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.

Hi there. So today I want to talk to you about why, if you are a lawyer who's thinking about leaving your job and leaving the law, you need to stop doing your best. And I realize that that sounds to most of you like a probably insane statement, because if you're anything like me, and like most of the lawyers who I work with, you are the kind of person who is very concerned about doing your best.

You are probably the kind of person who, as a kid, when people would say, just do your best to try to like calm you down, would think like, okay, but like, that's part of why I'm actually so stressed out. Because for a lot of us, especially those of us who are neurodiverse, and we know many, many, many lawyers are neurodiverse, hearing just do your best is essentially give every ounce of everything that you possibly have until there's literally nothing left. And then it's okay. And then you'll know you've done enough. And that is not actually what people generally mean when they say just do your best.

And people who think of that as being what is required in order for them to quote unquote, do their best, often end up becoming lawyers. And here's the problem. It is very hard for those of us who care a lot about doing good work, which again, many, many lawyers care a lot about doing good work. And for a lot of people who become lawyers, one of their values, or one of the things they really value, one of the things that's true about them is that they're highly responsible, and they can be relied upon. You often are like the type of person who carried the whole group in a group project in school. And that tends to translate over to your experience in the working world as well.

And here's the thing. I'm not saying like do a bad job at your job. I think for most of us, even if we were actively trying to do a bad job, it would be very difficult. Because of the way that so many people who become lawyers are made and conditioned by the profession and just the nature of the people who tend to decide to become lawyers. But doing your best in this sense of thinking that you are not doing enough, unless you are absolutely destroying yourself, is hurting you. It's hurting you both in your current environment, but it's also hurting your ability to think about doing other things.

And I'm not saying that every person who's overwhelmed by their work as a lawyer is like it's all their fault. Because it's not, okay? We all know that there are many people who work as lawyers where there are expectations that they be working extreme numbers of hours. And even if there isn't that expectation per se because of the kind of work they're doing, whether it's a deal and it needs to be done in a certain timeline, whether it's litigation or a trial where you're in trial or, you know, before trial where you're dealing with discovery or you're having to get things like motions and responses that aren't... whatever. The point is, I'm not saying, oh, just like don't try so hard and it'll be easy. That's definitely not what I'm saying.

But I think a lot about... there was a guest on the podcast several years ago. And one of the things that she mentioned was that she had to learn how to do B-minus work when she was at the law firm in order to actually make space in her life for other things. And, you know, for a lot of lawyers, this idea of like B-minus work is like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine letting myself be okay with B-minus work. But it's still... B-minus is still a decent grade, right? It's still passing.

It's way above passing. It is completely acceptable. And it's hard for us to just do something that is just acceptable.

And also, I just want to recognize that there are a lot of factors and pressures that go into this. Because especially for people from historically marginalized communities, or historically marginalized identities, there is more pressure to do better than the average person in order to get the same sort of perception. So I'm not suggesting, like, this is all in your head.

But here's what I'm saying. If you want to make space in your life for other things, or even just for yourself, one of the ways that you can and should do that is by not holding yourself to the unreasonable standard that many of us hold ourselves to, which is doing our best, meaning completely destroying ourselves for the sake of the work or the product or whatever. That's hard.

And I suggest therapy. Unsurprisingly, if this is something that you're thinking about trying to do, there's a reason why you feel like you need to work in that way. And a therapist would be a great person to help you work out exactly why that is. I have seen people make huge strides in figuring out what it is that they really want to do, when they have been able to let themselves not quote unquote, do their best. And so I wanted to offer that to you. Maybe consider not trying to do your best in that way. And also consider therapy.

All right. 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.