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 I want to talk about a question that comes up for many lawyers when they're thinking about leaving the law, and that is, do I need a bridge job? Before we get into this, I first want to talk about what a bridge job is, because I actually think there are two different types of bridge jobs. They serve very different roles.

If someone asks me whether they need a bridge job, this is the first thing that I'm going to ask them. The two types of bridge jobs—according to me—are the following: Exit-ramp bridge jobs and on-ramp bridge jobs.

Let's dig into this a little bit. An exit-ramp bridge job is basically a job that gets you out of something that is toxic, that is really bad for you where you're just like, “I cannot be here anymore and I need something to pay the bills.” It's something I need to get relatively quickly. It doesn't need to be anything other than basically an escape hatch from a bad situation.

Because let's be real, there are a lot of lawyers who are in a really bad situation because there are a lot of lawyers, many of you listening to this podcast who are in very toxic work environments. That is one type of bridge job.

The other type of bridge job is what I call an on-ramp bridge job. This is a bridge job that you look for once you've actually identified the direction that you want to go and you've determined that you need some additional skill set or some additional experience that will help to move you closer to whatever your ultimate non-legal job goal is.

As you can see, these two bridge jobs, while both providing a bridge, one is a bridge out and one is a bridge into something new, so out of something bad into something new. I think this is really important to think about if you hear someone else talking about a bridge job, often people don't distinguish between these two things and there are very different questions that you should be asking yourself if you are thinking about one versus the other.

This is something that we talk about a lot in the Collab. In fact, I am/have upgraded the curriculum in the Collab recently and I'll be talking more about that. But one of the things that I added was a lesson talking about asking yourself this question: Do I need a bridge job and ultimately, what to do and how to figure it out?

I also hosted a panel last fall with some other former lawyers to talk about this question of bridge jobs. How do you think about it? What should you look for? What factors to consider? Etc.

I don't want to get into all of that here because I want to keep it snappy today. But one of the things that I do think is really important, first, of course, is to ask yourself, “When I’m asking myself do I need a bridge job, why am I asking that? Am I asking that because I already know the direction I want to go and I think that I don't see a direct path into that new non-legal role or is it do I need a bridge job because can I handle it here because where I am is hot garbage and I don't want to continue experiencing it?”

To be honest, if I had to estimate rough numbers off the top of my head, I would say 35% to 45% of the lawyers in the Collab at some point end up getting some sort of bridge job.

Some of those are exit-ramp bridge jobs. Some of those are on-ramp bridge jobs. But it's very common for people to decide that they need a bridge job. If you're asking the question, “Do I need a bridge job?” the first thing to figure out or to ask yourself to determine is which type of bridge job am I talking about.

Then the next thing that I think is really important is if you determine that the type of bridge job that you’re thinking about is an exit-ramp bridge job, the questions of “Do you need a bridge job?” is, in that context, not very much about your professional goals. It’s about “Is the environment that you’re in something reasonable for you to continue in?”

Let me tell you, I know that it is hard to walk away from a job as a lawyer, especially if it's a “prestigious job” for a bridge job that people, especially other lawyers might objectively think is not as good.

As you know, if you listen to the podcast, I left my Biglaw job and went to a legal publishing job. I took a six-figure pay cut in order to do that. There were definitely lots of people who thought I was thoroughly out of my mind, and it is truly one of the best decisions that I ever made in my entire life because the environment that I was in was not good for my mental health.

It took a long time for me to even be able to admit that to myself. It took a long time for me to feel like that was an okay thing to do because hello, mind over matter. But if you're someone who's asking, “Do I need an exit-ramp bridge job?” there's a good chance that you are in an environment that is not good for you.

Again, I know I talk about therapy on the podcast all the time, but this is a great question to be asking a therapist because the therapist is in a position to really help you determine whether where you are is stable enough for you to continue or if you should be trying to find something else.

Also, depending on your relationship with the people who are close to you in your life who see the effects of the job on you daily, there is a decent chance that those people might have a perspective on how much you should really be tolerating in terms of misery.

That can be a bit fraught because sometimes the people who are close to us see even more clearly than we do and see that we are experiencing misery that we should not be subjecting ourselves to and sometimes they don't.

Again, I think it is extremely helpful to have a therapist as part of this, if not part of the conversation, just part of the analysis so that you do have an objective third party who can also advocate for you in your mental health, even with you because if you are a perfectionist type lawyer—which many of us are, I'm raising my hand here—you sometimes need someone to help you advocate for yourself against yourself.

That is what I have to say about the exit-ramp bridge job. On-ramp bridge job, I think that the primary question you need to be asking yourself is, “Do I have enough information to know that I want to go in a particular direction, target a particular role? Is it really true that I can't just go target that role and that I really do need to get something that kind of moves me in that direction?”

Often you do, but not always. Sometimes as lawyers, we feel like we need to credential ourselves up or get more experience than we actually need in order to justify pursuing a particular position.

Really, when we're talking about an on-ramp bridge job, the question you want to ask yourself is, “What do I need in order to move into the role that I've identified? Do I actually need some interim role? What does that look like? What role is that role going to play in my career trajectory?” If you can answer those questions and the questions are clear, then you will know whether you need an on-ramp bridge job or not.

Whether you're talking about an exit-ramp bridge job or an on-ramp bridge job, the questions are very different, but they also are elemental questions that you need to answer when you're talking about either of those.

As I said, if you are trying to figure this out for yourself as part of the broader process of figuring out what it is that you want to do, that is not practicing law, you are always welcome to join us in the Collab where many lawyers yourself have made that decision, are making that decision, and where we have resources to help you make that decision among other things. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

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.