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 something that is almost going to sound so obvious that when I first say it, you might just be like, "Why? Sarah, why are we talking about this today?" And that is the fact that you are allowed to change your mind.

At first blush, it's like, "Yes, of course, you're allowed to change your mind, right?" But the reality is that for so many of us who are lawyers, we may know that in some theoretical sense, but the reality is we often don't feel like we actually can change our minds. By that I mean, there’s so much pressure once you become part of the legal profession to not make any mistakes, for lots of reasons, including not wanting to commit malpractice, which is a good motivation.

But here’s the problem. Most people who become lawyers have some level of perfectionist tendencies. I used to say that I wasn't a perfectionist, and the reason for it was like, "There's just no way I could possibly do things perfectly." Yeah, spoiler alert, that does not make you not a perfectionist. Being very aware of your flaws, failures, or missteps does not mean you're not a perfectionist. In fact, that means there’s a high likelihood that you are in fact a perfectionist.

Anyway, that was a bit of a detour. But here’s the thing, you've got a bunch of people who, by personality, are fairly perfectionist. You've also got a bunch of people who have gone into a profession, in part because they have this sense of, "This is going to make people respect me and look at me a certain way." Then, you've been trained in law school and in practice to choose a position for which you advocate, and the goal is to maintain that position.

For people with that type of personality in this type of profession, when you start thinking, "Maybe I actually don't want to practice law," or, "Maybe this isn't all that I expected," or even for some people, they may start out in law and like certain aspects of it, and then have various life circumstances happen that ultimately make them go, "Actually, I don’t know that this is the right fit for me anymore."

But there is this pressure because of all these factors that I've talked about to not change your mind. There is this sense often that people have that, "If I decide the law isn't the right fit for me, or if I decide that if I've told myself forever that I love research and writing, but in fact, I'm sort of coming to realize that maybe I don't love research and writing, or maybe I did at one point, but things have changed," it can be very difficult for most lawyers to just acknowledge that to themselves.

It's much more likely that we double down and are like, "No, I really do. Loving research and writing is part of who I am." I say this a little bit flippantly, but I think anyone who's listened to the podcast for any length of time knows that I, Sarah, the host of the show, am intimately familiar with this way of thinking and this type of resistance.

There is this sense, I think, both in our profession and for lots of not great reasons in the wider world right now, that changing your mind is a sign of weakness. That looking at your situation, looking at all the facts, looking at your circumstances, looking at other people's circumstances, whatever, and saying, "Oh, I thought one thing and I was wrong, and actually this other thing is true," is a sign of failure, a sign of inadequacy.

The thing that is so mind-blowing about it is when you step outside of that kind of thinking, you realize, "Oh, this is just common sense. This is just letting the facts of a situation actually inform the way that I think about it."

I think that it is so easy as a lawyer, when you're working in a law firm in particular, to have this sense of, "I don't like this, but we're all here, and we're all doing this. So even though I have this sense that I don't like it, I'm not going to let myself really feel that or think that or acknowledge it because that is, in some way, a weakness."

And I just want to say, first of all, everyone changes their mind about things, big things, small things. It is human. And not only is it human, but changing your mind based on new information, being able to integrate new information, or maybe not even new information but newly realized information, like, "Oh, I didn't realize that these things were true about me, and now I do", that is an adult way of thinking. That is a mature way of thinking.

Anyone who has young kids, which, as you know, I have two elementary-aged kids, I think of this resistance to reality, resistance to new information, as a very toddlerly thing. Anyone who has interacted with a three-year-old or a four-year-old has had the experience of telling their child something the child is not happy about, and then they tantrum. Because they, we need to go outside, or we need to leave this place, or you need to put on shoes, or whatever.

And I think that we have been fed this lie as adults that changing our mind is somehow weak or proof that we're a bad person. But in fact, I think changing your mind, like I said, is a very mature way of thinking. And the alternative is to be childish in our thinking, to be so resistant to our reality that we would rather pretend that the thing we thought was true is true.

So what I want to encourage you to do is, if you have this sense of, "Oh my gosh, if I change my mind about whether practicing law is right for me, or whether I like certain pieces of the profession that I've been telling myself I like and that's why I'm here," or even things like—this one comes up a lot—people went to law school because they really cared about the good of the community and helping people. Then they get into the profession and find that they are not able to help people or the community in the ways they imagined they would or could.

And people feel trapped because they have been telling themselves, "But this is the way that I help people." The reality is, there are lots of different ways to help people and to achieve the goals that you hope to achieve. The fact that at one point you thought that was going to be through practicing law, and now you're questioning that or don't necessarily think that's the case, that's just taking information you didn't have before and letting it inform your decision-making.

Which is wisdom, right? To be able to take on board new information, especially information that makes you realize, "Oh, I didn't necessarily have as broad of a perspective as I thought I did," or, "Oh, I didn't necessarily have as complete information as I would have preferred." That demonstrates a level of discernment and flexibility that is actually pretty exemplary.

And yet somehow, because of the perfectionist tendencies of so many of us who are lawyers, and because our profession is so oriented around staking out your position and then defending it at all costs, it can be very hard to see changing your mind as something that's good.

So yeah, that's why we're talking about it today. A lot of times, I'll be working with people, and as we're talking, it's clear they have developed a different opinion about different aspects of their working life than they did when they first started on the path to law school and becoming a lawyer. But it's also hard sometimes to let go of that. And I think this sense that it's not okay to change your mind is part of what plays a role there.

So if you're someone who's thinking about leaving law but struggling, I would definitely take stock and ask, "Do I feel like it's okay to change my mind about this?" Because maybe I feel like it's okay to change my mind generally, but for some reason, it feels like it's not okay to change my mind about this. What's that about?

And hey, if you have a therapist, this would be a great thing to talk to them about. "Yeah, I've realized I have a different perspective on my working life than I used to, but I'm struggling to actually let it inform my behavior." A therapist can help you work through all of that, like why, what's going on there, and how to move forward.

So once again, a plug for therapy on The Former Lawyer Podcast, shocking, I know. But yeah, it's okay to change your mind. It's actually good to change your mind in many situations. You don't have to be afraid of it. That's all I have for you this week. 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.