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 Matt Wheat, a single dad who left the law to become a firefighter. Matt spent most of his legal career in various public interest law jobs. While he was still practicing law, Matt started serving as a volunteer firefighter, fell in love with firefighting, and ultimately left legal practice to make it his full-time career.

We'll get to the episode in just a second but I just wanted to remind you that if you are looking for more support in your journey out of the law or your process of deciding whether or not leaving the law is right for you or what you want from your career as a lawyer, all of the resources that I have created both free and paid, you can find in the resource vault which is linked on the main page of the website. Just go to formerlawyer.com and at the top, you'll see resource vault and you can click on that and see all of the options that you have. Okay, let's get to my conversation with Matt.

Hi, Matt, welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Matt Wheat: Ah, how are you?

Sarah Cottrell: I'm great. I am excited to hear your story. I think we got connected because you saw The Former Lawyer page on Facebook and reached out. Why don't you introduce yourself to the listeners and we'll go from there?

Matt Wheat: Alrighty. Well, my name is Matthew Wheat. My friends call me Matt. I'm from McComb, Mississippi which is a very small town. I'm a single dad. I have a seven-year-old son who lives with me full-time. I went to the University of Mississippi School of Law in Oxford Mississippi and I graduated there in 2007. I was sworn into the bar and started practicing in 2008. I practiced full-time until about 2015, early in 2015 might as well say 2014. In 2015, I was hired at Meridian Fire Department and I became a full-time firefighter.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Let's start back with law school. You said you graduated in 2007, what made you decide to go to law school in the first place?

Matt Wheat: Well, honestly, I wanted to do it, I believed in it, I believed in justice, and grew up, you go to school and teachers, parents, and all these people sometimes, they treat students and kids unfairly and only want to hear one side of the story. Growing up I was consumed by the injustice of that. I guess I was drawn in all we're trained that to account for that, you know that there's going to be two sides to every story and you want to hear both sides. We're trained to hear both sides and listen to them and then make a decision that's unemotional. That really appealed to me and I guess that's what I went into it with the mindset of, and too, I thought it would be a good career. I think my heart started out in the right place with it.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. You said you feel like you had this internal drive for justice or against injustice since you were a kid. When you were young, were you already connecting that with, “Oh, that's what lawyers are involved in,” or was that something that came later? Did you know lawyers?

Matt Wheat: I think that came later. It's portrayed that way on movies and television series and such as that they portrayed this as a very noble profession and almost heroic in some ways. I guess as I grew up seeing that stuff and as I became more aware of the world and how things work, I guess yeah, I did make that connection and gravitate that direction.

Sarah Cottrell: Got it. By the time you went to undergrad, were you already thinking, “Oh, I want to go to law school,” or was it still not totally set in your mind yet?

Matt Wheat: It was pretty well set by the time I got to my junior year and was starting to put in applications for that kind of stuff my senior year. I applied to some other things more as a backup but law was my primary goal.

Sarah Cottrell: Got it. Did you go straight through to law school from undergrad?

Matt Wheat: I did.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I did as well. For me, it was a little bit more of I just think the law is interesting and I have an international studies and leadership studies double major, which I feel like doesn't have a lot of practical skills attached to it. Anyway, that's a separate issue.

Okay. You went straight through to law school, you got to law school, and when you got to law school, was it what you expected? Did you have a vision of what law school would be like? If so, did it match up?

Matt Wheat: Not really. I didn't know what to expect. I guess in my mind, I was thinking it would be very similar to undergrad and it really wasn't. The reading was totally different and the Socratic method was a big thing. It was a very big picture. I guess I was thinking it would be more of a small-picture way of learning but they teach you the big picture. I think that there are all these gaps that you have to pick up as you start practicing and whatnot. It doesn't teach you the little things, the little things you have to learn on the job.

Sarah Cottrell: I know I have talked with a lot of people who had a similar experience to me which is, like you started studying for the bar and you were like, “Oh, there are actual laws that have specific definitions,” whereas law school is teaching you, like you said, more of, like they say, the how to think like a lawyer. Then of course, you get into practice, and again, similar, it's like, “Oh, I don't know how to do any of these things.” What type of law did you end up practicing when you graduated?

Matt Wheat: Well, I've listened to your podcast and I think my experience, a lot of the lawyers that have been on this show were really, really top of the class at prestigious law schools and they went into these jobs that were really, really important jobs at Biglaw firms and such as that. My experience was a little bit more, I guess you'd say, normal small-town lawyer. When I started in 2008, the job market was not very good. I've been out of it a few years now so I really don't know if it's bounced back or where it's at, my finger's off of the pulse of it. But when I started, it was terrible.

In the town I grew up in, there are no firms. It's maybe a partnership or two. It's mostly solo practitioners and nobody was really hiring. I found a lawyer that was willing to let me use some of his office space and I started hustling taking court appointments for public defender work. I was doing okay with it and it was interesting and all that, learning. But when you're first starting out and maybe forever, I don't know, I didn't stick with it long enough, but your income is up and down and it's hard to budget because one month, you'll make great money and the next month you don't make anything. I guess I was looking for something a little more steady.

I took a job seven or eight months later with the state working at the department of human services. They had me handling child support and paternity cases. That was pretty much it. We would set up child support orders, we would establish paternity, we would enforce the orders where needed and that was pretty much it. Along in that time, I ended up getting married. My wife at the time wanted to go to University of Mississippi also, do her undergrad so we ended up moving back to Oxford and I ended up getting on it at a pro bono firm there in Oxford called North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. It was under LSC. It was a public interest. All I've done is public interest law.

Sarah Cottrell: I think one of the things you brought up is just really important. We've talked about this a little bit on the podcast. Maybe I've talked about it in interviews that haven't released yet at the point that we're talking but, for sure the job market for lawyers starting in 08 and beyond definitely took a major hit. We've talked about that many times in the podcast, the way that the financial crisis affected that. But the other thing that I think is just really important, and this is something that I talk with people about in my regular life all the time, people who are asking for advice about going to law school and I think the statistics these days, I think there's something like they're only enough JD required jobs for 50% of the people graduating from American law schools every year.

Honestly, when I went to law school, I had no clue that that was the case and I don't know how aware people are these days when they decide to go to law school. But I think that I have been in conversations with people where there's this assumption of, “Okay, well, that's not great but somehow, that won't affect me.” I will be the one who isn't affected by that. But the reality is that's a huge disparity in the market and it's going to have effects. What was your experience? Do you feel like that was something that people were aware of? We're talking about before you went to law school.

Matt Wheat: Well, I don't know, I don't want to speculate too much about what other people knew or what the law school knew, but I felt good about it in 2004 when I entered law school because you sit there at orientation and they're bragging to you about the job placement rate and all this stuff. In my mind, I didn't start feeling nervous about it until after I graduated and really started looking. But other people, I don't know but I definitely think that labor is a commodity like anything else, and supply and demand affect it. If you just look at the numbers, Mississippi was graduating 250 a year at Ole Miss and we have a second law school in Jackson at Mississippi College and they're graduating another 175 probably so you're talking up over 400 attorneys a year entering the job market versus UMC which is the state's only medical school and they only graduate 100 a year.

Then you look at it and go 100 doctors and people needing doctors and the price of health care and all that going through the roof and having these waiting lists to get in to see a doctor and they're double booked. You look at that profession and go, “Man, they're undersupplied,” and then you look at us and why do we need four times more lawyers in this state than we need doctors? Maybe that's a side rant but I asked myself that same question.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. This podcast is all about side rants. But yeah, and not even to impugn the motives of individual law schools or people but I just think it's my observation that there seems to be a little bit of a collective like everyone thinking that they're the exception to the rule. I think that's part of why lawyers can get in such a bad situation because just because there is a significant oversupply of people graduating with JDs. It's something that I think is being talked about more but still not necessarily enough because I know that I often talk to people who are considering law school and don't know this, haven't heard it, and are surprised.

Certainly, if you're getting into a situation, especially where you're going to be taking on student loans, it's information that I think people really, really should have, it sounds like you agree.

Matt Wheat: I do.

Sarah Cottrell: That's something that I cannot talk about enough honestly. That's one of my many side rants. Basically, you said that you did various types of public interest. When you started working for DHS and doing child support enforcement, at that point, how are you feeling about the actual job in terms of did you enjoy it, how did you feel like it fit with what originally led you to law school, your feelings about justice? Talk to me a little bit about that.

Matt Wheat: I don't know. I guess if I'm honest about it, I became a little bit disenchanted with it, that's a pretty thankless job honestly. I respect anybody that is involved in public interest law and that in particular but it felt like to me everybody, no matter what I did, wound up mad at me. My client would be mad because it wasn't enough money, my party opponent is mad at me because I took too much money, the judge is mad at me because I didn't settle the case.

It just felt like a really thankless job and you started to see some of, I'm trying to be careful about what I say but some of the double standards that exist unfortunately, and that bugged me a little bit. It diminished this notion that it's this noble thing a little bit. I still believe in it, I still want to believe in it.

Sarah Cottrell: I think the mental and emotional toll specifically of public interest work can be really significant. I know we've talked about it some on the podcast and I've also just heard other people who have worked in public interest jobs talk about it. Even if you're doing something that's really important, it can just be very hard, it can be very difficult, especially when it's day in and day out and it gets to be a bit of a grind I think.

Talk to me a little bit about the timeline. How long were you there? Then tell me a little bit about the job that you were working when you were in Oxford with the legal aid organization.

Matt Wheat: Okay. I'm having to think back myself. I want to say it was about a year and a half, I was at DHS and by the time I got married, we moved shortly thereafter up to Oxford. In 2010, I started in legal services and I enjoyed it much better. It was an enjoyable experience because it was more broad. We handled all kinds of different stuff, a little bit of everything. Before, I'm just doing criminal law and then I'm just doing child support and so I still felt phony or unprepared because I didn't feel like a real lawyer. I didn't know all this stuff that other lawyers knew.

When I went to legal aid, there was a lady there named Nora Rasco. She'd been a lawyer longer than I've been alive and she's still there. She was my supervisor and I learned more working under her in two months than I did the whole time I was in law school and the two and a half years I was practicing law up to that point. It was a good people and just a fun work environment for the most part. It has issues like everything but I could have stayed in that job, it wasn't something that I just hated or dreaded getting up and going to. It's not a lot of money but as far as just a better work environment, I really thought it was a much much happier place to work.

Sarah Cottrell: You say there was like a blend of work. Was it both civil and criminal? What matters did the organization handle?

Matt Wheat: It was strictly civil. Because of the volume of cases that come through there, everybody was calling and had all kinds of different problems and they couldn't help everybody. They just don't have the time, the resources, the number of attorneys, or any of that stuff so they tried to prioritize and only get directly involved as in court appearances and such as that with cases that they deem to be an emergency under their priority. Things like bankruptcies, if they were looking at a foreclosure on their home or if they were looking at having their vehicle repossessed, if they had a garnishment on their check, those were things where time was of the essence and they needed all you right this minute so that's an emergency.

Divorces were not really something that they got too directly involved in unless there were children involved and any type of domestic abuse, anything like that, we would go in and say we got to file for divorce on this and handle the restraining orders or anything like that that needs to be done. If there were children involved and if say, a client received summons, they got a court date, and they're looking at maybe somebody taking custody their child away, time is of the essence again, they got a court date so something like that. We jump on it but stuff that could be put off, if it wasn't considered an emergency, we couldn't get involved in everything.

But we didn't do any personal injury, we didn't do any estates. There were no estates, anything like that but just about anything else in between. We did bankruptcy, social security appeals, youth court cases, almost anything else.

Sarah Cottrell: Got it. It sounds like, to your point about your supervisor and just the work of lawyers in general, having a good mentor supervisor as a lawyer, especially as a young lawyer or early in your career is just so important because that's literally how you learn what to do. That is really great. You said you liked the work but ultimately you ended up leaving there, can you talk to me a little bit about how that happened and what your thought process was?

Matt Wheat: Well, it was during that time frame that I started volunteering with the local fire department in Lafayette County Mississippi. I don't quite know what drew me there. To this day, I can't think back and go, “What was the moment where I decided to go sign up and become a volunteer firefighter?” But I guess something was just a little bit of a void or something. I needed some sense of fulfillment, some sense of being involved in something bigger than me and so I went down there, I signed up, they had a training class that had just started to become a certified volunteer firefighter. I went down there, took that class, just fell in love with it, and just caught the bug.

It wasn't an immediate thing. I didn't immediately go down there, resign, and say, “I'm going to be a firefighter,” but I kept volunteering, I kept working at legal services, and I started the process of becoming a professional by looking around seeing who was hiring in applications, going to interviews, all that stuff. It took me a while to actually get hired somewhere because again, the job market's still in a recession and the jobs just aren't that easy to come by in any industry. I had a little bit of a hard time and it was I guess 2011 maybe when I first started volunteering and then it was 2015 before I got hired.

You're talking about a four-year window between the time I started volunteering and the time I actually got hired professionally. It wasn't out of just disgust, being too stressed out, or anything to do with the job I was in, it was just more of a job and not something I was passionate about versus finding something that you really just fall in love with. It was something I wanted to do more. It's not that I didn't want to do this, I just wanted to be a firefighter more.

Sarah Cottrell: Tell me more about that. You said that you just fell in love with it. Tell me what about it you loved and how that compared to being a lawyer.

Matt Wheat: I just love going fast, kicking in doors, saving lives, and being a badass. It is the greatest job in the world, that's all I can tell you about it. Anybody that has ever thought about it, I recommend doing it, you won't regret it.

Sarah Cottrell: That's awesome. So you started volunteering in 2011 and at that point, you said you don't really remember exactly what brought that about and so it sounds like you weren't thinking at that point like, “Oh, I'm going to go volunteer because I want to change careers.”

Matt Wheat: No, you're exactly right. It wasn't that so much. At that point in time, I guess my marriage wasn't going well and I was unhappy at home more than career-wise and so I was just looking for some release outside of that and it all worked out. I have no regrets about anything.

Sarah Cottrell: You said you left and took a job as a firefighter in 2015 so between 2011 and 2015, how soon after you started volunteering did you realize, “Oh, hey, I actually want to do this”?

Matt Wheat: Pretty soon after that.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. One of the things we talk about a lot on the podcast, because this is something that comes up a lot with people who are thinking about making a change from working as a lawyer is how people react when you decide you're not going to work as a lawyer anymore, can you talk to me a little bit about that if there were any reactions from people in your life and how you handled them?

Matt Wheat: From the lawyers that I had worked with and become friends with, they were all supportive. None of them said, “Man, you don't need to do that.” It was like, “If that's what you want to do and you love it, we don't blame you a bit.”

My parents on the other hand, not that they were upset or unsupportive but they had helped me an awful lot and I'm thankful to them, they helped me financially going through school and I guess they may feel a little bit like some of that money they spent helping me with apartments and such as that, maybe that was wasted or something. I understand that but your parents want you to be happy too so I don't think it wasn't anything major. I didn't have anything that was just like, “Wow, this is a huge backlash,” it was never a moment like that. Maybe a little bit of resentment you feel coming.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it's interesting that you mentioned that the lawyers that you knew instinctively were like, “Yeah, totally. I completely understand why you would go and do this other thing.” I guess I'm assuming your parents aren't lawyers, and maybe they are.

Matt Wheat: My brother is a lawyer.

Sarah Cottrell: Oh, good times, but I think it's interesting because I have found this to be true, and I know this has been a couple of other people on the podcast have mentioned this as well, that there almost is more understanding from lawyers than from people in your life who haven't worked as lawyers as to why you might want to leave and do something else.

I think part of that is just that other lawyers are more aware of what the day-to-day is like as a lawyer and I think people who aren't lawyers maybe just see the title, the schooling, and the reasons why you might want to stay as opposed to the reasons why you might want to leave. Was that your experience or did you have a different experience?

Matt Wheat: No. That's pretty consistent with what I saw. I do think there's a misconception about the legal market and how much money lawyers are making nowadays and stuff like that. I think in a lot of people's minds, non-lawyers, they act like you're throwing away a lottery ticket or something and it's like I made more money than most people in Mississippi but I never got rich at it, like I gave up a six-figure job to go be a fireman.

I think it's perception. There are the lawyers, whether they are making a lot of money or not, they have to keep that perception up so they're driving fancy cars, they got fancy suits, all that stuff and some of them are a month away from bankruptcy. You don't ever really know. But I think that the public perceives lawyers as all making money.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think that's right. It's interesting if you look at the statistics on lawyer salaries, there are a few jobs where people make quite a bit of money, this is like coming out of law school, the traditional Biglaw amount and there's very, very little in that middle ground. Then there's quite a bit in the much lower like 30s, 40s, maybe 50s range and I think, like you said, I just don't think there's a lot of awareness about that, certainly, not amongst people who aren't lawyers but even amongst people who go to law school, the fact that there isn't necessarily just an even distribution from a lower range to a higher range, which I think is generally what people assume but that's not really the case.

I think you're right, I do think that some lawyers try to maybe maintain a certain facade of what it is to be a lawyer, but yeah, that's interesting. So 2015-2019, you've been working as a firefighter now for four years and not lawyering, talk to me a little bit about that change, some of the benefits that you've seen from that. I guess you are saying that it wasn't so much that you were like, “Get me out of this lawyer” thing, it was more, “I really want to do this other thing.” Talk to me about what you think people should think about if they're thinking about making a change like that.

Matt Wheat: Well, fortune favors the bold. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do in life. I took a little bit of a pay cut to do it but as a firefighter, the shifts are totally different. We work 24-hour shifts and then we have two days off for every day we work. You're working 120 roughly shifts a year and that's a lot of days off. Almost all firefighters have side jobs, do other things, and make up the income. There's a lot of overtime available so it's a lot of flexibility. You can just take your days off and spend time with your family.

My son's at an age where he wants me around and I want to be around. I've spent a lot of time with him with the free time that I do have now. It's a slower-paced life and I enjoy that. It ain't for everybody. Some people may be bored of tears or miss the hustle bustle. I was not one of them. For me, I would just say you just gotta search your own heart. If it's something you feel like you need to do, you gotta take a chance. I think life's too short.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think there have been a couple of people who I've had on the podcast who have talked about having a big moment that has made them realize what you just said, which is life is short. But I think you don't necessarily have to have that one big moment to have that realization. This is something else we've talked about on the podcast quite a bit, which is I think sometimes when you're working as a lawyer, you can get into this mindset of, “Oh, going to do something else is this huge deal that is just super crazy.”

I don't know what your experience has been but I find that that kind of thinking about career or job, not everyone thinks that way. There's a little bit of a lawyerly way of thinking about it. I think part of it is having gone to school and invested the money. I'm not saying there's no basis for it but I do think that sometimes, we overcomplicate it, and like you said, if there's something else you want to do and you're interested in doing it, maybe just do that. That is part of why this podcast exists.

Matt Wheat: I agree. The law is always there. I've kept my license up. It's inactive. It's on inactive status but I've kept it up where if I ever want to go back and do it, it's still there if I want to go back and give it another whirl. But right now, I'm not at that place. But I would say keep that in mind too that you can always come back to this if you get out there and tried something and it ain't what you think it is, at least you tried it. Go back and do law again.

Sarah Cottrell: If you were talking to someone who was thinking about going to law school and was not yet a lawyer, what advice would you have for that person?

Matt Wheat: If they're passionate about it, if they look at it and say, “That's what I want to do and I'm motivated by more than just money,” then I would say do it. It was a good experience for me. I made a lot of really close friends. Some of them I still stay in touch with and I had fun. But again, my experience was different. I wasn't at the top of my class. I wasn't just locking myself in a room and studying all the time. I had fun. I went out. I did things and I don't regret it for the memories I have.

I don't want to discourage anyone from going out there and experiencing any of that but I would just say make sure that it's truly something you want to do beyond just a paycheck. If you're just looking at it for the money, then no, absolutely don't do it. But if it's something you truly are passionate about, then I don't want to discourage anybody.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think to your point about if you're just in it for the paycheck, don't do it, I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the things that they said was there are a lot of ways to make money, there are a lot of ways that you can make money. If you think like being a lawyer is the way that you should do it and you're doing it for the money as opposed to some other reason, then it's probably not going to be something that you are going to end up being happy with. That is 100% true.

If someone's listening and they are not so much in the position that you were where they're like, “Oh, there's this specific other thing I want to do,” versus “I don't like being a lawyer,” if they're more in the “I just don't like being a lawyer and I want to do something else” position, do you have any advice that you would give to them or what would you suggest that they do?

Matt Wheat: Well, that's a tougher question. I don't know that you could ever advise someone, when you become a lawyer or any job you start working, you start accumulating things, you start accumulating bills and such as that, you're going to have to have some plan, you can't just say, “I'm going to quit,” and just sit around with the bills not get paid, obviously your common sense has to kick in and you got to come up with something. I would just say contemplate, spend some time thinking about it, and ask yourself what might you rather do and figure out a way out of it.

But don't stay in it forever just for that reason. Don't say, “Well, these bills have got to be paid so I'll just grow old practicing law doing something I hate.” I would say really spend some time meditating on it and figure out your escape plan and make it happen.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I know we've talked about this on the podcast before but I think often, people fall into really black-and-white thinking where it's either “I know exactly what I want to do and I should leave right now. Who cares about any of the practical things?” or “I'm not sure what I want to do and therefore I'm just going to stay here and it's terrible but those are my options.” I am sympathetic to that because I think for me, that is a little bit where I was mentally when I first was starting to think, “Huh, maybe I don't want to do this forever.”

But it's not that black and white like you said. You can take the middle ground. You can make a plan even if it's not “I'm leaving today.” You can ultimately end up doing something that you enjoy more and don't hate which is good. That's a good thing to do to not spend your life doing something you hate if you don't have to.

Matt Wheat: Absolutely.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay, as we're getting to the end of our conversation, Matt, is there anything else that you would like to share about your story or anything else that we just haven't had a chance to touch on yet?

Matt Wheat: No. I really can't think of anything. I think we pretty much covered most of it. I appreciate you for having me on.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing your story. If people are interested in connecting with you, is there someplace they can find you online?

Matt Wheat: I have an email address they could reach me at.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay, I can put that in the show notes for anyone who is interested in connecting with you. Thank you so much for coming on, Matt. I really appreciate you sharing your story and I think that there are a lot of things in your story that people will relate to.

Matt Wheat: I hope so. Thank you for having me.

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.