Scroll down to read along with the imperfect transcript
In this groundbreaking episode, I share my journey from the relentless pursuit of big money to the liberating escape from a toxic legal environment. As a leader in the legal profession, I believe this story holds invaluable lessons for every professional seeking balance and fulfillment.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
1. Discover the Dark Side of Success: Uncover the hidden struggles behind the facade of financial triumph, exploring the toll it takes on mental health, relationships, and overall well-being.
2. The Power of Intention and Planning: Learn how strategic planning, coupled with a five-year vision, transformed a burnt-out lawyer’s life, paving the way for a fulfilling transition to Europe.
3. Navigating Disappointments: Explore the challenges of unfulfilled promises and the ultimate decision to walk away from a multimillion-dollar firm. Insights on coping with disappointments and making bold life changes.
4. Reclaiming Personal Well-Being: Dive into the importance of self-care and recovery after burnout. Understand the significance of taking a break, sleeping, and rejuvenating before embarking on a new chapter.
5. Empowering Lawyers for a Thriving Profession: Join the movement towards a healthier legal profession. Gain insights on setting boundaries, managing expectations, and crafting a joyful and thriving life as a lawyer.
Select Quotes from the Episode
“I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I got to the office before him, I left the office after him. I made that law firm what it was. Then, when I passed the bar and got sworn in, I started to try to have the discussion with him – when do we want to start changing the names on everything, should we create a new legal entity, when was my name going on the door and on the bank accounts?”
“I was already running the firm remotely. I’d put the systems in place to allow me to log in and do what I needed to while I was abroad. I did everything that needed to be done to make my firm a multimillion-dollar success.”
“You have me. And you don’t have to put up with whatever you’re putting up with in your lawyer life now. I spend my days helping lawyers – 1:1 and in groups I facilitate and in CLEs and trainings and workshops inside firms – and I would much rather help YOU live your joyful and thriving life, than to do all the things you THINK you should be doing in your lawyer life.”
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Imperfect Transcript from this Episode
Alright, so let’s talk about what we came here to talk about: why lawyers focus on the big money, and then once they have it, can’t step away from it, even when it’s killing them.
First things first, let me just say there’s nothing wrong with making money. I am not against you pulling in multiple six-figures. I’m also not against you working hard or meeting your billables; I have no problem with you doing what makes you happy and putting your heart and soul into your work. I’m not saying don’t meet your billables, so long as they’re reasonable of course! That’s not what we’re talking about here.
What we’re talking about is why even though we have the money, even though we get the accolades and the pats on the back for good work every now and again, and even though we work hard to earn that bonus, at the end of the day, we’re exhausted, burned out, broken, sad souls – and I just don’t want this to be the case with our profession. We deserve more. YOU deserve more.
You know, in my work over the last 23 plus years with attorneys, as an attorney, as a project and litigation manager, as a consultant and coach and educator, the thing I’ve seen time and time again is absolutely ridiculous bonuses based on the extra work put in, absolutely ridiculous billable expectations, especially based on that lawyer math of what it takes to bill one single hour as an attorney (more on that in Episode 6). I’ve seen and worked with absolutely insane partners and owners of law firms – including the one I came up in. I cut my teeth in class actions, complex multidistrict litigation. I’ve been on both sides of the table – plaintiff and defense. I was in the 9/11 litigation, and I was in pretty much every major class action in Louisiana from 2000 to 2010, until the day I left the multimillion dollar firm I built from scratch. Way before I was even a lawyer.
In late 1999, early 2000, I was still in undergrad and I had an issue with a landlord. My roommate was doing her MBA and she asked her business law professor what our rights were with the landlord. He told her, and he offered to help us for free, pro bono. Now, having been raised in an entrepreneurial family, with a financially independent mother who told me from my earliest memories to never be in a position where I could not walk away financially, emotionally, and mentally, allowing free help was not something I thought I could do. So, I offered instead to help him out, like a barter. I’d come to his office on Saturdays and help with filing and administrative stuff. He’d just gotten his license a couple of years before, and he was new. I did that for a couple of weeks and realized at some point that his office was chaos. He needed systems, calendars, someone to manage things and take care of things, and slowly, I took over the place. When I met him, he had about 2 grand in cash in the bank, and when I left – January 21, 2010, on the best day of my life – I left over 10 million in cash in the bank, and another 10 in investments. But all of that came at a price. I worked 100, 120 hour weeks. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat right, I didn’t take care of my body. I lost pretty much all forms of sustainable emotional exchanges – relationships, friendships, family – all because I got caught up in what I believed was success. And so let me tell you why I left.
Because I did all this – worked this hard – missed holidays with family and worked 100, 120 hour weeks – including all through law school, because this lawyer had told me that when I became barred, that I would own half of everything. We’d be partners. That what I was building was actually MINE. So I sacrificed. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I got to the office before him, I left the office after him. I made that law firm what it was. Then, when I passed the bar and got sworn in, I started to try to have the discussion with him – when do we want to start changing the names on everything, should we create a new legal entity, when was my name going on the door and on the bank accounts? He dodged me for months. And each time he did, it became more and more clear to me that he really had no intention of ever fulfilling his promise to me. And it wasn’t just a private promise – everyone knew what he said we’d do. Every lawyer we co-counseled with, every legal assistant who ever worked a case with us. Every CLIENT we ever worked with. When I tell you that everyone knew, I mean it: EVERYONE KNEW WHAT HE PROMISED ME. And so, what happened?
Well, when I realized he wasn’t going ot live up to his end of hte bargain, I consulted another attorney about my rights, and then I started to plan my exit. I drafted a formal letter to him, asking him to fulfill his promises to me for the previous 10 years. And when he didn’t respond, I began taking home my personal things from my desk. I started my own law firm, SMWPLC, and I began saving every single penny – which was paltry, let me tell you … at one calculation, I was making $3.28 an hour – and I drafted two emails – one for my clients, and one for my co-counsel – ready to press send at a moment’s notice. I tried to talk to him again on the morning of January 21, 2010, and he dodged me, and when that happened, I walked over to my desk, pulled out a pair of scissors and the company credit cards and started cutting them up. My staff was looking at me pretty wildly at that point, I can only imagine what it was like, watching me cutting up credit cards, and then I put the credit cards in an envelope, took my office key off my ring, opened my computer and clicked SEND and SEND again on both those emails, packed up my computer and walked into my partner’s office. He was sitting at his computer, reading his email, and he looked back at me, bewildered – and he said, “did you just send these two emails? Saying you don’t work here anymore?” and I said Yes, I did. He sputtered and clearly looking freaked out, goes, “but wait, wait, we can talk about this, sit down, let’s talk about this,” to which I replied, “are you going to make me partner, are you going to fulfill your promises of all these years of raising my pay and paying off my student loans and putting me on the firm, so I own half of everything that I’ve spent my blood sweat and tears building?” and to my – maybe not so surprise, but still surprise – he said, “fuck no – I’ve wasted enough time and money on you, I’m not giving you anything else” – at which point, I said, “well, then there’s nothing else to talk about. Here are the credit cards, cut up, and here is my office key, Ii’m out.” He looked at me like I was a ghost, when I tell you, I STILL can see his face in my mind – I turned to go and stopped at the door, and said, “thanks for the last 10 years” and walked out. And while that was hard, what was even harder was that my staff was standing at the door, blocking the doorway. They didn’t want me to leave. Because they knew what I knew, and what every client and co-counsel knew: I WAS THEIR BUFFER. This man was wired for war. It was no longer worth it to me to fight with him, because I knew who he was – he’d spend 10 thousand dollars not to pay someone a hundred. It wasn’t worth it.
And after I convinced them to let me out, I got into my car and BEFORE I left the parking lot, I had 5 job offers. And I turned every single one of them down. And everyone wanted me to sue him, but I wasn’t going to – not because I’m a coward, but because I could NOT have that evil in my life anymore. You see, I had already quit this guy once – in my first semester of law school, when he had absolutely no respect for me or what law school required of me. I was still working 100 hours a week, but I was running the law firm on top of it. And I quit – 3 months later, he begged me to come back and I did, but not without promising myself that I would never ever stay on longer than I wanted to ever again. And that first semester of law school, I had no idea what awaited me in my first summer: for the first time in my life, I studied abroad, and I fell in love with Europe – with Vienna, and Prague, and Venice, and Brussels, and Luxembourg, and Strasbourg. I fell in love with the EU, the European Union, and I realized that I’d hit my prime in New Orleans. I was at the top of the game. There’s nothing higher than class actions in New Orleans, and so I’d met every challenge, long before I’d even gone to law school. And what no one else knew, was that I was working a 5-year plan. In 2008, I was sitting in the conference room at a multinational law firm in Brussels. It was my third trip to Europe in less than 2 years and I looked around htat conference table and decided, that moment, December 10, 2008, that in 5 years, I would be in Europe full time. Either going back to school, or working there, but being IN Europe – and every single step I took from that moment forward was towards that ultimate goal. I was already running the firm remotely. I’d put the systems in place to allow me to log in and do what I needed to while I was abroad. I did everything that needed to be done to make my firm a multimillion dollar success.
And then yes, I walked away from it all.
But let’s be clear: I didn’t blow up my life. In fact, I did everything EXCEPT blow up my life. When I rejected all those job offers the day I left, I didn’t say no, forever. I said no, not right now – because I needed a BREAK. I was burned the F out. I was exhausted. I was used. I allowed myself to be used. I was disappointed. I was stressed out. And so instead, for 3 months, I SLEPT. I went to the movies pretty much every day in the middle of the day, and then I SLEPT SOME MORE. I was recovering. And I felt good because I’d planned for this. And I knew I was working my plan to be in Europe by 2013. And that’s exactly what I did. I applied to 5 LLM programs and got into all of them. Ultimately, I made the decision to be in Brussels, Belgium, because it’s the center of the EU, and I completed an Advanced LLM in International and European Law, with a focus in business. There was a track for human rights, but by that point, I was already a licensed Master Social Worker. I wanted the business piece to round out my education. I graduated magna cum laude, and then, even when everyone told me it was impossible, I converted my student visa to a work visa. I opened up my own Belgian enterprise, had a Carte Professionelle and was a Belgian resident for close to 5 years. I let it go for a couple of reasons, but in the end, I shifted my life to make my life what I wanted it to be. Now, I split my time between New Orleans and Brussels, about 50/50 across the year, and I have friends all over the world. I even have a godson in Brussels, and some of my most favorite people in the whole world live in Europe.
So, why am I telling you all this? One, to let you know that whatever crazy big ideas you have about your life are absolutely possible, and two, to demonstrate that if I, an orphan by the time I was 16 – my father died when I was 12 and my mom died when I was 16, and I raised my younger sister – if I can do these things with very little help, so can you. You have me. And you don’t have to put up with whatever you’re putting up with in your lawyer life now. I spend my days helping lawyers – 1:1 and in groups I facilitate and in CLEs and trainings and workshops inside firms – and I would much rather help YOU live your joyful and thriving life, than to do all the things you THINK you should be doing in your lawyer life. I want our profession to be better. I want YOU to be healthy and happy. That’s what matters to me.
So, as we close out our little chat, I just want to say thank you for listening. I hope this has opened the door a bit more for you, and that this has helped you see that you’re not alone. And I hope that you’re just as excited as I am for your next chapter of learning and exploration and reflection for yourself. My clients are experiencing that each and every day, in our one-on-one work together, in groups that I facilitate, and even in their self-studies. And my hope is that as you move forward in this process of rediscovering yourself and reflecting, that it will continue to be validating for you, too. You are not alone. We are all in this profession together – and we can change it, together. One lawyer at a time. And I know that sounds daunting, and no, it won’t happen overnight, but what I do know is that I’m already helping change the profession. And when I can help you make one simple change in your life, then your energy and your optimism and your joy will then trickle over into every other facet of your life, which means you, too, are changing the world. Each and every day.
And I know you think you can’t change the legal system (which is true – you alone cannot do it, but together, eventually, we will – the old guard is dying out – and we are stepping into positions of power), but for now: you CAN change how you work WITHIN the legal system (or, you can leave it altogether). But here’s the deal: I don’t want you to blow up your life. That’s not what we’re doing here. Instead, I want you to see that the concerns, the fears, the risks you think are the REASONS you can’t change anything in your life are EXACTLY the things that are holding you back – maybe this is you being an overachiever, maybe it’s that you think you’re not worthy of something more joyful and beautiful and easy … or that you made this bed so you’d better lie down in it … and that you allegedly asked for this, to suffer and pay your dues … or maybe you believe that if you ask for help, that people will find out, or that’s a failure in and of itself – and if you tell others that you need help, that’s the nail in the coffin. But in reality, asking for help is a sign of strength – and you know this intellectually, that’s not the problem. It’s the emotional piece that’s holding the majority of lawyers back. And that’s the part I want to get into with you – to figure out how you got where you are, so that you can know what you really want in the future – and then I want to help you make a plan to achieve the joyful lawyer life you thought you were signing up for. They lied to us, because if they told the truth, they know we’d think twice about joining the ranks … but that doesn’t mean we have to keep doing things the way they’ve been done. We can do better, now that we know better. You can do better, now that you know better. And I will be here, ready for you to schedule a call with me, to talk about it. I’m not going anywhere. You have me. And I want to support you.