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.

Hello, everyone. This week on the podcast, I'm sharing my conversation with Toya Gavin. Toya practiced law for over 10 years, eventually opening her own practice before finding herself struggling with severe depression. After re-examining her life and her career goals, she started her company, Legally Bold, where she coaches and consults with women with JDs who are dissatisfied in their careers or who are trying to transform their side hustles into full-time careers.

When Toya contacted me about sharing her story about struggling with depression on the podcast, I knew that I had to have her on. As you probably know, if you've followed me for any period of time, one of my goals is to break the stigma around talking about mental illness so that people who are struggling and suffering are able to get the help they need. We'll have a quick word from the sponsor for this episode. Then it'll be right to my conversation with Toya.

This episode of The Former Lawyer Podcast is sponsored by my eight-week small group program, 8 Weeks to an Exit Plan. If you're an unhappy law firm associate, I'm going to guess that speaking from experience, you're a little bit cynical about most things, especially anyone telling you that they can help you find your way to a better future. I've been there. Done that. That's what landed you in law school and look how that turned out. I get it. I want you to know that I'm not offering you some bright and shiny quick fix that won't pan out for you. In 8 Weeks to an Exit Plan, you really will get clear on where you need to go and what you need to do in order to leave the law. We will nail down an individualized plan that covers all the prongs of what I call The Former Lawyer Freedom Framework that any successful plan for leaving the law needs to cover. It really is simple, which is not the same as saying, "It's easy." But it's worth it, and with my help, you will be able to make a plan that works for you. The group is capped at eight spots. Grab yours now at formerlawyer.com/group.

Sarah Cottrell: Hi, Toya. Welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Toya Gavin: Hi, Sarah. How are you?

Sarah Cottrell: I'm good. How are you?

Toya Gavin: I'm doing good.

Sarah Cottrell: I'm super excited to talk with you. Let's start with you just introducing yourself to the listeners.

Toya Gavin: Okay, sure. Hi, The Former Lawyer Podcast listeners. My name is Toya Gavin. I'm a writer coach. I still pay my bar dues so I still have a law degree. I'm the creator of Legally Bold. The tagline for that is I help women make an income and impact with their law degree. But really, what that means is that I coach and consult with women in two ways. The coaching piece is for women who are dissatisfied with their careers trying to figure out, "Okay, what to do next?" and making a plan of action to do that. Then I also help aspiring legal entrepreneurs transform their side hustles or whatever they might be doing into full-time careers. Yeah, I made that transition about 18 months ago.

Sarah Cottrell: That all sounds super interesting. I want to know more about that, but first, as always on this podcast, I want to go back and talk about how you ended up deciding to go to law school in the first place.

Toya Gavin: I've been listening to your podcast and I feel like a lot of lawyers have similar stories about how they just ended up in law school or just always wanted to go. I think I've fallen that I always wanted to go route, like when I was a kid, I'm actually a twin. I have a twin sister. She always wanted to be a dentist and she's a dentist. I always wanted to go to law school, I went to law school. But what's interesting about my path was that I wasn't the type of lawyer who only did well in writing and arguing. I was really, really good at math and science. I actually got a scholarship to college for the engineering program.

I was going back and forth not about going to college about what I was going to major in because I still am into engineering and problem solving. I just find it very interesting. During my first year in college in the engineering program, I was going to switch to poli-sci because again, I always knew I'm going to law school. Luckily, I met a dean who I became very close with. He's like, "Yeah, engineers can be lawyers too." He set up this lunch with a bunch of former alumni who were lawyers and engineers. I talked with them. Most of them were patent attorneys but we talked and then I was like, "Oh, okay. I can do both right." I finished up undergrad with an engineering degree, then I went to law school. That's how it happened.

Sarah Cottrell: When you got to law school, how was that for you? Did you get there and you thought, "Yes, this was a great life choice"? Did you get there and think, "Maybe, this is not totally what I was expecting"? What was your reaction to the law school experience?

Toya Gavin: The law school experience for me was jarring. It was when you come from an engineering discipline, there's a lot of math, there's a lot of science, there's a right answer. Eventually, you'll figure it out and you'll get to somewhere. With the law, there are arguments on both sides and someone makes a decision based on whether they believe your argument or not.

The camaraderie that I felt when I was in engineering school where everyone was like equally confused or miserable but we all worked together to figure this out, law school was much more competitive, much more like everyone's trying to get like this brass ring thing, like, “I want to be in the top 10 of the class.” Even though you might have study groups and things like that, you always felt you were in competition with your former classmates as opposed to being on a team. I wasn't necessarily used to that. Of course, I did find friendships and all that, but it was very new for me.

I also went to law school. I went to George Washington University Law School here in Washington, DC. It was my first experience meeting people whose parents were lawyers. They were generational lawyers. Their father was the partner of this firm. People who knew the game of the law. I was the first person in my family to go to law school. I didn't really know any lawyers. I come from a family of educators. There are teachers, guidance counselors, and things like that. It was just very like stepping into a new world for me when I went to law school. I don't think I really got my footing until maybe the second year.

The whole first year, I was very much like, "This is a lot happening. This is a lot. What's going on here?" I wasn't used to that experience. I think most lawyers, you always did well in school, that's why you're in law school. You just tend to do well. I thought I did well all these other times, I'll do well here, and I wasn't in the top 10% of the class. I didn't do horribly but the experience was much more jarring for me and that I think reflected in my work during that first year.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I also don't have any lawyers in my family. I didn't really grow up around any lawyers like family, friends, or anything. This seems to be a pretty common story just in terms of people I talk with on the podcast, choosing to go to law school and not really knowing anything about what the legal world is like in a practical way. Like you said, as opposed to someone who maybe has family members who are lawyers and there's a whole legal dynasty.

I know I've talked about this in the podcast before, I honestly don't think I even knew what the typical salary for a lawyer was, not Biglaw, I don't remember even thinking or asking about that in making my decision. I went straight through from undergrad to law school but I look back on that and I just think, "What?”

Toya Gavin: Right. I was the opposite. I was keenly aware that lawyers made a lot of money. That was one of the driving factors through, or at least that's what we were told from television. I should say that, and from what you see just culturally, you think lawyers make these impassioned arguments and they win cases. Then they get in their fancy car and they have the hottest clothes. They make a lot of money. I think that reality needs to be dispelled for a lot of people. Lawyers aren't broke by any means but we don't make, as a career, a whole lot of money. The top 10% is the top 10% of any class but then there's the other 90% of the class that still has to make their way.

I think there's something like the majority of lawyers are either in solo or small firms. I think the average salary in 2012 was like $50,000, which is nothing. I know that's 2012, but most lawyers have to work your way up. You think when you go to law school, you're going to start at the top. You think you're going to be able to buy the French Riviera. No, you're actually just going to have an apartment and be paying these loans and working like anybody else.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. Well, $50,000 is not terrible but it's quite difficult if you have $200,000 plus in student loans. It's interesting. My husband is also a lawyer. We often are approached by people who are thinking about going to law school and wanting advice about that. What you were just talking about is something that we frequently talk with people about that there still doesn't seem to be a lot of awareness around which is things like there are only enough legal jobs, like JD required jobs, for 45% to 50% of the people graduating from law school in the US per year. Of that amount that are available, those jobs that require JD, not all of them are a Biglaw type. We're talking about all legal jobs that exist on the whole salary spectrum.

Like you said, also the effect of the ranking of the school that you go to where you are in the class, all of these things have a significant impact on what type of job you can get. I think that the legal market has rebounded some from where it was maybe 10 or so years ago, but they still, I don't think, have rebounded to the level that it was maybe 15-20 years ago.

All of these things are really relevant things to be considered if you're someone who's thinking about going to law school and the information is out there. I don't know what your experience has been but I find that we all think that we're going to be the exception to the rule, to the extent that people even know this information. They often tell themselves things like, "Well, I'm a hard worker. I'll be okay,” basically. The reality is that there are a lot of people out there who are hard workers and that's not the only thing that will affect where you'll end up with a law degree.

Toya Gavin: There are a couple of things I think like the legal field where we do a disservice. One of them is the pedigree thing where it's like the top 10% of your class or your 50% or whatever, all these rankings, if you're a doctor, you're just a doctor. No one asked in a job interview whether you were in the top 10%. It's like, “Can you do this job and help the people that you're meant to help in this capacity?” The same way with a CPA or any other profession. But the legal profession is very pedigree oriented. I think that does a disservice because it makes you feel you're less than. That just affects how you perform and what you're going to do. It's a totally arbitrary thing.

I think particularly in law school, at least my law school, we had one exam a semester. That should not determine whether you'll be a good lawyer or not. I listen to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast as well, I'm a big podcast listener, called Revisionist History. He talks about the legal career and just that setup of you have one exam and it's supposed to mean something about your entire career path, and it means very very little. I think that's one thing.

Then I think what you were talking about as well in terms of there not being as many jobs that are like JD required jobs, I think that's again where our profession does a disservice. We don't talk about the skills that you actually learn as a lawyer, that you can use in any industry. You finish law school and you start working as a lawyer. If you're dissatisfied, you really have this feeling of, "I'm not qualified to do anything else." That's totally not true. You can do so many things but there's not a focus on the underlying skills that would be transferable in other professions or other jobs.

Because of those numbers, there's just not enough jobs in this one field to service these highly intelligent, highly educated people. I think it would be better if law school started saying, "This is where you could use your law degree in all these areas,” and be happy, but we don't do that.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I agree. I also think—this is a much more complex conversation but we can tease out today—but the issue of there are all these law schools enrolling students and they're not saying, "Hey, by the way, here's the statistical likelihood that you will actually get any kind of JD required job." I think there's that and I do think that the scarcity of JD required jobs contributes to this artificial pedigree obsession. I'm not saying there are no differences between individual students, I'm not saying there aren't differences between schools on a broad level potentially but to your point, I think there is an element of, "Well, we just need to artificially distinguish between people because we have so many options for possible lawyers. Let's just come up with a way to differentiate.” Does that make sense at all?

Toya Gavin: Yes, I know exactly what you're saying. That makes total sense. For me, just like themes in my life, I think through all the things, I want to help people. I think a lot of people in this profession ultimately were highly educated people who want to help people. The idea that our profession makes us feel we can't make an impact in some way if we don't get this brass ring or whatever, and because of the scarcity of the jobs, I think that does a disservice to, like you said, the people we could potentially help, to the communities that we could create, and then also to ourselves.

I agree with you that law schools need to be more honest about those numbers and JD related jobs. Then if you are working at a law school where you know your student population may not be able to get these “brass ring” or whatever jobs, if you know that, then I think it's about like, “Yeah, these are highly motivated educated people who can do something right, who are talented, and have the ability to contribute. How can I fashion them with this degree to send them out into the world and to make those impacts?” We just don't think about it that way. We just think like, "Oh, should have been in the top 10%." It's not answering the question. That's not helpful.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, 100%. You're in law school, the first year you're like, "Wow, this is intense.” You get into your second year. Where were you at the point where you were graduating? Did you, at the point that you were graduating, think “I'm going to like being a lawyer." “I'm not going to like being a lawyer,” where was your mindset at that point about working in the law?

Toya Gavin: At graduation, my mindset was that I wanted to pursue this legal career. There was another guest you had on who said something and I thought the same thing. I thought it was like a hazing process, like, “I'm joining a fraternity. This is clearly the hazing. Once I make it past this part, I will have all the rights and privileges of being in this fraternity.” I was gung-ho about becoming a lawyer and doing the thing. That's where I was when I graduated.

Sarah Cottrell: What work did you do when you graduated from law school?

Toya Gavin: Yeah. When I graduated, you would think that having an engineering degree that I did patent law. That would make sense, but no. I had an internship in patent law when I was in law school, doing patent applications and all that. I didn't love it. I liked the engineering and the inventions. I wasn't really very excited about the patent prosecution aspect.

What I did well in law school was criminal law. I ended up first working for a local government doing legislation and contracts. Then I went over to the prosecutor's office. This was in New Jersey. I was a prosecutor for a number of years. Then in 2015, I left the prosecutor's office and opened my own solo practice.

Sarah Cottrell: What kind of work did you do once you opened your own practice?

Toya Gavin: Yeah, my practice was completely different. I went into business law. I did a lot of online entrepreneurs as well. The energy of criminal law is that you tend to see people at their worst moment. I wanted to deal with clients who were in a different path, they were excited about something new, they were doing new and interesting things, and really wanted to get into business, online business. Intellectual property side, not patents, but I did really love trademarks, copyrights, and stuff like that. I started my practice doing that.

Sarah Cottrell: Tell me about the meta level through those years with the government and the prosecutor's office, then into your own practice. That whole time, were you thinking like, "I like this," "I don't like this," or "I don't like this but maybe I'll like this other thing"? Where were you in terms of your thought process about, "I want to be a lawyer," "I don't want to be a lawyer"? Tell me a little bit about that.

Toya Gavin: Through the prosecutor's office and working as a government attorney, there were definitely more times than not where I felt like I don't necessarily like this. I don't like what I'm doing. But I think lawyers have a mentality of just like, “Just do it. Just keep going.” We often don't stop to think about how we feel about something. It's almost as if—I think this might be in the American culture generally but particularly for lawyers—there's this idea that you're not supposed to enjoy what you're doing.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, no. We definitely talked about that here before.

Toya Gavin: Yeah. There's this idea somehow that if you just do the work anyway, if you're an adult and you're a responsible adult, you just work. So what if it doesn't feed your soul when you're not happy? In our culture, there's just a lot of jokes about people pursuing things that make them happy as if they're flighty, as if they are not willing to work hard, and all those things. I don't think that's true. Just to answer your question, through those years that's how I was feeling when I was at the prosecutor's office and all that. I was not very happy. I accepted that as, "This is what's required."

When I opened my own practice, I was elated. It was so much fun. But I realized in hindsight that it wasn't necessarily the legal work, it was the business aspect of things. It was figuring out new software and figuring out how to run a location-independent law firm, learning about new things, and entrepreneurial things. That's really what the passion of it was for me. I really, really enjoyed that. But what ended up happening for me, maybe right around the end of 2016 into 2017, is that I had my first experience, or the first, I guess, diagnosed experience that I was aware of with clinical depression. That's when my whole life shifted.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, talk to me more about that. I know that I've shared before on the podcast about my own experience of having diagnosed anxiety panic disorders. I think there are tons of stuff out there about the high incidence of depression and anxiety amongst lawyers as a profession. I'd love to know more about your own experience. Also, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are about why that is so common in the legal profession, and what you think—well, I was going to say what you think we should do about it, but I'm not even sure—what your thoughts are about that.

Toya Gavin: Okay, I do have thoughts. Yes, as you mentioned, depression and anxiety are very, very common in our profession. I think 28% of attorneys experience depression at some point during their career, 76% of us are dissatisfied with our careers. We have high rates of substance abuse, all of those things. When I went through my depression, I think I was going through different aspects of anxiety and panic issues going back to law school but I'd never gone to a doctor or really thought about them other than you need to push through this. Like, “This is a moment,” or “You're stressed because you're taking the bar exam.” I didn't recognize it at the time for what it was.

Around the end of 2016 into 2017, I always say my body and my mind were like, "Yeah, we're on strike" They have been trying to talk to me for years and I was not listening. I think a lot of lawyers do this. We keep doing the work but we don't listen to ourselves about how we feel, almost as if our feelings and what we think are invalid. Around that time I was sleeping a lot, crying all the time. I would schedule myself to get up earlier because I knew it would take me a long time to get ready because I would cry and that doesn't make sense. You're scheduling to get up earlier so that you know you can deal with these long periods of crying. Something is wrong. But no, I kept going.

I thought I had all sorts of medical issues. I had gained weight even though I was working out harder than ever. I was often confused. One of the things that I think people don't talk about depression is it affects your executive functioning, your abilities to make decisions. If you're a lawyer, you have to write briefs. You have to do whatever you're doing. My work became that much harder for me. Everything became anxiety producing. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't open my email. Physically, I could feel myself breathing hard just thinking about opening my email. I actually hired another lawyer who was a friend of mine to open my email, read it to me, and then I would respond back to her. She would type what to say because I couldn't do it.

I can laugh at this now, but at the time doing these things made total sense. Your body was telling you to stop. The ultimate thing that happened was just one day, I was just crying and I couldn't get ready. I called one of my best friends. She was just like, “Yeah, so you're not working today.” I was like, “I don't know what you're talking about. I have things to do. I'm building a business,” whatever. She's like, "Yeah, no. This is not okay. You're not doing this."

She was at work at the time. I remember she left work. She came to my house and was just like, "Yeah, we're going to talk this through but by the end of the day we're going to go and see a therapist or something. This is not okay." That was the beginning. I thank god for great friends because she was the one who was just like, “Yeah, no. You need a break from this. Something is happening to you.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. This is not actually normal.

Toya Gavin: This is not actually normal. I think lawyers, one of our great skills is we can figure out anything. If you give us enough time, we'll read all the things, we'll do all the things, and we'll figure it out. But that's also our Achilles’ heel because I have figured out all these workarounds to a mental illness that was really affecting my day-to-day life. That day, I started seeing a therapist. It took me a while, even with the therapist, I decided to take a break. I pare down all of my cases and I had to take a break because I didn't want to keep going and end up ruining the things that I've built.

The way I could explain that is for me, depression was like living my life underwater in an olympic sized pool. Every day, I had to walk across this pool on the bottom of it and I would pare down my day to the smallest things possible just so I could make it across. Taking a shower felt a lot. Getting out of bed felt a lot. I was making my life smaller and smaller so that I could make it across this pool. I can get up to breathe, like, “Just do that.”

Eventually, what will happen, and what I learned from therapy, is that if you don't do something about it, you're going to give up, you're just going to be like, “Whatever happens, I can't keep fighting this water to walk across.” When you give up, that's when lawyers have issues. That's when—this is me talking, no therapist—I believe the substance abuse comes in, that's when lawyers start making mistakes. They may have issues with the bar, ethics issues, and all of those things. I think that's all a part of not taking the time for yourself and recognizing that I need a break. I'm not okay. I got to figure out what's happening with me.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I didn't have the same experience with the emails in the sense of not being able to open them but I remember distinctly sitting at my desk at the firm and I'd see an email pop up, the little envelope in Outlook, I would just feel sick. At the time, it didn't really occur to me to be like, “Hey, maybe this is not normal, not a reaction that indicates that everything is okay with me.” I was not diagnosed with my anxiety disorder until after I left Biglaw but then, once that happened, I was like, “Oh, so many things.”

Even going back to when I was much younger, like my teen years, so many things made so much more sense. But to one of the points that you made, I think that it's so normalized to feel negatively about your job as a lawyer, to feel “stressed out”, that I think people can be struggling and not even realize that it's a struggle or that it's something that they should be dealing with.

Sarah Cottrell: This episode is sponsored by my eight-week small group program, 8 Weeks to an Exit Plan. Do you find yourself spending way more nights in the office than you would like to the point that you never want to see take out sushi or a sweet green salad again? Are you an associate and know that you don't want to make partner? Heck, you don't even know if you want to be a lawyer, but the thought of trying to figure out what to do next is totally overwhelming because you feel like you don't know how to do anything else. Are you sick of hearing yourself complain about how much firm life sucks but have no idea where to go next? Hey, what about your student loans? I get it because I've been there. In 8 Weeks to an Exit Plan, we'll work together to craft your individualized plan to leave the law so that you can move forward with confidence. We'll develop the essential elements of a strong and comprehensive plan to make your path out simple. Imagine, in less than two months time, having a strategy and timeline for leaving the law personalized for you. This will be a reality if you join me and the other participants of this program. Go to formerlawyer.com/group for more information and to enroll.

Sarah Cottrell: I know that was true for me for sure and it sounds like it was also true for you.

Toya Gavin: Definitely, I agree. I think there were times, way before this major episode happened, that were markers where it's like, "Hmm, maybe you should relax for a second or there's some anxiety here." I also think in our profession, when you're dealing with cases, there is no debrief after a case. Say you're working on something and it has a particular importance to you or impact for your client and you want it to go a particular way or whatever.

Whether it goes your way or it doesn't, there is no time for you to sit there and process the disappointment if it doesn't go your way, or just the relief of, "Okay, it did go my way. Now what?" There's no talking about that. You just move on to the next thing. Those things take a toll on you. We don't have and we're not given the tools to work through those things in our profession.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. What I want to say to everyone who's listening is if you don't have a therapist—I know I've said this before and you're like, "Sarah, we get it. You love therapy."—but you need to go, see a therapist. Because lawyer, former lawyer, just someone who's listening, just go see a therapist because you need someone who has some external perspective on your situation. Especially, as a lawyer, there are frequently things that you are experiencing that you may not even realize are having the impact on you, but they are.

Toya Gavin: No. I 100% agree. Once I started going to a therapist, I'm like, "This should be required. You have to go once a year, your yearly health check. Why aren't we requiring this? This would have been so much more helpful.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, for sure. Because I didn't start going to therapy until after I left Biglaw, I was like, "Wow, this would have been a good idea to not have waited this long." I don't know if you hear this but I know, because I'm open about my experiences with mental health, I get a lot of people talking with me and asking questions. I think there are a lot of people who think, "Oh, well it's not that bad," or "It has to be really bad for me to need to go to therapy." My recommendation is always like, “If you're thinking about it, just go.”

There's no level of "badness" that it needs to reach in order for it to be something that will benefit you. Ultimately, if you aren't someone who's going to benefit from therapy, a qualified therapist will tell you, they'll be like, "We've worked on what we need to work on. You're good." Therapy people.

Toya Gavin: No, I think every adult, if you haven't been to therapy, you need to go to a therapist. My therapist, he wrote about—and he talks about parenting—but he essentially said, "Every parent is a bad parent not because they don't care or whatever, but it's really how the child is interpreting whatever they're learning from their parents. Inevitably, because you're a child and your brain isn't fully formed, you misinterpret things.”

When you become an adult, you need a way to re-parent yourself under a new set of circumstances so that you can make it through this life and feel good about yourself. That's a skill. It's like anything else. I guess some people pick it up but most of the people that I know that have picked it up are because they went to therapy.

Sarah Cottrell: 100%. So 2019, talk to me a little bit about what has happened over the past couple of years.

Toya Gavin: Yeah. Once I went through that whole period—being depressed, and taking a break really just figuring it out—I started doing all this research about lawyers, depression, and all this stuff, and realizing that it's like an epidemic, no one talks about it, then also that we're just unhappy. I was just like, "Yeah. No, I'm going to do something about it,” and started legally bold with that purpose. I just knew too many lawyers who were unhappy with their career. I knew that I could help them figure out something different.

That's what I've been doing through my platform since then. Again, I help primarily lawyers but I've helped other professionals figure out what your underlying skills are, what your values are, and your needs are, to craft a vision for where you want to go next in your career and to instill some confidence that you can do this. You can do this. You can figure it out. You can make your way and you don't have to be 19 to decide you want to do something different. You can do it at any age.

I have three main programs. The two, one's called Release Me, and the other one is called Grow Me, build on the ultimate program which is Peel Back Your Label. Release Me is about figuring out what you want to do next and going through that whole journey of figuring that out. That's the coaching aspect. The consulting aspect is that often, I find that when I'm working with women, they really want to start a business of their own of some sort or do something that's outside of the normal.

If you're not a millennial, I don't know if I'm technically a millennial but if you didn't grow up feeling like, "I can do whatever I want," which is this new generation, which I admire so much, they're like, “Yeah, whatever,” if you didn't grow up like that, you need some guidance to feel okay with starting something new and having a business process for that. That's the Grow Me aspect. Then if you want to do both programs, which is a longer, six-month commitment, we do that together and that's called Peel Back Your Label.

Sarah Cottrell: Got it. It's interesting that you mentioned the generational thing because the episode that released the week that we're recording is my conversation with Morgan Hall. She and I talked about not so much the issue of the millennial generation but her experience of relating with her parents and the different perceptions of career. I had a very similar experience where I think for the generation above—I'm 36, so I was born in the early 80s—the generation above mine I think has a very overall, tends to have a very specific idea about work that you get a job, you keep that job. If you make a bunch of changes, I think you mentioned this earlier, you're being flaky, you're not necessarily being responsible.

If you are are interacting with people who have those ideas, or people in your family, or that's even your own experience in terms of the ideas that you were raised with, I think it can be really challenging as a lawyer to think about making a move because lawyers are nothing if not responsible. But not every profession has the baggage that lawyers have around making a career change and doing something different.

There are plenty of people—and again, we've talked about this in the podcast many times—there are plenty of people in other professions or jobs where they're like, "Oh, this isn't working for me anymore. I'm going to go do this other thing." It's not this commentary on their moral worth and value as a person. But in the law, especially if you're someone who maybe has people in your life with that specific perspective on work like you do a job and you just stay in it, I think it can be really really hard. I think there are a lot of things that keep people in the law but those are some of them.

From your perspective, Toya, what kinds of things do you think make people, or women—because you specifically work with women—stay even if it's not really working for them?

Toya Gavin: One of the first things is just that responsibility aspect. The women that I work with may be married or have children. They definitely have bills and different things that they need to pay for, or mortgage. As you mentioned, just like in our culture, there's this idea that if you go after something entrepreneurial, you have it, and done it by, I don't know, some ridiculous age, like 25, it's just not going to happen, which is like most entrepreneurs are in their 40s. I don't know the statistics off the top of my head but that's not what's shown. What’s shown on television is like this young guy in a hoodie who founded something at 19 and then he's a millionaire at 30.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. We're not all Zuckerberg is what you’re saying.

Toya Gavin: Right. But that's the model. You think like, "Oh, I’m 30. It’s over for me," like, "No, you have a long life to live." In working with women, it's just about figuring out what you can do with the law degree and doing that in a systematic way where you can still maintain your responsibilities. There are ways to do that and to transition into the life that you want.

To your point about generational things, I remember I was at a conference and it was a bunch of lawyers. I forget what the theme of the conference was, but all of a sudden it became this just complaint fest about millennials; how millennials don't want to work, they don't want to do this, and they don't want to do that. I don't feel that that's really what's going on there. I think generationally, they understand that they have to maintain responsibilities too and pay for themselves. I think they've just figured out a way to do it with the internet and things that we didn't have maybe access to when we were younger, or realize that you could make money using these mechanisms in a way that also made us happy.

Because we didn't see that, we don't believe that it's possible. But it truly, truly is possible to raise your family, maintain your responsibilities, save for retirement, and actually have a job that you enjoy going to or a business that you enjoy creating from your home or from anywhere else. There are just so many examples.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I think that's so right. I think part of it is that—and I'm certainly not saying that I'm exempt from this—but our experience defines for us sometimes how things should be in a way that we maybe shouldn't allow it to do for us. For example, earlier we were talking about the pedigree issue in the law. I think part of that is it's this self-perpetuating cycle of like, “Well, so and so did all these things to get into this certain type of school or to get a certain accolade. So that person is incentivized to value that and to think that that is the most important thing when they're looking at people to hire,” or whatever.

In the same way, I think also for people who have maybe made certain career trade-offs or just accepted a certain unhappiness in their legal career, I sometimes have experienced what seems to be almost like, I don't want to say resentment but kind of, almost feeling like someone else's decision to do something different is not just someone else's decision to do something different. It's actually a commentary on their own decision of whatever decision they made.

I think that it's important to recognize, when maybe that's happening, if someone's advising you or just reacting to some decision that you're making career-wise, it's not always about you, it's often about them and how they perceive what you're doing to be some commentary on them. Does that make sense?

Toya Gavin: It absolutely makes sense. Even when I started my law practice, I primarily served online entrepreneurs. There's a community of attorneys going online, trying to do location independent practices, and just serving clients in a new way. When I started doing that, there was a big backlash from other lawyers just like, "Oh, how can you service your clients this way?” There was a whole uproar about the bona fide office rule.

I think it's hard to deal with change and it's also difficult to see people reaching for something that you may have wanted, that maybe at the time you weren't prepared to go after or were afraid to go after. Maybe you feel you can't do that now for whatever reason but what I always like to tell, particularly women, is that we have a long life. You can go after it whenever you decide to do it.

One of the things that I always tell my clients as well is that when I started this whole grand entrepreneurial plan, I just told myself, "I'm going to give you five years". Give yourself five years to figure out what you want just to try it and to see what happens. Nothing's going to happen that much in five years. If it doesn't work out, you've already had a job, you know how to get a job. You probably won't drain your 401(k), you won't be homeless. None of these catastrophes will happen. But if you try something that you're afraid of, that you really wanted to do for five years, and it works out, imagine how happy you would be. Just do it. Just try it.

Sarah Cottrell: I think that that is great advice. Toya, as we get towards the end of our conversation, is there anything else from your story that you'd like to share, other advice that you have, or other things that you'd like to talk about that we haven't already covered?

Toya Gavin: I think what I would want to share with your listeners—I think I want to talk to, I know everyone talks to young people, but I feel like in terms of figuring out like, "I'm going to do what I want," young people are like doing what I want. I think they got that. They have to figure out how to afford these things but they're pretty much determined to do what they want—My message is to women like me and you, in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, who may be questioning whether it's a responsible choice to pursue something that they've really wanted for a long time or to be honest with themselves that they're not happy in a particular situation.

To them, I would just say there are so many resources now online with online courses, with coaches, with this podcast. There are so many ways for you to get information and just to try things. I would just encourage them to take a chance on themselves because they're worth it. Especially if you're a lawyer, if you take a chance on yourself, believe in yourself, and trust yourself, you'll do more than you ever thought possible. You will figure this out. I think that would be my overall message.

For just my business, if you want to know, I write about all these topics, about business topics, about self-confidence, about changing careers, productivity, and all that. I have a blog that's at legally-bold.com/blog. I have a lot of different articles and information there as well that can help you as you try to make these decisions. I also have a resource library. You’ll enter your email and there's a quiz called Stick versus Quit and it has all these questions. It helps you decide whether you should stay with the law or do something else. There's a bunch of different other resources, like books and all these things that they can access through my website as well.

Sarah Cottrell: Awesome. We'll definitely get those links in the show notes. Toya, if people want to connect with you on social media, where is the best place for them to find you?

Toya Gavin: I'm on Instagram @legally.bold. I'm on Facebook. Legally Bold is my page as well. I mentioned my website earlier, legally-bold.com. I do have a Twitter account, it's @ToyaGavinLaw, but that's probably not the best place. I'm not tweeting all the time. I do love Instagram though. I'm pretty active on Instagram mostly.

Sarah Cottrell: Awesome. Well, Toya, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. For me, mental health and the law is a really important topic that's near and dear to my heart so I just love that you are able to share your own experience and I hope that it will really benefit lots of people and everyone will go get a therapist.

Toya Gavin: Yes. Thank you, Sarah, so much for having me, for your tenacity, and moving forward with this podcast and doing this for our community because we need it. We need this information, so I appreciate you too.

Sarah Cottrell: Thank you so much.

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.