Do you hate working as a lawyer? Are you sick of doomscrolling LinkedIn hoping the perfect non-legal job will appear? The Former Lawyer Podcast is hosted by Sarah Cottrell, an ICF-certified career coach who has worked with hundreds of lawyers to help them identify an alternative career. Join her each week for advice and strategies for lawyers who dream of an alternative career, and interviews with former lawyers who have left law behind to find careers and lives that they love.
The Former Lawyer Podcast is a production of Former Lawyer LLC, a career coaching consultancy founded by Sarah that helps lawyers who want to leave law identify the alternative career that is right for them.
Do you hate working as a lawyer? Are you sick of doomscrolling LinkedIn hoping the perfect non-legal job will appear? The Former Lawyer Podcast is hosted by Sarah Cottrell, an ICF-certified career coach who has worked with hundreds of lawyers to help them identify an alternative career. Join her each week for advice and strategies for lawyers who dream of an alternative career, and interviews with former lawyers who have left law behind to find careers and lives that they love.
The Former Lawyer Podcast is a production of Former Lawyer LLC, a career coaching consultancy founded by Sarah that helps lawyers who want to leave law identify the alternative career that is right for them.
Lawyers often describe feeling like they can never fully turn their brains off. Even during downtime, there’s a sense of waiting for the next email, the next call, or the next fire to put out. It’s not simply overthinking. It’s the body staying on alert, a nervous system trained to expect that something could go wrong at any time. Sarah…
The first year after leaving the law is a strange mix of freedom and fatigue. There is relief in stepping away from billable hours, but the exhaustion runs deeper than expected. Sarah Cottrell hears it constantly from clients. They imagined a clean break. Instead, it feels like living in a body still bracing for impact. At first there’s quiet. The…
Lawyers often find themselves in a familiar loop. Work is unbearable and the thought is, I need to get out. Then things calm down. The urgency fades. It suddenly feels manageable. Until the next impossible deadline, the next abusive comment, or the next late night at the office. The whole cycle starts again. Annie Little, who has been a guest…
Caring about what other people think doesn’t mean you’re shallow or weak. It means you’re human. For lawyers especially, this shows up again and again. Sarah Cottrell sees it with almost every client who joins the Collab. One of the first reflection exercises she gives them is to look back at why they decided to go to law school in…
You’ve been in therapy. You’ve talked through your career. You understand, logically, that your boss’s mood isn’t your responsibility, that your worth isn’t measured by productivity, and that burnout doesn’t mean you’re broken. And yet… you’re still panicking every time Outlook pings. You’re still second-guessing every boundary. You’re still bracing for impact. For many lawyers, this is the point where…
2025 is more than halfway through, and if you told yourself this was the year you’d leave practice, this is your check-in. September is basically here, which means four months left in the year. That’s still plenty of time to make progress. And honestly, the start of fall always feels like a reset — school year vibes, even for those…
