Sarah Cottrell leaves big law to start the Former Lawyer Podcast and Collaborative

The Lawyer's Escape Pod

Sarah Cottrell is my podcasting soul sister. She is a former big law litigation associate who, after 10 years of practice in various forms and paying off her law school loans, moved into the work she’d been wanting to do for years. She launched the Former Lawyer Podcast in August 2019 (within a week of this podcast’s launch!) and now also runs the Former Lawyer Collaborative.

In today’s episode we discuss:

• Sarah and I geek out on our shared brain
• So many of us are under-educated on the realities of being a lawyer
• In applying to smaller firms, Sarah realized she didn’t want those jobs either
• Sarah’s anxiety disorder made her a great lawyer, in many ways, but also made the law a particularly bad fit
• Sarah left big law and took a job making 1/6th what she made
• Eventually, Sarah went on to become an appellate court staff attorney
• This was the best legal job she could have had, so it made it extra clear she didn’t want to practice at all
• Sarah and her husband had a long-term plan for her to leave the law completely, after paying off their loans
• Sarah explored her interests in the name of figuring out who she was, if not specifically for figuring out her next career
• Side hustles work for some people, not everyone
• Sarah left her job to start the podcast and business that had been in her head for years
• Sarah also runs the Former Lawyer Collaborative, a confidential community supporting lawyers moving into new careers

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Former Lawyer Website: https://www.formerlawyer.com/