Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I practiced law for 10 years and now I help unhappy lawyers ditch their soul-sucking jobs. On this show, I share advice and strategies for aspiring former lawyers, and interviews with former lawyers who have left the law behind to find careers and lives that they love.

Today we're kicking off a summer series with episodes of the podcast that have been released over the past, well, honestly, almost five years the podcast has been going. These episodes that we're going to be re-releasing are all episodes that have been extremely popular, they're some of the most downloaded, or they're some of the ones that I hear the most about from people, either people who I work with, my clients in the Collab, or my one-on-one clients, or listeners who email me, or like I said, also some of these are ones that have been listened to many times and have a very high number of downloads.

Side note, I recently discovered that the podcast has over 300,000 downloads, and I do not look at stats, honestly, for the podcast, hardly at all. You may have listened to me when I talked to my podcast producer Stacey sometime last year, like I said, I basically just rely on her and her team to tell me the things that I need to know in terms of stats because anyway, I just don't.

But 300,000, that seems a lot. That's very exciting. I just wanted to mention that here. If you are someone who's been listening for a long time, just know there are lots of other lawyers listening along with you and you truly, truly, truly are not alone, even though it can feel like you are the only one who has the kinds of thoughts that the people who come on the podcast share and is wanting to get out and thinks that there are enormous problems in our profession. You are not alone. You are so not alone. You're 300,000 downloads.

Yeah. Okay. So, summer series. As I said, this summer series is episodes that have been extremely popular. This first episode that we're releasing the series is the first of a previous series that we did, which was based on the book Bullshit Jobs.

This is the first episode of that series. It was a five-episode series. We're releasing the first episode today, re-releasing it for you to listen to. If you're interested and you want to listen to the whole series, which I highly recommend, you can scroll back in your podcast app to find those episodes, or you can look in the show notes, and there will be links to all of the other episodes for you to listen to.

This is an episode series that I did with Annie Little, one of my good friends, who's also a former lawyer and a career coach. Her company is the JD Nation. You can find it at the thejdnation.com.

Basically what we talked about in this episode is this book called Bullshit Jobs about the phenomenon of bullshit jobs and how lawyering fits into that model. Without further ado, here is my conversation about bullshit jobs and whether lawyering is a bullshit job with Annie Little.

Today I'm kicking off a series of episodes, conversations with my friend Annie Little, who is another lawyer career coach, talking about the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, and specifically talking about some of the observations that that book makes that are really relevant and helpful for those of you who are lawyers that are thinking about leaving.

So, Annie and I will explain more as we get into the conversation. Today is the first part of the conversation. It's the intro. We are going to be telling you why you should care about this book and what it has to say. Also, talking about and answering the question: Is being a lawyer a bullshit job? Without further ado, here's my conversation with Annie.

Have you thought about joining the Collab but would really like to have some one on one coaching with me as well in order to give you some accountability as you're working with a framework and figuring out what it is that you want to do? The Collab Plus 1:1 program would be the perfect program for you.

You're probably familiar with the Collab, which is my self-paced program for lawyers who are trying to figure out what it is they want to do. The Collab Plus 1:1 program basically takes the Collab, I mean, it's frankly what it's described as Collab Plus 1:1. and on top of membership in the Collab, you also get an eight-week one-on-one coaching experience.

That means that when you come into the Collab Plus program, you get everything you get in the Collab, then you get an eight-week action plan created by me to move you through the framework in those eight weeks. You get 8 weekly 45-minute coaching sessions with me, where basically each week, we're going to meet to talk about what you have worked on that week to figure out what you're going to work on the next week in terms of what's on the action plan.

Then you also have, as part of the program, the Collab Plus Program, several of the assessments that I recommend included. You can always buy these assessments separately and people who enroll in the Collab and do the self-paced program will buy them separately, but if you enroll in the Collab Plus 1:1, you will get a free Clifton Strengths 34 Report and a free CPS Enneagram Compass Report.

You also get access to me via email for the eight weeks and via Voxer if you so choose, which is a voice messaging app for any questions or issues that arise between the one on one sessions. You also get one additional 60-minute one on one coaching session, which you can schedule at your convenience within six months of enrolling so that you have some follow-up support after the eight weeks are over.

If you're interested in this program, you can go to http://formerlawyer.com/collab-plus and you can see all the information there about enrolling. If you're interested, you will not directly enroll from that page, you will book consult with me. We will meet and talk to see if this program is the right fit for you. if it is, I will send you the link to enroll.

I will be doing consults for this program through mid-June and then I will not be doing any more consults until the fall because I'm going to be taking some time off from consults this summer. If you're interested in doing the Collab Plus 1:1 Program, you want to get on my schedule between now and mid-June. Otherwise, we will most likely not be able to talk until the fall when I start to enroll people again.

Of course, as always, if you have any questions, you can email [email protected], just put Collab Plus question in the subject line, and I will get back to you as soon as possible. One more time, to see all the information and to schedule a consult if you're interested, go to formerlawyer.com/collab-plus.

Okay, Annie, I am really excited to have this conversation. Well, we're going to be talking about this book, which is called Bullshit Jobs, a theory, but we're also going to be talking about some ideas and how they relate to lawyering and the things that we've seen.

First of all, a couple of things. One, can you introduce yourself to people who haven't listened to any of your previous episodes? Then talk a little bit about how this book got on your radar because you're the one who told me about it.

Annie Little: Yeah. I'm Annie Little, a former lawyer, just like you, and I'm a lawyer career coach. I founded JD Nation, my company, 10 years ago. Used to be a lawyer, but I love working with lawyers now to help them find better jobs, whether it's staying in the legal profession or leaving.

You may know me from other episodes like the ADHD episode on Former Lawyer and any of the other fun ones that we've done.

Sarah Cottrell: Very popular.

Annie Little: Yes, love it. That can explain how I came around to this book a little bit too because I have a bajillion different interests. I came across this book because I was reading a blog post from Tara McMullen.

She was somebody who helped me when I started my business way back in the day. She, like me, was a religious studies major. I really appreciate her interdisciplinary approach to talking about business and the history of business and all that stuff.

I was reading one of her long-form blog posts because I'm a nerd. She referenced an essay called Bullshit Jobs that came out in 2013 and talked about how it went viral. I vaguely remember that because that was when I left the legal profession and my daughter was born.

I clicked on the link in her huge blog post or whatever, I went to it and I was like, “How do I not remember this better?” Then I saw that David Graeber, who's the author of it, he had just written it on a whim and sent it out, and just went absolutely viral.

It went so viral that he decided to write a book because people wanted to talk about it more. It was just basically talking about and making explicit, I think, what so many corporate employees, including lawyers, and just really across all sorts of industries, this underlying sense of, “God, my job is such bullshit.” He's an anthropologist.

He was able to articulate some of the different things by talking to tons and tons of people and tying them into some of his sociological and anthropological understandings, which I just find fascinating. But of course, in classic “me” form, I'm reading it and I can't just read it and enjoy it. I have to talk about it to anybody who listens, including you.

I'm blowing up your Voxer while I'm reading this and I'm going into these anthropological discussions on capitalism, and I am like, “Sorry, I hope that was interesting for you, Sarah.”

Sarah Cottrell: I was like, “This is super interesting. Actually, I think we should talk about this on the podcast.” As always, this is sort of just like Sarah and Annie's Voxer conversation live.

Okay, there are so many things but I think probably I'm going to title this episode something like, “Is being a lawyer a bullshit job?” To start with that, I want to be clear that is not, in fact, something that I am trying to persuade people of. I know that's true for you as well because we've talked about this.

But the thing that's really interesting, because, of course, I got the book and read it after you recommended it to me, is that the author does talk about interviews that he did with lawyers and in particular, corporate lawyers who identified or characterized their job as a bullshit job based on the criteria he set out.

I think this is interesting and helpful, but also I think that one of the things that I want to be really clear about is that part of the way that a bullshit job is described or defined is there's a subjective component, and as we're talking about this, I think there are really helpful things to pull from some of the research that he did.

Also, I know that Annie and I both are not trying to tell you that your job is bullshit if you don't feel that it is. However, I think what she and I have both observed in working with lawyers who either want to leave a not-great job or a toxic workplace or leave the law entirely is that there are a lot of lawyers who do feel this way about their job and also feel like they shouldn't feel that way. Would you say that's fair, Annie?

Annie Little: Oh, 100%. I think that's a big part of the cognitive dissonance that makes it so hard for lawyers. This was myself included where you're like, “I don't even know what I should do. Is this normal for me to feel this way? Is it just me feeling this way? Am I just a wimp? Yeah, I feel like that contributes to the stuckness, and it makes it really hard for us to see a path forward.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think especially for lawyers who started out or are currently in large law firms who are making a lot of money, especially can have this sense of like, “I shouldn't complain. I'm not entitled to my feelings,” that is actually one of the phenomena that he talks about in terms of the experience that people have in a bullshit job.

We'll get to that later, but I think that maybe at this point it would be helpful to do the lawyerly thing and define the term more specifically, which means I'm literally going to read for everyone this brief working definition that he created of a bullshit job so that you understand what we're talking about when we talk about this.

Here's what he says. His working definition of a bullshit job is the following: “A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence, even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”

Okay, so Annie, tell me your thoughts about that definition and when you read it, how you saw that connecting to the experience of lawyering.

Annie Little: Yeah. I think what, at least I know that this stood out, but it still stands out to me now is having to maintain this front where it's like, “Nope, my job is not pointless,” or, “My job is not bullshit.” I felt like it was having to play this game of like, “Yeah, my job is hard. Yeah, sometimes it feels like I'm not really doing stuff that's particularly meaningful.”

But again, to that point of it's a good job, you know, I have no right to say it's not a good job or whatever. I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I was like, “Does anybody else not see this?” And I'm married to a lawyer, too. I'd be like, “I don't like this just seems.” He'd be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah that's bullshit.” I'm like, “But we're still just going to play along.”

That's just my personal oppositionist too, where if I identify something as being off or inauthentic in some way, I have such a zero-tolerance approach. For me, that was one of the hardest things because when I would see something about my job or my firm or legal profession at large, if I did bring it up to somebody who might be more senior to me, they were basically telling me, “You're taking crazy pills.”

“What are you talking about? No. This is just the way it's always been or we have our reasons for doing it. Just because you think this is inefficient or meaningless doesn't mean it's true.” So for me, that was what felt most bullshit about being a lawyer.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think the other thing that similarly can happen is even if you do see some purpose in your job, there can still be this sense because I can remember feeling like, “Wow, this is horrible.” Not so much about the purposelessness or not of the job, but just the experience of this job for me is soul-crushing, and that seems to be true for a lot of people and feeling so much confusion about how can we talk about this being so terrible, and yet that not result in people being like, “Yes, I want to get out.”

Which is not to say that there aren't considerations and factors you have to take. But for me, that was the piece of it that felt almost like the logical outcome of seeing how bad this is for you as a human being should be deciding to go do something else and the fact that wasn't happening was very disorienting.

In the same way that I think he describes in the book the way that he defines what a bullshit job is, it was sort of that experience for me.

Annie Little: Yeah. For me, in talking to other people, I didn't work in Biglaw, I worked in boutique firms. I was doing sophisticated work, so there was plenty of stuff that fell into this category, but knowing people who worked in really big Biglaw, AM law, 50s type places, even though we were newer associates, they felt like they were doing a lot of cut-and-paste type work in the transactional area and they were like, “Is this for real? Fine, I'm making a ton of money.”

Sarah Cottrell: Did I really go to law school to copy and paste? Is that what we're doing here to run a red line and turn a Word doc into a PDF?

Annie Little: Right, right. Then on top of it, they'd be like, “Plus, even though I'm pretty far removed, I'm billing on these matters, which are helping a merger happen, which is going to create a monopoly in a certain area.”

I remember somebody talking about the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. They were like, “Ugh.” It was like, “Yeah, I had enough work to do this the past few months. I hit my billable targets. But eww.” It's that part where in the book he's talking about part of bullshit jobs is that they have little to no societal value or to take it a step further, they're actually harmful.

We get that cognitive dissonance again. How do we talk about this without just throwing up our hands and being like, “Fine, I'm just not going to be a lawyer anymore.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I also think a piece of that is the idea of making work in the sense that there are people who have this sense of if not my whole industry, then many components of this industry, it's like a self-sustaining thing, but not in the sense that it's creating something else, but that it's creating its own work.

The reason I think this is all so important is that I know you and I both see people really struggle with some of the emotional impacts of being in a job that they’re experiencing in this way that ultimately makes it hard for them to actually think about making a change because as lawyers, they’ve so internalized certain expectations that they feel like essentially they are wrong for feeling the way they feel.

This book breaks down some specific impacts, common to basically all people or most people who are experiencing their jobs in this way that you and I have seen in the clients that we work with as they're trying to figure out what it is that they want to do next.

Basically what we want to do is for the next several weeks, we are going to be sharing conversations where we're going to talk through, he identifies four impacts. Essentially, we're going to talk through each of them and how that might be showing up for the people who are listening, what we've observed in terms of that, and maybe some ways to think about those things and to also give people a sense that they're not alone in feeling these impacts.

I know that you see this all the time as well, most lawyers, if nothing else, are great at making themselves feel like they're the problem, and if something isn't working for them, they need to fix it.

Essentially, I think both you and I have seen people experience the things that he describes in this book in terms of the impacts, the emotional, psychological, and mental impacts of working in jobs like this.

Also, we've seen those specific impacts really make it difficult for people to feel like they can or should make a change. I think part of the point of this conversation and the episodes that we'll be releasing after this and talking about these different impacts that he talks about in the book, it's essentially to help people know that they are not alone if they're experiencing this.

Tell me your thoughts about that. What else do you think people need to know about why we're going to be having this conversation?

Annie Little: Yeah. Well, for me, something that was really interesting as I was reading this, part of why I thought—the book is massive, so apologies, Sarah. You muddled your way through it—but because I saw how large it was, I was like, “Ooh, do I really want to read this?”

But I saw that he used corporate lawyers as examples so many times throughout that I was like, “Okay, I feel like this is going to be relevant.” But I wasn't sure if everything was going to be relevant to lawyers. I found that it is.

Maybe this is just me, but I found that really enlightening and it was almost kind of freeing because I often felt like this stuff was very unique to the legal profession. To be fair, there are aspects of being a lawyer that are unique that very few, if any, other professions have.

It almost gave me hope that these patterns emerge in all kinds of other industries and professions so that it's not like, “Oh, it's just this clunky, archaic legal profession that's dealing with this stuff. It's never going to change because it's so insular.”

I hate that other people are enduring such crap that lawyers are as well. They may not have the same resources that lawyers do to talk about this stuff or to make a change. But I was like, “I feel like this could be perhaps the legal profession, though it's often slower to catch up, that this is part of a larger sort of social change.”

As these things are going to be happening in other professions, to change things a little bit, the legal profession is going to have models of what could potentially be done. Not that that's going to happen soon, but as leadership starts to shift more to, millennials, I think that's going to be really big.

That's always my thing. For anyone who wants to stay in the legal profession, I think it's really important to be talking about this stuff so that when millennials are getting into—and other generations too—but primarily millennials getting into these leadership positions, being able to identify these sorts of problems and start to experiment with ways of doing it differently and having that awareness about it and not going in blindly with it, like, “Well, this is just the way we've always done it. Yeah, it was really awful for me, but too bad. Pay your dues and move on.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think just having that experience of if you’re looking around your legal workplace and you're like, “Why are we doing things this way? This feels totally unreasonable,” people might complain about it, but they're not really doing anything to change it, I want people who are in that type of position, which, let's be real, we know, are a lot of lawyers, to know like, “Hey, you are not making things up. It's not that you just don't get it. The experience that you're having and what you're observing is real and it's not just you.”

Thank you so much for joining me for this. I am really excited. Next week, we will be talking about why when you're in a bullshit job, one of the things that can be a result is misery based on ambiguity and forced pretense. So, stay tuned, everyone.

Are you sick of just thinking about it and ready to take action towards leaving the law? Join us in the Former Lawyer Collab. The Collab is my entry-level program for lawyers who are wanting to make a change and leave the law for another career. You can join us at formerlawyer.com/collab. Until next time, have a great week.