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.

Let's talk about why values are step one for any lawyer who is wanting to identify an alternative career or another job that's a better fit and what it means if you feel like you want to skip it. The reason I'm bringing this up is as you may know, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, my framework that I use with my clients, whether you're someone who is working through the process in a self-paced way in the Collab, or we're working together one-on-one, either way, one of the very first things that we're going to do together is we are going to talk about your values.

I'm going to offer you some different exercises that allow you to explore what the values are that are really important to you that you want to inform your career decisions. I find values to just be so essential. I'm sure you've heard me talk about it on the podcast if you've been listening for a while, because one of the things that tends to be true for lawyers, so lawyers are, generally speaking, highly competent people who are able to do many things, a lot of us are in these jobs where we've developed skills and we're very good at things, but we don't necessarily like them, one.

Then also, there is often an element of regardless of whether or not we like the work we're doing, it isn't aligned with our values. That can mean a lot of different ways. Sometimes when I talk about values, people think of like, “Oh, well, if I really care about a particular issue, or there's a particular value that's very important to me, then I need to go find a job that's directly focused on that value.” Sometimes that's the case. For example, some people, some lawyers, when they're working on their values, one of the values that is very important to them is family.

First of all, that can mean many different things. One of the conversations we will have, if you're someone who identifies this as one of your values, is like, “Well, what do you mean when you say family is important to you?” So for some people, they mean being able to have time to travel to see family. For some people, they have a group of found family that they want to be able to have time with and literally have time to see.

For some people, when they say family is an important value for them, they are talking more specifically about parenting. All of these things are impacted by your job in different ways. When I say that often what creates a lot of our discomfort or dislike of our jobs is this violation of values, part of it can just be like, if your job is structured in such a way that it doesn't allow you to give the time to the things that you value, then that's going to be a huge problem.

Another example of a value that comes up a lot for people is autonomy. Depending on how your workplace is structured, depending on the type of law you're practicing, depending on the type of people you work for, there are lots of different ways that autonomy can be violated in your job as a lawyer. That doesn't mean that you necessarily need to go out and find a job that's about autonomy. Does that make sense?

However, it is very difficult to identify a job that is a good fit for you if you are not clear on your values. I know that there are some lawyers out there who will hear me say this and they think that the values and going through their process is a waste of time. I know that because I once had a lawyer who was interested in working with me as a career coach, they wanted to hire me, but they were like, “But I really don't want to spend my time on values and stuff because basically I don't want to waste my time on that.”

I ended up telling that person that I didn't think that we would be a great fit since that is a pretty bedrock part of the work that I do with my clients, and I referred them out. I suggested several other career coaches who might be a better fit for them. I know that if there's one person, one lawyer who has had this thought, I'm sure that there are others.

I get it, values can feel very amorphous, values can feel very much like, “I want to get out of this job and this is not revising my resume or applying to jobs, or anything ‘concrete’ so this feels like it's just distracting me from what I really should be doing,” etc.

The problem is if you're a lawyer, it's one thing if you are like, “I don't want to be a lawyer and I'm very clear on the fact that I want to do X, Y, or Z and this is the path to do that. I know what the path looks,” and you're really just in need of help executing going in that particular direction.

For most of the people who I work with, for most of the lawyers in the Collab, that is not the case. Most of the lawyers who I work with would say to me, "I know that I don't want to be doing what I'm doing and I have no idea what it is that I do want to do and I don't even really know where to begin in figuring it out."

If that is the position that you are in as a lawyer, it is going to be incredibly difficult to identify something that is a really good fit for you without doing a bunch of different things, but one of the most fundamental is values work.

Because of everything that I talked about earlier in the episode about the ways in which your values so fundamentally affect the way that you experience your job, the satisfaction that you have in your job, and the fact that values matter independently from even whether you like certain job tasks that you have to do, or whether you're good at job tasks that you have to do, even if you are good at the individual tasks, if the overall job does not align with your values, the ones that are the most important to you, if it feels like there is a conflict or there are conflicts there, it is going to be very difficult to have job satisfaction in that job.

If you're someone who is listening to me talk about values and is like, "Ugh, that feels like a waste of time," then I think that tells you one of a couple of things. One, it could be that you already know what it is that you want to do, and really for you, it's just a question of executing going in that direction.

Two, it also can be an outgrowth of like, "Wow, this environment that I'm in is so bad, I just need to get out ASAP. Every moment that I'm here is terrible.” In that case, I have tons of clients who end up going to a bridge job, one that often is more aligned with their values than the one that they're in but ultimately that gets them out of the one that they are truly incompatible with while they figure out what they really will be compatible with.

The third thing is I find that for most people, they have to reach a point where they really believe that one of the fundamental problems that are creating their unhappiness in their current role or their unhappiness as a lawyer is some values mismatch in order to see why spending time thinking about what their values are in the context of a career search or a search for an alternative career makes sense.

A helpful exercise for everyone who's listening if you're in a lawyer job that you're like, “I don't like this job. I want to get out” is to give a little bit of thought to “What is it about this job that I don't like, and in particular are there particular values that I have that are being violated in this job?”

There, of course, are a million values exercises out there. I use [inaudible] with my clients, and then I also use an exercise that [inaudible] has made available online, and that's just to capture a couple of different ways of thinking about values. Whether you use one or both of those or any number of other options that exist out there, obviously I think it is definitely worth thinking about your values.

For all of these reasons, this is why values work is front and center in the work that I do with lawyers so that when they make a move, it is the right move for them and it has the highest chance of being a satisfying, good, and ultimately rewarding career step. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening. I absolutely love getting to share this podcast with you. If you haven't yet, I invite you to download my free guide: First Steps to Leaving the Law at formerlawyer.com/first. Until next time, have a great week.