Topic 1. Introduction
Are you wondering if you are suffering from lawyer burnout? Burnout looks differently for everyone, so in today's video, I am going to share with you my experience with lawyer burnout from over a decade ago. So stay tuned until the end so you can see if there is any part of my experience that resonates with yours. Welcome back! If you are new to this channel, I am Annie Little, I am an ICF certified career coach and a former lawyer. I created this channel for lawyers who want to find their ideal job, advocate for themselves at work and enjoy a life filled with flexibility and freedom.

Topic 2. Background
I am one of those people who always knew she was going to be a lawyer. It was not just something that I defaulted to, it was very thought through and I was very intentional about it. So I was also aware of all the reports of lawyer burnout and all these other things about being a lawyer that were not so great. So, I did my due diligence and I was preparing myself against getting this lawyer burnout I had heard about. But from what I could tell, I thought that I was going into law school and the legal profession with my eyes open.

Topic 3. First job
Let us start with my first lawyer job out of law school. It was actually a surprisingly good fit considering it was not a job that I had planned on going into, the funding for my legal aid position had fallen through, so I ended up working at a boutique firm doing commercial lending. So they were intentionally hiring entry-level lawyers, they you were training us, and, I actually kind of liked it, there was a lot of hands-on experience, I was learning a lot, and I was pretty good at it. But as you might know, there is what some of us call the curse of competency. So this is where you do your job well and so the reward is you get more work. So that happened to me, and I did not mind because I thought, you know, more billables, you know, more clients who are excited to work with us the better. But any time I would talk to the partners, like at my reviews and they would say all these wonderful things about me and I would say, okay, so what does this look like for me in terms of a raise or moving up to partnership? You know, all of these. And that is when things would start to get kind of dodgy. And so it only took a few months of this sort of dynamic to be reinforced with me and I started to feel now what I know as burnout.

Topic 4. First sign of burn-out
And for me, this looked like I was oversleeping on work days, I would drive into the office robotically. Honestly, a lot of times it felt like I was sleeping with my eyes open while I was driving, which is not great. Then I would muscle through a few hours of work before going out for my lunch break at a local mall and engaging in some retail therapy. And I just want to clarify that this was at a boutique firm, I was not working in big law. And they did not have ridiculous billable requirements or ridiculous face time requirements, so I was generally there like 9:30 to 5:30. But as soon as I would leave, I would get home, I would just collapse onto the couch with like a bag of Doritos and my dog while I watched some Real Housewives of wherever. So what really began to scare me was when I was waking up in the middle of the night crying, like hard. And it was because I could not imagine this being my career for the next 20, 30 years, whatever it took until I got to retirement. I was like, this cannot be it. And with that, I realized I needed some kind of change.

Topic 5. Second job
And then almost like magic, I had a head hunter contact me during the Great Recession no less about going to a different boutique firm, this time in real estate and finance. I thought, okay, so maybe it is not the practice of law that is the problem, maybe it is just, I need this new position at a new place and that that is going to be the answer to my boredom and my frustration. Nope! I was bored and frustrated at my new job within a matter of months.

Topic 6. Frustrated about being frustrated
So there I was feeling frustrated about feeling frustrated still and so confused because I thought that I had done everything "right"to avoid lawyer burnout. Now, part of the problem was or is the outdated law firm model, which is a different topic for a different video, check that out later. But the similarly important part of my burnout was the fact that I was not aware or in touch with my core values. And once I did some of that work and realized that my top core value is freedom, everything started to make so much sense to me. While, I thought that I was the one who had gone into the legal profession with my eyes open, ironically, it was lawyer burnout that actually got me to open my eyes to my situation.

Topic 7. Realization
The main reason that I became a lawyer was so that I could have freedom both financial, physical and emotional from my family in Montana, and becoming a lawyer helped me to achieve those goals. But once I had gotten there, freedom was no longer the same sort of goal, instead, being a lawyer created this whole new paradigm of restrictions. So I had this enormous sense of relief, I knew what was causing my burnout, and I was like, this being a lawyer is not for me. And then I was paralyzed with fear because, what the fuck am I going to do now? And I should back up. I do not think, in fact I know that I did not realize that the legal profession was a bad fit for me right away. So, because I was so afraid of what it meant for me to realize that freedom was feeling very restrictive, what I thought was freedom was feeling very restrictive is I thought, okay, so what should I do? And because I was so paralyzed by fear, my first steps were really pretty small, and I was like, so what do I do here? Do I try to negotiate for like a flexible work schedule or a part-time work schedule? Maybe I apply for a different type of job, maybe a big law job where I make more money and then I can quit sooner and just save it, or maybe I go and try to become like a college admissions counselor because I have worked in college admissions when I was a student. And, I just did not know what to do, and it was not until I had been digging through all of this stuff in my mind that I even considered that leaving law might be the right option for me.

Topic 8. Leaving law
So of course, you know which route I ended up taking, I ended up leaving law. But that is not the outcome for most of the people that I work with, and it may not be the solution to your lawyer burnout either. But I am sharing my experience so you can see just one example of how it manifested for somebody, me, and what I did to move through it. Because regardless of what your burnout looks like for you and what you decide to do about it, the key to getting to the root of it and developing that awareness is getting clear on your core values. Now, if the solution to your burnout involves getting a new job, whether it is another legal job or a completely different type of job, you are going to need to be able to identify and communicate your transferable skills.

Topic 9. Outro
And I have for you a free masterclass I created called three simple strategies for uncovering any lawyer's transferable skills, so that you can identify what your transferable skills are, learn how to communicate them to any employer, get that ideal job and leave lawyer burnout behind for good.