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.

Hello, friends. It is 2026. I just wanted to have a conversation about what you do when your job really isn't working for you, and also the world is so unstable. Because I think for a lot of us, certainly for me, 2025 was a year, there were many, many bad things that happened in 2025, and it can be super overwhelming.

If you're in an overwhelming job, it can be even more overwhelming. And I am very aware of the fact that there are many people who listen to this podcast who, for many different reasons, have been significantly affected even more so than I have been by all of the events of 2025 and continuing into this year.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about how to think about leaving your job, which, in a way, is introducing some instability into your life in a world that already feels unstable, unsurprisingly. I do not have any prescriptive recommendations in the sense of, as always, I think it is such a personal decision, whether or not you're in a position to think about leaving your job and what that needs to look like. What I can tell you is that even though 2025 was a dumpster fire, I know a lot of lawyers who left their jobs and found other jobs working as something other than a lawyer.

And even when things are a dumpster fire, that is possible. Let's talk about that, because I don't want to minimize the hot garbage of all of the things that we're dealing with, particularly in the US. But I also think that it is important for you, in all of this, to take care of yourself and your community as much as possible.

And part of that is finding yourself a job that allows you bandwidth and margin to do and be other things. And the reality is that your capacity to manage other things outside your job is heavily influenced by the toll that your job takes on you. The amount of time that it takes up, the mental bandwidth it takes up, the emotional bandwidth it takes up, physically, how much time you spend either at your office or just at your desk doing work or on your phone responding to things.

And again, this is not me saying your job sucks, it's a dumpster fire, so just quit your job today. No. No. But I was talking with Stacey, who's my podcast producer who, if you've listened to the podcast, you have heard her a bit at times.

And she said to me, so she listens to all the episodes. She's not a lawyer. But after so many years working together, I think she has a very good understanding of the psychology of those of us who became lawyers and then realized we didn't want to be lawyers.

And we were talking about this episode. And she said to me that the phrase that came to mind for her was, "everything is a dumpster fire, but that doesn't mean your life has to be." So that's what I want you to know. Everything is a dumpster fire, but that doesn't mean your life has to be, or at least that certain parts of your life have to be.

Because here's the thing. Even if you're not going to make a move to a different job in 2026, the process of figuring out what it is that you actually want to do can take time. For some people, it's fast. For some people, it's not.

For a lot of people, it's a multi-stage thing, where you move to a bridge job and then either to get more of a particular skill or just to get out of your toxic hell hole of a workplace, and then ultimately you move on to something else. And even if you're not moving, even if you're just staying put and having conversations with people and networking and these sorts of things, there's still a lot that you can do, even where you are. And not only is there a lot that you can do, but also there's an element of don't wait until you're "ready to leave," because it's not a process that you can go through on a super-defined timeline.

When people talk to me about how long it takes people in the Collab or whoever with one-on-one to find something, of course, the most lawyerly answer ever is it depends. But the more quantifiable answer is typically six to 18 months to two years, but it depends on so many factors. It depends on whether someone comes in wanting to immediately make a move. It depends on the other things that they need to get lined up.

Some people need to get financial stuff lined up. Some people need to get other stuff lined up. Some people in some cases might want to take on some volunteering of some kind that pertains to the thing they're wanting to move to.

And so the point is that because it takes time and because everything is a dumpster fire, I think it can be easy to just say, "Oh, I'll just deal with that eventually." And listen, I am not someone who thinks that you should overrun your capacity. If it's a question of "I literally do not have the capacity to think about this other thing. It is not energizing to me to think about leaving the law. It is stressful and I need to just put it on a shelf," great. Awesome. I support that one million percent.

But if it's more a question of you thinking, "Oh, well, it's just too early for me to think about it," it's definitely not too early. Pretty much never too early. Because the more time that you have, the less pressure there is on you to make any particular decision or have any particular revelation.

And that is always good, in my opinion, for your ability to be creative and to think strategically because it keeps you out of that fight or flight, "oh my gosh, I need something right now." I just want this to serve as your reminder that your capacity to do so many things is tied to your job. And if you want to make a move, don't put off starting that process because the world is a dumpster fire.

Because everything can be a dumpster fire or everything is a dumpster fire. But that doesn't mean that you can't still carve out pieces of your life that allow you to deal with the dumpster fire more effectively. And let's be real. I think that if 2025 has taught us nothing else, it's that we are in this for the long haul and it's going to take a lot of us and it's going to be hard work, but it's worth doing.

I also just want to remind you at the beginning of the year that through Former Lawyer, I donate 1% of the gross revenue of Former Lawyer every month to the Equal Justice Initiative. And I also donate 1% of the gross revenue from Former Lawyer every month to the ACLU. I realize that that is not a "yay me, I'm so great."

I tell you this because I think it's important for you to know if you're someone who's thinking about working with me where my priorities are and what I do with my money, because I believe that what people do with their money shows you what they value. I am excited about the possibility of many lawyers in 2026 figuring out what it is that they want to do in the world that is not practicing law and going and doing that.

And if I get to be a part of your story and experience doing that, all the better. So thank you so much for listening. It's a new year and you can leave the law in 2026. 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.