The Former Lawyer Podcast

In this episode of The Former Lawyer Podcast, Sarah Cottrell tackles a topic that has been coming up in many of her conversations with clients: the overwhelming feeling that you just don’t want to work anymore. 

If you’ve ever felt like you hate working and can’t imagine enjoying any job, especially after working in a toxic legal environment, this episode is for you. Sarah discusses how burnout, particularly in lawyers, can make you feel like you’re broken, but she’s here to tell you—you’re not. She explains why these feelings are common and how recovery is possible.

Drawing on her experiences working with lawyers in her Collab program, Sarah highlights the importance of giving yourself time and space to recover from burnout.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/243

In this episode of The Former Lawyer Podcast, Sarah Cottrell talks with Victoria Collier, founder of Quid Pro Quo Law, about the process of preparing a law firm for sale. Victoria shares her own journey, from building her practice to successfully selling it, and offers critical insights into the steps lawyers can take to make their firms scalable and attractive to buyers. From establishing processes and delegating tasks to cleaning up financials, Victoria breaks down the key factors that make a law firm a valuable asset.

Whether you’re a law firm owner thinking about your long-term exit strategy or simply curious about what goes into selling a legal practice, this episode is packed with actionable advice. Learn how to position your firm for sale, maximize its value, and set yourself up for a successful transition beyond the law.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/242

The Former Lawyer framework has recently received a glow-up, and this podcast episode covers all the fun updates.

Sarah has a few things that stuck out to her and would be the most helpful to anyone considering becoming a former lawyer. She covers those items in this episode to highlight them for all the podcast listeners considering joining.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/241

Today’s podcast episode features a conversation between Sarah and a member of the Collab, Liza Hanks. Liza made a career transition out of practicing law after 22 years, and they discussed how the Collab played a role in her transition and decision-making process.

This conversation is helpful for anyone considering making their transition out of law and looking for some assistance in the process. The Collab has undergone some fantastic updates recently, and it’s a perfect time to join. Read on to learn how it helped Liza ask the right questions.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/240

You may have worked in a workplace or more than one legal workplace where they said that they had a no-asshole rule.

Clearly, there are many people who have worked in similar workplaces because this episode is one of the most downloaded episodes. Again, it's one of the ones I hear about the most from people because there is so much agreement with the fact that the no-asshole rule is, in fact, a myth. Here are my thoughts about the no-asshole rule.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/139

The next episode in our summer re-release series is Burnout is a Feature, Not a Bug. This is one of the things that I honestly think is the most important for you to realize if you are working in a toxic workplace, if you're working in a large law firm, or in Biglaw. 

Burnout is a feature of the way that work is organized in these organizations, it is not something that inexplicably happens that you could have some of life hacked your way out of.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/93

I originally recorded the episode Your Job Should Not Make You Cry back in the very early days of lockdown when I was still editing the podcast myself and needed to be able to edit some shorter episodes, which ultimately I discovered was a happy accident because this episode is one of the most popular episodes of the podcast.

It is one of the most downloaded. It comes up all the time. I hear all the time from people who have sent it to friends and coworkers because apparently there are a lot of us who need to be reminded that your job should not make you cry. If that doesn't tell you something about our profession, I don't know what will. Here is the next episode in our summer re-release series, Your Job Should Not Make You Cry.

The next episode in our summer re-release series is one of the episodes from our Collab member question series. If you've listened to this series before, you know that I asked a bunch of different people in the Collab to answer some questions about their experience, what they've learned, the things that they have taken away from the process of figuring out what it is that they want to do that isn't practicing law. 

This series gets mentioned to me very frequently when people reach out to me. So I wanted to bring it back and highlight it. 

In each episode, you are going to hear a number of people who are answering the same question. In this episode, the question that people will be answering is, “What is one thing that you resisted doing in this process of figuring out what it is that they wanted to do that isn't practicing law, that they wish they had done sooner?”

Listen to the rest of the Collab Member Series

Former Lawyers Share an Obvious Thing that was Transformative 

Myths Former Lawyers Believed Before Leaving the Law 

What Has Been the Biggest Surprise for Former Lawyers in the Collab? 

What Would Former Lawyer Collab Members Tell Themselves Five Years Ago 

Why These Former Lawyers Decided to Join the Guided Track 

Next up in this summer series of the most popular episodes of The Former Lawyer Podcast is an episode that I did about malignant narcissism in the legal profession and specifically signs of malignant narcissism because no surprise, narcissists are very common in our profession and a lot of the things that you experience in your legal workplace that seem honestly a bit crazy making are frequently the result of working with a narcissist or multiple narcissists or being in a narcissistic system.

In this episode that you're about to listen to, I talked a bit about what the characteristics even are of narcissism and in particular, malignant narcissism, and how to identify it.

See show notes at formerlawyer.com/127

The reason that I recorded this episode originally is that so often when lawyers are thinking about leaving, one of the things that holds them back from leaving especially if they work in a law firm is that other people are going to look down on them and think that they're making a terrible decision, et cetera.

I think it's critical to remember, as I talk about in this episode, especially if you are not wanting to be in a law firm long term, that not fitting in is actually a good thing. 

Let's get into this episode, which is one of the most popular episodes of the podcast.