcity mindset, those things are going to be very difficult for you to do because you're going to have this internal sense of, “But I need to hold on to this. There probably isn’t anything else,” etc. I brought this up today because I think it is really helpful, especially if you're a lawyer who is in a job where you make more than typical, to ask yourself, “Do I have a scarcity mindset?”

Yeah, I might be okay financially. I might be good financially. But in my experience working with lawyers, that has very little impact on whether or not you actually see possibility as opposed to scarcity, whether you assume possibility as opposed to scarcity. If you assume scarcity as opposed to possibility, it is going to be much harder for you to actually think about doing something else because of that internal bias.

It's definitely something to be aware of because it can have a significant effect on whether or not you are willing to consider other options. In fact, one of the things that I've observed—and this makes sense and goes back to the first thing I talked about, which is the golden handcuffs piece—is that often the people who struggle the most with scarcity mindset and thinking about doing something else are the lawyers who are in the highest-paying lawyer jobs.

There are a lot of reasons for that. But I think one of them is just if you're someone who has been working in a job where you're making significantly more than the average person, then there is a degree to which you come to rely on that. I don't mean monetarily. I mean seeing yourself as a person who is in that type of position financially.

Again, we all know I’m very practical. I'm not someone who's going to be like, “You should quit your job and go bartend on the beach in Cabo,” when you have dependents and all sorts of other things and a mortgage and whatnot. But on the flip side, I think that it is really helpful to think about, “When I look at my finances, how much of what I'm making do I genuinely need to make in order to have a life that works for me? And how much of what I'm making is something that I have this sense that I need to retain because it makes me feel safe? And are there ways to create a sense of safety for myself that don't rely on me continuing to work in this job that I do not enjoy or that is bad for me?”

Even if you make a lot of money as a lawyer, you may still be experiencing a scarcity mindset, and that will impact whether or not you're able to really seriously consider other options that could work better for you. Thanks so much for listening. I will 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.