The Former Lawyer Podcast

You worked with a career coach because you wanted to figure out what to do instead of practicing law. Maybe you took assessments, learned more about yourself, and even had a good experience with the coach. Now you're at the end of that process with more information about yourself, but even less of an idea of what you should actually do next. When you're super burned out and going to a to...

When you're thinking about leaving law, it's easy to convince yourself that you don't have any transferable skills. You've spent years learning how to be a lawyer, and so much of what you do every day feels specific to practicing law. It's hard to imagine how any of that experience would be useful in a job that has nothing to do with the legal profession. Something that la...

If you want to leave law but have no idea what you want to do next, it can feel like you need to figure out at least a few possible options before you are ready to get help. For a lot of unhappy lawyers, though, the problem is not choosing between several clear career paths. Everything outside of practicing law feels like a complete black box, and they do not even know how to start figuring out wh...

Being laid off from a legal job can create a lot of anxiety, financial and otherwise. If you’ve been laid off, you’re worried that a layoff might be coming, or you’ve been through one in the past, there are very real practical concerns that come with losing your job. We all have bills, we all need to be responsible adults, and sometimes getting another job practicing law is the choice that makes s...

Staying in a toxic law firm because you want to help change it can feel like a good reason to stay. You want to get to a position where you have more influence and can use that influence to make the environment better. The question is what staying long enough to get there is costing you along the way. The harder part is that toxic environments can change your sense of what is normal or acceptable....

When leaving law feels like letting other people down, it can become much harder to take your own unhappiness seriously. For lawyers who are women, first-gen, people of color, or part of another historically underrepresented group, there can be a very real sense that being in these spaces is not just about them. Their achievement can start to feel tied to representing other people well and showing...

Your law job may feel more unsustainable than it used to, even if you were managing it fairly well before. Maybe you already knew the environment was not great, or that the work itself was never especially sustainable, but you were making it work. Now, all of a sudden, it feels completely impossible and you are wondering what changed. For a lot of lawyers, the instinct is to turn that question inw...

“There’s a reason they call it a job.” “If it was fun, everyone would do it.” “The grass isn’t always greener.” Lawyers who hate their jobs hear some version of this all the time from people outside of the legal profession, usually when they are trying to explain just how miserable their work has become. There is a kernel of truth in the idea that every job involves some amount of work, frustratio...

When you start thinking about leaving the law, it is really common to realize that some of what you are trying to figure out is about your career and some of it goes much deeper than that. You may need help understanding what kind of work would actually be a good fit for you while also untangling why quitting feels so unsafe or why disappointing other people feels almost impossible. That is part o...

You can know that you do not want to keep practicing law and still have no idea what you want to do. You may not even know what you could do. A lot of lawyers assume they need to have some sense of the answer before they can start when the process is actually designed for people who are in exactly your position. Part of what makes figuring out what comes next so uncomfortable is that there is no a...

After years in the law, it can be easy to believe that creativity simply is not part of who you are. Maybe you stopped making time for things you used to enjoy, or maybe you decided a long time ago that being artistic was not practical, serious, or something that fit with the kind of person who becomes a lawyer. That belief can shape more than what you do outside of work. It can also shut you off...

If you have been thinking about joining the Former Lawyer Collaborative, now is the time. Enrollment is closing permanently on August 31, 2026, and while the program will remain open for another year, this is the last chance to join the community and work through the Former Lawyer Framework with Sarah’s support. In this episode of The Former Lawyer Podcast, Sarah Cottrell talks about why she decid...

In today’s episode, Sarah is back again with Annie Little discussing the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber . The final misery covered in the book is the misery based on knowing that one is doing harm. The most obvious example of this as lawyers would be representing a person or entity, and they are asking you to do something that is itself harmful. While these situations may arise, people tend t...

In today’s episode, Sarah is back again with Annie Little discussing the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. It’s part of a series of podcast discussions diving into the miseries of a bullshit job, and today, it’s time to dive into the third misery that comes with bullshit jobs. If you missed the first two, go back and catch up. See show notes at formerlawyer.com/189

In today’s episode, Sarah is back again with Annie Little discussing the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. It’s part of a series of podcast discussions, so check out the others before and after this one. Graeber gives four reasons why having a bullshit job feels so miserable. Last week’s discussion was all about the first reason— ambiguity and forced pretense —catch up on that one first. Then,...

This episode is part 2 of the series where Sarah is chatting with Annie Little about the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. If you missed the first episode in this series, check that out first and learn the background of this series and more about Annie . This episode is about the misery of ambiguity and forced pretense, which is the first of four things Graeber identifies as an impact that havi...

Sarah revisits the Bullshit Job series on today's podcast with Annie Little, another lawyer career coach. Annie has been on the podcast a few times in the past, like the episode on ADHD . She founded her company, JD Nation , and helps lawyers find better jobs, both in and out of law.  In this new series, the two of them discuss the book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber and dive into s...

In legal practice, it is easy to start measuring yourself by whether you can cover every detail, do everything perfectly, and keep grinding through whatever is in front of you. If that is not the way you are wired, it can feel like there is something wrong with you, instead of recognizing that the job is rewarding a narrow set of behaviors. Alex Su describes this as game selection. In business rol...

Listen, it's the summer of 2026. Everything is a dumpster fire, and there are a lot of people who have been struggling a lot with their mental health, especially in the last two years. Sarah's seen a lot of clients take mental health leave or after taking mental health leave.  This episode serves as a reminder that even though it's not available to everyone, because it depends a lot...

Leaving the law when you’re already burned out can feel impossible, because the job you need energy to escape is the same job draining all of your energy. You may understand that you need to figure out what comes next, but when you are scraping by energetically, even one more task can feel like too much. That is where a lot of burned out lawyers get stuck. They assume that if they do not have hour...

Going to law school felt like the right call. For some lawyers it felt like the obvious call, backed up by experience, by personality, by everything they knew about themselves at the time. So when practicing law turns out to be a bad fit, the harder part is that the decision felt so right going in. If they were wrong about something they were that sure about, how can they trust themselves to choos...

Somewhere along the way, most lawyers picked up the idea that once you commit to something, you follow through. No exceptions. So when the thought of leaving starts to surface, it doesn't feel like a career question. It feels like there's something shameful about admitting your original decision was wrong. But the decision to become a lawyer was made at a specific age, with a specific am...

Lawyers who know they want to leave often get stuck in the same place. Not because they don't want to move, but because they're waiting to feel certain about what comes next. Sarah Cottrell sees lawyers who won't make a move until they have a new 20-year plan with an absolute guarantee, and while they're waiting for that, nothing changes. Zach Reisch didn't have a master p...

When lawyers start thinking about doing something else, the first thing they reach for is almost always the resume. It feels like real progress. It produces something tangible. And for lawyers who are used to having clear work product, that matters a lot. What actually happens is the opposite. You sit down to revise it, you stare at a bunch of legalese you wrote years ago, and within an hour you&a...

On paper, Amy Terwilleger’s life as a lawyer looked great. Partner at a regional firm in Florida. Deputy general counsel. Thirteen years of business litigation. Married with two kids. And the whole time, a constant restless feeling she could not shake. What Amy eventually figured out was that she was living somebody else's perfect life. The things that mattered to her, her values, the way she...