Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. On this show, I interview former lawyers to hear their inspiring stories about how they left law behind to find careers and lives that they love. Let's get right to the show.

Hey, everyone. This week, you'll be hearing my conversation with Alex Davis. Alex is the owner of Davis Legal Media and her company helps lawyers and law firms with their content marketing so that they can attract their ideal clients. There are tons of really good things in this interview. We talk a lot about ditching the idea that there's only one path that you can be on or should be on. We also talk some about the Enneagram. Alex and I are both Enneagram Ones and you'll learn a little bit more about that in the interview.

Before we get to the interview, I just want to remind you today, the day that this episode releases, is September 30th, which means there's just a little over a week to pre-order First Steps to Leaving the Law Jumpstart which is my mini course that's going to release on October 9th. You can pre-order it right now for $47. The price is going up once the course releases to $97 so it's a really good deal and I would love for you to take advantage of it.

The purpose of this mini course is to help anyone out there who feel stuck in their lawyer job to take the first steps that they need to take to start moving out of that job and get some momentum. It's just designed to jumpstart your progress. If you want to pre-order or need more information, you can go to com formerlawyer.com/jumpstart. Now on to the interview.

Hi, Alex. Welcome to the podcast.

Alex Davis: Thanks so much for having me, Sarah.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Let's start with you just introducing yourself to the listeners and giving a little bit of background about how you decided to go to law school in the first place.

Alex Davis: Sure. I'd be happy to. My name is Alex Davis. I live in Raleigh, North Carolina with my husband, Jacob, who's also a lawyer, and our son who's due in about four weeks. I am a lawyer. I'm a writer. I am a creative at heart and I'm also a small-business owner.

In terms of what led me to law school, I was one of those people that decided at a very young age that I was going to be a lawyer and I just I didn't really know why. But I think at some point, someone must have said to me, “Hey, you're a good writer, you're a good public speaker.” My parents would like to say that I was good at arguing, you have a strong sense of right and wrong which is I guess my Enneagram Type One coming out, which I know, Sarah, you could probably appreciate too.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I’m like, “Enneagram Ones unite.”

Alex Davis: Yes, girl. I just made up my mind one day. I think this is the hallmark of a good lawyer so that's what I'm going to do. It sounded good. It was an easy answer when I get asked like, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” But I had my doubts and they crept up throughout the years, throughout high school, throughout college that “I don't actually know if I want to do this.”

I briefly entertained the idea of doing something else but I just wasn't really sure how to apply my interests and my skills so I just barreled headlong into law school because I thought that's the most practical choice of this juncture. I went straight through from undergrad but as soon as I got there, I thought, “Oh, my gosh. Oh no. I really think I've made a mistake here.”

It was not what I expected. People think of law school as being this intellectual Mecca and that's just not necessarily true. It's preparing you to be a lawyer. It took me some time to really figure law school out. I eventually did but I really learned that I love the law in theory, so I really love to think about it, to talk about it, to debate it with people, to write about it but when it came down to just the nitty gritty of practicing, it just didn't do it for me.

But you know how it is being a law student, you're completely swamped just emotionally as well as just in general just with everything that you have going on so I didn't really take the time to figure out what it was I wanted to do with this degree that I was working so hard on. I just got in this lane and just started to hit the accelerator towards a very traditional legal career and just didn't really take the time to figure out whether it was even a good fit for me.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. There are so many things about what you just said that I think are really common. One, which I hear all the time, are people who were told at a young age, “You'd be a great lawyer,” either because, like you said, people think they're good at arguing or they're good at public speaking and they just get it in their head like, “Oh, I have this skill. That means I should be a lawyer.”

I think that's super common. The other thing that you mentioned about once you hit law school, it's just such a conveyor belt. You don't have a lot of time for self-reflection. I know a couple of people who dropped out of law school after basically the first semester or first quarter. I'm always like, “Man, that's impressive.”

Because I think there are a lot of people who end up in the situation that you were in where they realize on some level, “Maybe this is not right. Maybe I like the theory of the law but the practice, not so much.” But I think it's a rare person who once they're actually in law school pivots on the early side.

Alex Davis: Exactly. I certainly don't regret going through with it but I did admire people who had the conviction early on to say, “You know what…” it's like the sunk cost fallacy, I think you talked about that on one of your other episodes here.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I'm sure I did because I bring it up all the time when talking about law school stuff.

Alex Davis: Yeah, and it's so true. I don't put myself in this category because I think I needed to go through the somewhat harrowing experience of being a new associate in practicing law. It just taught me so much. It changed what I was as a person I think in some great ways so I'm very grateful for it.

But people who just truly had no interest, just to cut the coat early, just pull the escape cord and say, “Okay, I already put in a year. I paid for a year of tuition but you know what, I really want to go do X so I'm going to go do X.” I think that takes a lot of hutzpah. I think people who do that do very well. Law school is really a unique animal and it's certainly not for everybody.

I think a lot of people go in with a lot of misconceptions, a lot of people think of it as “I'll be sitting under a big tree, reading these old texts and having these spirited debates with other very bright people.” Of course, there's some of that but you're in law school to become an attorney and I think if you suspect that's not something you want to do, then maybe it's not the right path.

But I think a lot of people just think, “Oh, I'll go to law school. I'll just wander in the doors because it's a prestigious thing to do. It's really respectable,” but if it's not something you're convinced you want to do, it can really take a lot out of you, take a lot of time out of your life. I think people really need to think that through.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I totally agree. I also think that even in law school, you're still very disconnected I think even if you do clinics and whatnot from what it actually is to be a lawyer. I remember after we graduated and we were studying for the bar so very concrete practical things, things about the various codes and statutes and whatnot.

Some of that stuff are things that you don't actually learn in law school, they say you learn how to think like a lawyer, which I think is true but it's interesting how removed in certain ways it is from what it is to actually practice. I think you can actually go through law school, graduate, and start practicing and all of a sudden be like, “Whoa, this is nothing like what I was expecting.”

Alex Davis: It's so true. I remember being so confused in contracts the first couple days and I was like, “Wait, so we're not actually ever going to read a contract or write one? What are we doing in here?” That just showed how ignorant I was. It was like, “This is preparing you for probably 90% of what you're going to do as a lawyer,” but it's like okay, offer, acceptance, consideration, that's great and all but what does that even mean? How's that even going to play out? So yeah, absolutely, 100%.

Sarah Cottrell: You knew once you were in law school, “Oh, this is maybe really not for me.” What were you thinking when you graduated? How did that inform your job search? Did you just say, “I'm just not going to think about that right now”? How did that play out for you?

Alex Davis: Yeah. My graduation from law school was caught up in really a whirlwind of life events. I ended up graduating and then studying for the bar, taking the bar, getting married, and then leaving the country all within a couple of months. It was quite the whirlwind of a summer. I don't know why I do this to myself but maybe it's the Type One yet again but I had a very demanding final semester so I actually intentionally delayed my job search. I did not start looking until I got back from Europe in September and found out I passed the bar.

It took me a couple of months to find my job at my firm but I found one and it was a great firm. I pretty much only applied to litigation firms. The reason being without having really reflected about whether I actually wanted to be a lawyer, I thought, “Well, you know what, I have this degree and I passed the bar, I'm going to be a lawyer. That's just what I'm going to do because that's the only option that's really available to me at this point.”

I was like, “Let me pick litigation because there's a lot of writing involved I hear.” I was seduced by the whole Gerry Spence thing going to court, throwing out the one-liners that had the whole courtroom in stunned silence. I thought, “Okay, that sounds really intriguing.” So got a job within just a couple quick months. It was great. I did primarily personal injury plaintiffs work and business litigation, mostly in state courts. We did some federal work too so I got to write a lot of briefs and I really liked that.

To answer your question, I fell into my job and then found myself as a litigator pretty soon after taking the bar. It really just confirmed my initial suspicion that it wasn't for me. Litigation was not a good fit for my personality type at all. It burned me out really quickly. I was constantly anxious to the point that I would make myself physically ill. It had nothing to do with the people I worked for, they were phenomenal, our cases were very interesting, very intellectually engaging, I got a ton of hands-on experience but it wasn't working.

For a while I thought maybe that I was the problem, and I'm sure that there are other lawyers who can identify with this, but I thought, “Okay, I'm not taking the bull by the horns or I'm too thin skinned, I need to toughen up.” But I just knew that wasn't true. I knew that objectively I was doing well. I also knew, “Hey, I've been doubting this path anyway for about six years so maybe this is just confirmation that I am right now forcing myself onto a career trajectory that's just not favorable for me.”

That was all within about a year of me passing the bar that I had this realization. The problem was I was so new to practice, so new to the working world. I went straight through from undergrad to law school so I didn't have a lot of work experience backing me up so I felt like, “I can't pivot right now. I need to pay my dues.” So I found myself in that situation pretty early on unfortunately.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I had the exact same experience you said about feeling like there was something wrong with you. I was like, “I'm doing well. I should love this. I should feel about this job the way that person feels about this job. What's wrong with me?” All of those just not really willing to consider like, “Hey, maybe this is just not a good fit for you. Just because you can do this job doesn't mean it's the job you should be doing.”

It took me a long time. I think I may even have talked about this on the first episode of the podcast but it took me over a year to realize, “Yeah, if this isn't working for me, if I don't like this, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with me, it just means I don't like it and maybe I should do something else.”

Alex Davis: Exactly. Yeah, that's really all there is to it. It doesn't say anything about our identity or our value as employee, as productive members of society.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, exactly. Basically you knew within your first year of practicing that it was not a good fit for you. What did you do at that point? Did you just decide to continue on for a while? Did you start exploring your options? What was your process there?

Alex Davis: Both, honestly. This would have been I guess probably late fall of 2016 and I didn't end up actually making the move until January of 2018. I did stick it out. I gave myself a little bit of a deadline. I said, “I needed to get through another year.” It would have been two years total. I just thought, “I really think there's something to me sticking this out, seeing what I can learn, what I can glean, maybe it'll change.”

I stuck around and in the meantime, I did a lot of research. I really, really did. Honestly, I wish that your podcast was around at the time because I would just get online and Google stories of lawyers who left the law and what they're doing now and I would just see, “What can I do with a law degree?”

The problem wasn't a lack of resources, it was feeling completely directionless, feeling like, “Okay, there are a lot of things I can do but I'm just not sure what it is so let me stick around. I don't want to jump from the frying pan to the fire, leaving a good job with good people and good pay and support to something that's potentially really terrible.”

Stuck around, did my research, but one of the really great things about my employers who by the way have been some of my biggest supporters with me starting my business, they really are amazing, because it was a smaller law firm, just a handful of attorneys, one of the great things about it was I was really exposed to the inner workings of running a small business and seeing how they did things day-to-day, not just with practicing law.

They really brought me in on different tasks like marketing, business development, and blogging. I really enjoyed that. I remember telling my husband, Jacob, “If I could still work for these folks but not practice law and just be their ghostwriter, their marketing, and PR person, I would really love that.” But they're a small firm and I know they don't need that.

He said, “Well, why don't you figure out a way to do that for law firms, maybe figure out a way to use your writing background, your interest in marketing in a way that serves lawyers?” That really planted some seeds in my mind and in my heart for me to really consider a way to parlay some of my skills into a new career all together. Those seeds really sprung from my current job which was really, really interesting.

Sarah Cottrell: That is. How soon into that second year did you start to think about that as a possible career path?

Alex Davis: It was probably sometime mid-year of 2017 that I started to realize that there are people out there who get paid well to write content for lawyers because the thing is content marketing was and still is a burgeoning field and a lot of lawyers don't have the time to build up their online presences or they don't know how or they don't know why it's important but I started to really learn about this.

I did some of that for our firm and was really intrigued by how we would blog and get on social media and it would actually generate business so I thought, “Okay, this is cool. I might be able to try this out, maybe just beta test it a little bit and see if there's a need in this community for that type of work.”

Sarah Cottrell: It was in that second year when you started to think about this as a possible career option. When did you actually make the jump and what plan did you have, if any, when you did make the jump?

Alex Davis: Great question. You're exactly right. It was mid-year and it was sometime around Christmas of that year. We're talking December of 2017 that I came up with a “plan”, and you can't see me I'm doing scare quotes right now, and then eventually left in January. It went from seeds to, “Hey, let me research this whole field. That sounds interesting,” to “Hey, let me come up with this plan to actually leaving,” all within about seven months.

In terms of the plan, to answer your question, basically what it looked like was I was on a road trip with my husband and out of nowhere, I just turned to him and blurted out, “Okay, you know what, I'm going to try this blogging thing, this writing thing for lawyers. I'm going to start freelancing. I'm going to start picking up jobs and just see if there's a need.” He just looked at me and said, “Okay, sure. That sounds good. Let's give it a try.” That was in December and then in January, I gave my notice. I left my job and I stepped out into the wild blue yonder and started freelancing. That was how my business started.

Sarah Cottrell: How did you go about finding your clients initially?

Alex Davis: I started finding clients honestly through existing connections. My former employers were a client, friends of theirs. I did not market aggressively. I ended up getting people mainly from personal connections that I'd be happy to talk more about how I did that but when I officially organized as a business and launched as a business, I did have new clients which I think from there, it gave me a little bit more credibility just having that track record of work and then from there, it just mushroomed. Starting with people I knew and then expanding from there, if that makes sense.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, that makes total sense. What type of work do you do? Do you do the same types of work for all of your clients? Are you doing different types of work for different clients? How does that work practically just in terms of what people are looking for or the services that you provide?

Alex Davis: Absolutely, no, that's a great question because what started off as random freelancing has actually become very defined. It's a very defined and very narrow niche. Essentially, what we do now is we're content writers serving primarily small law firms. What the business does is we create custom ghost-written content and content plans for small-firm lawyers to give them a platform, to build brand awareness, and to connect them to clients.

Essentially we do this through blogging, through long-form social media captions, through website content, and then ghost-written creative assets like ebooks and white papers. We're broad in terms of the practice areas that we take but in terms of the type of work we do, it's very niche and very narrow. It's essentially coming up with a content-marketing plan and delivering the content. We don't write advertisement copy, we're not copywriters. We don't touch pay-per-click or Google ads. It's all very content-driven, if that makes sense.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, totally. I know you're in North Carolina, are your clients all North Carolina firms and practitioners or do you take clients from other locations also? How does that work?

Alex Davis: No. We have clients all over the country. That's the nice thing about this type of work is it's not limited to a specific jurisdiction. The only catch is to make sure that we brush up on the ethical rules in different jurisdictions to make sure we're not running a foul of the ethical rules in those states. But we do serve people across the country.

Sarah Cottrell: That's super cool. I'm trying to think, so that was January of 2018 and it's September of 2019 so almost two years-ish, a year and a half I guess?

Alex Davis: About a year and a half, yeah, which is hard to believe.

Sarah Cottrell: Time flies when you’re having fun. This is totally going back, but I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned about when you were working at the law firm just because this is something that's very near and dear to my heart. I don't think I've talked about this on the podcast yet but if people follow Former Lawyer on social media or the blog, I've written several things about how I have an anxiety and panic disorder which I did not know until after I left Biglaw. But then once I figured that out, I was like, “Oh, so much makes sense.”

But you mentioned having a lot of anxiety around the lawyering, in particular litigation, and part of it was that it was just not a good fit for your personality. I would love for you to talk a little bit more about that because, not everyone has a diagnosable anxiety disorder, but I do think that—and the statistics play this out—there is an abnormally high amount of anxiety amongst lawyers.

I think sometimes because of that, it's almost downplayed like, “Oh, well, you're anxious, we're all anxious,” these sorts of things. In certain ways, for me, having an anxiety disorder was “good” for me working as a litigator in a big firm because it drives you to be hyper focused on details and perfection because that's how it works.

I just think that a lot of people suffer from that, again, not necessarily clinically but just because of the nature of the work, and so I would just love for you to talk about that a little bit more and the way that it's normalized and how maybe you were able to realize like, “Hey, maybe this isn't just normal.”

Alex Davis: 100%. I think I've heard different schools of thought and I've heard people say, like what you said, Sarah, about how your—and this sounds so crazy to say—but that your anxiety actually was in some ways an asset to the type of work you were doing, I think sometimes the law does attract people who tend to be more, I don't want to say anxious by nature because I don't want to sound like I'm defining people as being anxious but you know what I mean, people who tend to be anxious in certain situations because the work is hyper detail-oriented, contentious, and antagonistic.

That's the one side of the coin that I hear as well. The law naturally attracts people of a certain disposition but I think on the flip side is the work itself, there's just colossal amounts of pressure on lawyers. With the work I do now, if I make an error, I might lose some credibility with the client but I can repair that by correcting the error.

If you make an egregious error while serving a client, not only do you lose your credibility, not only are you going to lose the case, not only can you get fired by your client and possibly your employer, you can also get sued for malpractice, you can also potentially lose your license, it's just a tremendous amount of pressure.

I think that a lot of lawyers, some of whom might be predisposed to anxiety, maybe some who aren't, it's just heaps and heaps and heaps of stress and it can really get out of hand, and like you said, it is normalized and it's almost stigmatized. I've certainly heard talk among lawyers, that's been really disturbing to me of, “Well, you have to suck it up. If you can't suck it up, that means you're not a good worker or that means that you're not a good lawyer.” That really disgusts me. I don't like to hear talk like that at all. I think we need to flip that script.

For me personally, the way that I knew it wasn't normal, I just could tell that certain natural strengths of mine that I've been praised for in the past were actually liabilities in litigation, certain approaches I would try to take to cases, I would get told by clients, “That's not aggressive enough,” “Don't be vulnerable with the other side,” a lot of the things that make me good at what I do now were liabilities.

Creative thinking sometimes was a liability. Compassion sometimes could be a liability. You couldn't show your cards. It was just very difficult for me and I think that's how I knew this isn't just normal anxiety, this is truly me trying to muddle through a field that's just really not a good fit. It's like the square peg in a round hole situation. I was like, “That's why I'm feeling this stress and I'm feeling this overwhelm. It's not anybody's fault, it's just that this is not my nature.”

I think really there are people who are uniquely suited and cut out to be litigators and to be certain types of lawyers, there are some people who truly have that personality and it wasn't me. That was really convoluted and I don't know if that answered your question at all.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, no, it totally did. I think that's really insightful because for people who are listening and are trying to figure out like, “Should I continue being a lawyer? If I'm feeling like maybe I shouldn't, how do I know?” I think one practical thing that you can do is you were talking about some things that are your strengths were actually weaknesses in the context of litigation, and I know for me for example, one of my far and away strengths is that I'm incredibly efficient and I'm just a fast worker.

I can read really quickly, I can synthesize really quickly, I can write really quickly. I had a reputation for that which was great, but when your work is ultimately being measured by how many hours you bill, being efficient and getting things done really quickly just means you need to take on that much more work or be on that many more cases in order to hit the hours that are expected.

If you are someone who has that type of work style, it's a completely perverse incentive because it basically does not really benefit you to be an extremely fast worker. Then once I moved into different positions, it was much better. One of my greatest strengths could actually be a strength because it meant I could get more done, and when you're not billing hours, being able to produce more is ultimately good for you and for your employer.

I think that's a really important thing that people can think about, like, “What are the things that I'm really good at? What are my strengths? Are those things actually strengths in this lawyer job that I'm currently in or not?” I think that can be a really helpful guidepost to determine whether that's where you should stay.

Alex Davis: Exactly. Oh my gosh. What you said made me think of one thing I'm really good at is planning ahead and prioritizing. You know how it is in litigation, [inaudible].

Sarah Cottrell: Like, “Surprise! We're going to a temporary injunction hearing.”

Alex Davis: Yeah, exactly. Or “Oh, I thought I had all weekend to write the brief of these pre-trial motions,” and then the judge's staff says, “Hey, the judge wants to read them over his coffee on Saturday morning so they're actually doing five hours.” Oh lord, true story. Or maybe it was 12 hours, it was the night before but oh my goodness.

So yeah, absolutely, 100%. If that's something that really stresses you out, why drag yourself through that when there are other jobs out there that will not involve that type of stress if that's something you can't handle? It's important to know that, and it's okay to admit that, it doesn't mean you're weak, it just means that you are setting yourself up for greater success, putting yourself somewhere where your skills are valued, or not that they weren't valued but your skills actually make sense and help move your team forward and your career forward, your clients, whatever it is that you're doing.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, totally.

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It sounds like your husband was pretty supportive when you said, “Hey, I think I want to do this completely different thing.” But I know a lot of people who are lawyers and are thinking about whether or not they actually want to continue being lawyers, one of the things they worry about the most is how people will react. Aside from your husband, how was that for you in terms of colleagues, friends, family? How did you find that to be?

Alex Davis: That's a really good question because it was a 50-50 split between people saying they were jealous and people looking at me like I sprouted another head out of my shoulder. It was tough for me because one thing I ended up doing, and I'd be happy to get into this more, this goes into the whole mechanics of making something like this work is while I was freelancing, obviously, I wasn't replacing my income right away. It took about a year for me to replace my income. I started out doing some doc review for a few months and it was great.

That work is stigmatized and it didn't even have to be doc review, I could have been working at a coffee shop or whatever, but I feel like lawyers carry these entrenched ideas with them from their traditional legal educations about what is a worthy path and what is not so I definitely had some snide comments about “Oh, you're doing doc review now, okay.” I said, “Well, no, I'm not doing doc review, I'm freelancing and then eventually I'm building a business, and the doc review is making it possible. It's supporting me while I'm building this business. It's building this business responsibly.”

The thing is it's not our job to convince other people that what we're doing is a good idea. They don't know your situation. I heard a great quote once, I wish I knew where it was from so I'm not going to take credit for it, just as a caveat, but being able to tell people what you do day-to-day isn't the same as living it out.

Just being able to tell some random person at a bar event what you do doesn't matter if you are completely miserable, and if building a business intentionally and doing some side gig in the meantime to get it going is making you happy, the fact that it doesn't matter what other people think, that's just the greatest understatement. It shouldn't even be on our radars at all.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. This is similar to what you were just saying, but if you realize that you're doing the job that you're doing because you think other people will be impressed by it, first of all, most people aren't really thinking about what you're doing one way or the other, that is a very weak motivation to keep you continuing in something that is really not a good fit for you.

I think sometimes the lawyer community can be insular. If you're working as a lawyer, you're frequently working a lot of hours and you're in this environment where you're always around people who think, “Well, there's nothing else that's better than this and why would you ever do anything else? We're all so impressive.”

Not to say that there aren't many lawyers who are very impressive, I'm not trying to degrade the whole profession, I'm just saying that I think once you get a step outside of that, or at least this has been my observation and experience, most people don't really know or care what you do.

Or if you tell someone who's not a lawyer, “Oh, yeah, I used to work as a lawyer and now I do X or Y other thing,” they're not sitting there thinking, “Oh, my goodness, you threw it all away?” It's just two jobs to them. You really need to be thoughtful about whose opinions are you concerned with and is it actually an opinion you should be concerned about, or is it just that you are so embedded in the lawyer bubble that some of these thought processes are rubbing off on you basically?

Alex Davis: Exactly. You had said something that hit on this briefly, but just this idea that people aren't sitting around thinking about you all day and contemplating your career path, and really a job is a job and if your job is draining you, there are a lot of different ways to make money, there truly, truly are.

I don't mean that as in a first-world privilege way, truly there are just innumerable ways to earn a living of various degrees of income, but there's only one of you in your mental health, your physical health, your relationships, everything that is touched by the work you do, 40, 50, 60, 70-hours a week, that is a finite resource.

I feel like we agonize and we hem and haw over what's our calling? What should we be doing? But it's okay just to try things. If something's not working and it's wearing you down, pick something else. If people make a face at you or scans at you for 10 seconds, well, they're going to forget about it in another 10 seconds, and who cares? That's my philosophy on that so I agree with you 100% for sure.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. All you lawyers out there, yeah, ignore those people's opinions. Obviously, there are people in your life, if you have a partner, spouse, or someone who has helped maybe to fund your law school education, I understand that there are people whose opinions you will want to take into consideration but yeah, not the random people who might have an opinion about what you're doing but have no actual investment in your life.

Alex Davis: Exactly, or the people, the mysterious “they” that we invent in our head who don't actually exist at all.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, exactly. For you, what does a typical week look like now in your business?

Alex Davis: A typical week is every week is a little bit different but I do actually batch my work days. I have specific tasks I work on on specific days. It used to be just exclusively client work, but now that the business is growing and scaling, I have stepped out of that a little bit as I've delegated some of the writing. I'm still very involved in all of our contents written by lawyers or people with a legal background and is vetted and edited by a licensed lawyer, but it's a mix of the clients that I do work on, it's a mix of working on marketing tasks, business-development tasks.

I put myself out there a lot just to get new business and to gain valuable relationships with contractors, with designers that I work with, with website developers. I'm always going to events, meeting up with people, meeting people for coffee, a lot of phone calls with prospective clients, actual clients, working on my own content, so the business’ blog, newsletter, social media.

It's a good combination of all of those things. It’s a lot of fun, it's very creative, it's very fun to be able to serve lawyers in this capacity. I feel like it’s everything that I really liked about my legal education and practicing law but in a different way, in a creative way, so I feel very fortunate that I'm able to do this type of work.

Sarah Cottrell: So awesome. I want to switch gears just a little bit because you mentioned this earlier when we were talking and I just wanted to come back to it because I think it's a really helpful tool for people who are thinking about making a career change, and that is the Enneagram.

The Enneagram, for anyone who doesn't know, is a personality typing system, I guess you would call it. The thing about it that is really interesting and helpful, or at least has been for me, is that it is less about typing your actions and more about typing your motivations and also, honestly, your weaknesses, which for me was honestly one of the most helpful parts of it. But do you want to talk a little bit about that, about your type and also how that played into thinking about leaving the law and why it might be helpful for someone else who's thinking about doing the same thing?

Alex Davis: I'd love to. I love personality tests. [inaudible] The Enneagram is a lot of fun and there are free tests you can take online. If you Google free Enneagram tests, there are a few that come up that you can take in just about 20 minutes and it'll give you detailed analysis of your type. Or you can just read about the types and see which one resonates the most with you.

But I am a Type One and I know, Sarah, so are you. It's a scale of one to nine and each type has a title. The title for Type One is the Reformer. Sarah, feel free to jump in if I'm not characterizing this as well as I could, but essentially the Reformer is a perfectionistic type, it's also a type that has a strong sense of justice, right or wrong. They want to come in and improve things, they always have an idea on how to do something better but they also feel like their work, their efforts have to be connected to some greater purpose. Otherwise, they burn out.

Also, Type Ones—and I very much exemplify this—they like to be organized, they are very methodical. If things are not organized and methodical, they can get very stressed, hence, why litigation and the bombastic dynamic nature of it was not a great fit for me. For me, that was really helpful and I took that in tandem with the Myers-Briggs, I'm an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs, which often corresponds to an Enneagram One.

It was just extremely illuminating for me. It wasn't just like, “Oh, that's fun. That sounds like me.” I truly learned a lot about myself and it was really arresting to think, “Wow, that really is true. I really do feel like my work has to be connected to a greater purpose. Otherwise, I do get stressed.”

You can really feel that way as a lawyer. I had wonderful days where I would help a client and I just felt incredible, but then I had days where I felt like, “Oh, my gosh, we're literally fighting over the same clause and a contract that we've been fighting over for five years.” I would just feel so disconnected from my purpose.

I highly recommend taking the Enneagram, taking the Myers-Briggs. I know some people swear by StrengthsFinder. I have never used that personally but getting that third-party neutral insight into yourself can be enormously helpful and tell you a lot of things that you might have been blind to, that is hard to assess ourselves. You know what I mean, it's hard to give yourself an honest assessment.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think the Enneagram for me, more than other personality tests, I feel like actually showed me things about myself that I wasn't necessarily aware of. Whereas the other personality tests, there was a little bit more like, “Oh, yeah, I see that or I was aware of that.” It can really give you some good insight into what types of jobs will work for you and what types of jobs will be a struggle for you because of how you're wired. I just think it can be really useful.

I'll drop some links to some of the tests, the free tests. There's also a test that I took that was $10. That was actually really helpful, so that if people are interested, you can go there and learn everything you ever wanted to know about the Enneagram. I am no Enneagram expert.

Alex Davis: No, oh my god, [inaudible] Sarah, have you heard of the, some of your listeners might have, but it's called Enneagram and Coffee, it's a fantastic Instagram account?

Sarah Cottrell: I have. In fact, I have a mug from her. It is a great account.

Alex Davis: It's a fun one. I definitely would recommend it. I would recommend you actually taking a test and doing more serious reading for people who aren't familiar, but it's a fun little supplemental account to follow. It's pretty hilarious.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, totally. As we're coming to the end, I just wanted to ask you what advice do you have for someone who's currently working as a lawyer and either is thinking, “Yeah, I definitely don't want to be doing this anymore,” or just thinking, “Maybe I don't want to do this anymore,” what do you think is the best advice that you could give someone who's in that position?

Alex Davis: Oh man. I think ditch this entrenched idea that all that you're trained to do, all that you know how to do is practice law because it is just not true. There is no preordained prescriptive path for lawyers. There are so many jobs that our training prepares us for.

Because when you think about what we learn in law school, yes, it is professional training, yes, it is preparing you to be a lawyer, but think about everything that goes in tandem with that: negotiation, risk spotting, client counseling, attentiveness to detail, issue spotting, and not imagining the capacity to just take in massive amounts of information, there's a reason that this degree is so respected, so highly regarded, why lawyers are respected so much.

Ditch this idea that there's only one path for you because there are a lot. You might need to get creative about thinking about how to leverage your skills in a way that fits a certain company or organization's needs. But ditch this idea that there are not options for you other than being a lawyer because there are.

Then second, figure out what you like and what you don't like. Again, the Enneagram is a fantastic way, but on a nitty-gritty level and maybe less-fun level, just sit down one day, make a list of what you like and what you don't like about your current job, make a list of everything you've accomplished in your job and look for patterns. What are you good at? What do you struggle with? How are your strengths, liabilities, and how are your weaknesses able to be honed, polished up, and parlayed into strength? Just do that self reflection to figure out what it is that you're suited to.

Then once you have a general idea of that, use your network. Talk to people who are out there doing different jobs, ideally lawyers who've left the law, but not even necessarily. Just if someone's job intrigues you and when you see their name pop up on LinkedIn, reach out to them, take them to coffee, take them to lunch. Peruse your law school's alumni directory. Just look for things that jump out to you, look for phrases, terms, job descriptions, and just learn-learn-learn as much as you can.

Finally, this is something I would have to mention, the big bogeyman of money, a lot of lawyers cite this as a huge impediment for them pursuing another job, just remember—this is my soapbox moment—there really are many different ways to make money. Think about is this worth it to you? Is it worth it to you to pick up a second job? Is it worth it to you to downsize your lifestyle? Is it worth it to you and your spouse to change the way you live so you can pursue a different path?

Think about it that way, don't think about it as “There's absolutely no way I could possibly ever take a pay cut because I have loans and because I have a mortgage.” When I left my job, we had just bought a house and I was the higher earner at that point. I was making more money than my husband at that point.

Doing the doc review, even though it was not glamorous, allowed me to do this and it's temporary. Don't let anyone tell you that for financial reasons, you can't pursue something unique, that your loans are an impediment, or that your budget is an impediment. There are things you can do.

Those four points. But just basically to summarize, keep in mind that there's a lot you can do as a lawyer, you have a lot of skills, figure out what you like, what you don't like, draw upon your network and utilize support, and then change the way you think about money. Those are the four bits of advice that helped me more than anything that I really want to pass on.

Sarah Cottrell: I think all of that is really excellent advice, and in particular the money piece just because I know that is something that is a huge mental obstacle for a lot of people. Great advice. As we're wrapping up, is there anything else that you would like to share about your process or just other things that you would like for our listeners to hear? Then also, if there are places where people can find you online to connect if you'd like to share those also, that would be great.

Alex Davis: Sure, absolutely. I would just say as a word of encouragement, one thing that really bothered me when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do was feeling like quitting a job and trying something non-traditional was a very privileged opportunity, but it's really not. It really is accessible to everybody, it really is possible to everybody. Yes, there might be sacrifices involved but just know that you want to try something different. You really can, you truly can.

I had a professor in law school who said that a career path is not a ladder, it's a jungle gym. You don't have to stay on a straight and narrow, it doesn't have to make sense to other people, you can just try different things within reason, and it's okay to pivot. We're in an age where it's increasingly more acceptable for people to change jobs, to pivot, to get on different trajectories.

Remember, it's a job, and it's important to not take it too seriously in the sense that one decision that proves maybe not the best is going to slap a scarlet letter on you for the rest of your career and it's going to completely mess up the rest of your career. Be comfortable with being a little bit flexible. Just remember that we went to law school and got this amazing degree to increase our options, open up doors, not to limit us and sentence us to a lifetime of doing something we don't like. Just remember that too.

You worked hard for this degree, so now let's make it work hard for you. Just listen to this podcast because Sarah's got some great content lined up as much as you can, stories of people who left the law, learn from their stories, meet other people who've done it. I'd love to chat with you. I love talking with people about this. You can find me on Instagram @alexandraelizabethdavis or on my website at davislegalmedia.com. I respond to my messages, I do, so please, I'd love if you leave me one, I'd love to chat.

Sarah Cottrell: Awesome. Thank you so much, Alex, for being on the podcast today.

Alex Davis: Thanks, Sarah. Thank you so much for all the good work you're doing with the podcast as well.

Sarah Cottrell: Thanks so much for listening today. I absolutely love getting to share these stories with you. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show, and come on over to formerlawyer.com and join our community to get even more support and resources in your journey out of the law. Until next time. Have a great week.