Hi, and welcome to the Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I've 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, today I want to answer a super practical question that has come up a lot over the years when I'm doing consults or when I'm talking to people who are thinking about joining The Collab. So first of all, for anyone who doesn't know, The Collab is my entry-level program for lawyers who know that they don't want to be doing what they're doing, but do not know what it is that they actually want to do, don't know how to figure it out, and feel stuck.

So The Former Lawyer Collaborative is this program that I've been running since the spring of 2020. It has a curriculum that I've created based on my work with one-on-one clients. It's called the Former Lawyer Framework, and it takes you from, I have no idea what I want to do, to just covering the things that you need to know about yourself and things that you need to know about careers to be able to identify something that you want to target, and then actually putting together a resume that's geared towards non-legal stuff if that's what you ultimately decide to do.

Doing interview prep and cover letters and LinkedIn stuff and all of that. And there's also, there's a group, I was going to say forum, it's not a forum, you know what I mean, where you can like talk and ask questions, and then we have a monthly call where anyone can come and ask questions, and you can join at any time.

So The Collab. Often people will ask me things like, do I need to quit my job before I start working on the framework in The Collab? Or do I need to be ready to, do I need to basically be at the point of leaving before I start this process? And the answer to that is no. And in fact, the day that you decide you're going to leave your job does not need to be the day you actually leave, and for many people, it is infinitely better, especially if you're trying to figure out something else, to decide you want to leave and then have some time before you're actually leaving. And in that time to work through a process that helps you identify where it is that you want to go next.

I have people who've like quit their job, found The Collab via Google and joined. There are also people who have found me from Google or the podcast or apparently Reddit, now on Reddit, people are talking about Former Lawyer. I don't know what they're saying. I know basically nothing about Reddit, but people find me through all of these avenues and they join The Collab because they're wanting to leave in like a year or two years or maybe even sometimes more than that. And often I find that people who are in that position make progress more quickly in the sense that there's less pressure to like identify a particular thing. And so it's easier to be flexible and creative in your thinking about what it is that you might want to do, which is not to say that if you like want to do it more quickly than like your SOL, because I also have people who have joined The Collab and are like, you know, out of there and doing something else in months, like just a few months.

The most lawyerly answer, of course, is it depends. But more to the point, this is the answer that I would give to you if you were someone who was thinking about The Collab and you were saying to me like, OK, but Sarah, I'm like not really ready to leave yet. Or I am worried I won't have enough time to devote to the process.

That's the other reason people are often asking me, do I need to leave my job before I join The Collab? And it's because they're concerned that the work is going to be too much and they like won't be able to do both. There certainly are people who spend a ton of time on the framework and move through it more quickly. But the rule of thumb that I tell people is basically if you can give a couple hours a week and that's like over a period of time, there are going to be weeks where you don't do anything. If you can give a couple hours a week to the framework, you can make really good progress in three or four months. You can again, it's like it again, it depends how many potential options you identify. Right. Because if you identify just a few versus more that you're interested in, that necessarily means that there's going to be more time.

But the point is, you do not have to feel like, OK, I can't join The Collab until I know that I can devote like 10 hours a week to it, because it is not that that is it is I too was a lawyer. I too was a lawyer. And like here in the real world, like that, there are very few lawyers who can say like, oh, I'm going to, you know, put 10 hours a week into this thing. And so the way that it's structured is to allow you to step through it with like consistent effort. But it does not need to be a ton of time in any one particular week.

If you're someone who's wondering, like, do I need to quit my job before I start this process? My answer would be no. Now, you may want to quit your job for other reasons, like it may just be like this is unsustainable. This is toxic. This is harmful. This is whatever. This is, you know, I have the ability to like take some time and I need some time. I'm super burned out, whatever. Like there are other reasons why you might think about leaving your job and also joining The Collab and working through the process. But the majority of people who join The Collab join when they are working full time as lawyers.

Some people join when they've quit and are like, I need to figure things out, which is also great. We welcome we welcome lawyers from all stages. But if you are thinking like, oh, if I'm like really serious about this and I need to like quit and like, no, you don't, you really don't. Again, if you want to quit or there's some other reason to quit, far be it for me to tell you not to. But The Collab is designed to live within your life as a lawyer. And that's because I was a lawyer and I know how difficult it can be to make time for things that are not your job.

And I wanted to create something that would give you the support and structure that you need to be able to figure out what it is that you want to do next in a way that did not require like extensive upheaval in your job or your life. Now, once you decide what you're doing, there may be extensive upheaval in your job and your life, but that will be because that's what you want. And we support that.

And that is also a super exciting part of running The Collab and being in The Collab because you get to see people doing that. And there's pretty much nothing better. Like this is why I do what I do.

So if you're interested in The Collab, the link is formerlawyer.com/collab You can go there anytime. You can enroll at any time. And of course, if you have any questions, you can always email me at [email protected] and I will respond to your questions. You do not have to quit your job before you join The Collab or before you work with me one on one, to be clear, because the same questions have come up.

Either way, it can work into your schedule and it can work into your life. And you don't have to stop being a lawyer before you figure out what it is that you want to do. That is not being a lawyer. 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 Leading the Law at formerlawyer.com/first. Until next time, have a great week.