Qualified, Confused and Kinda Tired - Two years on

I'm back after two years with a solo episode of The ND Lawyer Podcast. I talk about finishing my training contract, qualifying as a solicitor and what’s changed (or hasn’t) since then. There’s some reflection on life, why I’ve felt distant from the neurodiversity space lately, and what it’s like trying to find direction when things feel a bit uncertain. It’s honest, low-key and a bit rambly in places — but maybe that’s the point.

Website: https://ndlawyerproject.org.uk

Instagram and Tiktok: @ndlawyerproject

Linkedin: Amelia Platton 

Transcript

The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not represent the views of any employer past or present. I speak here in a personal capacity, reflecting on my individual experiences and feelings, not making any statements of fact about any organization. Nothing I say here should be taken as legal advice or as a comment on any specific individual team or policy. I've made every effort to ensure this episode is respectful and constrictive. 

But anything that I say that comes across differently, I welcome thoughtful engagement and conversation. The episode is intended to foster understanding around the often complex human experiences of being neurodivergent in a high pressure workplace, not to criticize or single out any person or institution. 

Hi everyone. I won't pretend like this isn't my 15th time recording this or that I have not been sat here now for about seven hours trying to think of exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it. But nevertheless, here we are. Anyway, hi, I'm Amelia. This is the Endy Lawyer Project and somehow it's been a whole two years since the last episode. I know, I also don't understand how time works anymore. In my head, I think the last 

upload was two months ago max but apparently it was pre-training contract and now I've finished that training contract and I'm officially a qualified sister which feels pretty wild to say. It's currently Easter Friday and I'm sat in my pajamas with a cup of tea that's already gone lukewarm talking into a microphone that I had to literally dust off and I'm pretty sure there was a bug in it which is nice. It's all been a bit of a blur. 

chaotic, overwhelming and shall I say character building blur and now that I've emerged on the other side I'm sort of floating in this strange... how shall we call it? Post TC limbo. I've been thinking for months now about whether to record something what to say, how to say it, where to say it, classic overthinking but I eventually decided... start it. 

I'll just talk. So if you're still here, or even if you're brand new, thanks for sticking around or thanks for listening. This episode is kind of going to be part catch-up, part reflection, part existential crisis as usual. I just want to cover kind of three main points. One, reflect honesty on what the training contract actually felt like. 

to share where I'm at now, which is let's say to be confirmed and talk a bit about feeling disconnected from the neurodivergent and legal communities and the neurodivergent and legal community, which has been tough, especially with everything that's going on in the world right now. So I first just want to rewind. Actually, before I say that, let me just say I do apologize about any audio disturbances during this. 

My dog could come running in any second and like I said, this microphone is now a little bit old and also my MacBook currently sounds like it's about to take off. apologies in advance for that. But I just wanted to rewind to just before I started the training contract. I'm not gonna go into any detail. It's something I've spoke about in depth before and frankly, I'm a bit bored of myself. But for context. 

I was diagnosed as autistic just before securing the training contract or at the very least around the same time, I can't quite remember. It was a complicated time. On the one hand I finally had the answer as to why I'd spent my whole life feeling like I was, you know, one step out of sync. But on the other hand it was like someone had kind of handed me this diagnosis and quietly whispered 

by the way, all these things that you hate about yourself, this is forever now. It wasn't this light bulb moment of clarity and relief and it was quite messy. Grief and understanding kind of arrived at the same time and then with no time to process any of that I went straight into the Accelerated LPC. Which, side note, thank god it wasn't the SQE, small mercies, but I still had a complete breakdown. 

I was convinced that I'd fail one of the 67 assessments, that I'd have to repay all the fees, lose the training contract, and that this kind of shiny new city I'd moved to would swallow me whole. I got through it, but inside I was completely frazzled. At that point, I'd also convinced myself that I was a diversity hire. I remember chatting to lot of my friends at the time and they'd always be like, wow, how did you do that? And I'd be like, oh, it's just luck. Just luck. 

You know, no one had ever said anything like that to me, but I'd really internalised it. I'd had to redo the assessment centre after a reasonable adjustment failure and the story my brain ran with was basically, you're only here because they had to let you in. I'd kind of look around at everyone else on the LPC cohort and just think like, I am... You know, they belong here, I'm the mistake. And every social event 

pre-TC and very early on in the TC I was in like full tears during induction week for example I met my first supervisor and could barely get any words out and spent the rest of the day just crying. Later we were able to laugh about it but at the time I think a lot of people were genuinely concerned for me. You know I'd convinced myself that everyone else was just different to me and that I just shouldn't be there. 

For my first seat I was then placed in Knowledge, a decision which was made for me, it was out of preference and not just kind of out of the usual system. And to be honest, I get it. They probably looked at me, a very visibly emotional, you know, person who talks online lot and thought, let's throw her, or I should say rather, let's not throw her into the fire of transactional seat straight away. 

But it still felt like I was being told, we're not sure you cope. And that kind of knocked my confidence initially. I wanted to be included in conversations about my own career as well. And I was really struggling with that confidence. And this kind of just felt like a a more silent confirmation that others were struggling with it too. You know, the confidence about me. 

I pushed those thoughts aside at the time and tried to really make the best of it. My supervisor was really lovely and the experience was actually really helpful. But I definitely still felt like this kind of fragile, slightly broken person that everyone was gently working around. And then, of course, the transitioning to transactional work halfway through the seat. That was a whole different struggle, especially with Autistic Changer version in the mix. 

But you know what, I did it and I did that first seat well, I got good feedback and I kind of moved into the second seat with a sense of optimism that, you know, I'd worked hard, approved myself and, you know, things weren't going to be the same going forward. The second seat, though, was where I started to realise that the social side of autism was going to be, I guess, slightly harder to navigate in a law firm. 

than I'd originally anticipated. I liked the work, I liked the team, but I couldn't stop kind of zooming in on my own inabilities, as I like to call them at the time. Things like kind of joining in on spontaneous conversations, navigating hierarchies informally, or knowing, you know, when to speak in a room full of quite loud voices was really difficult. And there isn't really anyone with... 

the knowledge of your neurodivergence to kind of mentor you through that as much as you can get mentorship for kind of general processes and promotion and whatever. There's nothing particularly tailored is what I'm trying to say. 

It wasn't that I didn't have any of those skills, it was just that I had to listen. 

It wasn't that I didn't have any of those skills either, it was just that had to use ten times the energy to access them. And I was really trying to throw myself into everything, constantly pushing through discomfort, trying to overcompensate, and yeah, I got some good feedback but it kind of came at a cost. At the time I didn't have the self-awareness or support to say, hang on, I'm doing well, but I'm also burning out really quickly here, even though this is not a seat with the 

highest amount of hours even. I thought I just needed to try harder so that's what I did. I tried harder until I got to the stage where I just couldn't anymore. 

The third seat, I wouldn't call it a turning point per se, in the sense that everything suddenly got better, but it was the moment I realised that I couldn't keep going in the way that had been. Something had to change, not in a kind of fix-yourself way, but in a you-can't-keep-surviving-on-fumes-and-pretending-you're-fine kind of way. I started doing a few things differently, which I can talk about more in a bit. 

I started doing a few things differently, which I can talk about in more detail at a later stage, but I really took a proactive approach to my old neurodivergence, which, you know, in the one sense was good because I learnt a lot of techniques and things along the way, but also, you know, it is just going above and beyond what you're already being expected to do, which is difficult at times. 

No, I started doing quite a few things differently. Really taking a proactive approach to my own development and my own neurodivergence. You know, I couldn't do that perfectly because it's not something that I can just fully control myself. But I realised, I think I'd been showing up to work as this really kind of 

polished professional version of myself, the version that kind of always smiled and was like, yeah, we're good, even when I was completely falling apart. And I think a lot of neurodivergent people will know that feeling, the kind of internal chaos and the external calm. It's like you're kind of running two different lives. People were really kind and I want to be clear about that, but kindness isn't always the same as knowing how to support someone, especially when you're the only person in the room. 

or you assume that you're the only person in the room who knows really what you're up against. And everyone else is obviously just trying to say a float in their own way too. When the final seat came and I went on to comment Munich, I was excited. I felt kind of like, right, I've learned all these hard lessons. Now I get to apply them. Plus I was going to be the only trainee in the office, which I think people were concerned about. But to me, that meant more responsibility, more exposure. 

and hopefully a bit more space to just be. And it worked and I'm glad I really trusted my instincts on that because Munich was in many ways exactly what I needed. Grounded me, the slower pace of Munich versus London was a lot better for me. But also, even though the work was busier, I just felt more regulated day to day. The team was really good. My supervisor really invested in me and 

felt like I was kind of seen, not just as someone doing the work but as someone who is growing. I still had my challenges, you don't just get to turn autism off because you're abroad, but for the first time I felt like I was thriving without having to hide huge parts of myself and like I said this is despite being busier than ever so it really wasn't about that. Looking back I just wish more of my training contract had felt like that. 

So I'm not going to sit here and preach about how I completely transformed or found some magic formula that fixed everything. A lot of what I went through was very specific to me. But I do want to share a couple of things that might resonate with someone, even if they're just things I wish I'd heard at the start. But let me be clear, this was at the beginning of the training contracts, not necessarily where I'm at now. I've grown a lot since then and I've had a huge kind of mindset shift since that point. 

But I think it's important to acknowledge where I started because at the time it's hard to think of a way that I wouldn't have had that mindset given everything that I'd experienced in life pre that point. 

So firstly, I got better at living with who I am and actually just letting myself feel things through the emotional dysregulation at times. When I started my training contract, I was in this constant state of overwhelm and I don't mean, you know, busy day at work overwhelmed. I mean like proper meltdown worthy overwhelm. One of the biggest triggers was just not knowing things, which sounds ridiculous because that's the whole point of a training contract. 

you're not supposed to know everything but for me the uncertainty triggered this kind of internal chaos I felt like if I didn't get everything right first time it meant that I'd failed failed what exactly? I wasn't sure just failed and I felt like I needed to succeed and I needed to be the best or I don't know I would just sink back being into this invisible person that I 

had kind of felt that I was before I started the training contract. 

Through the therapy that I was having at the time, she was great, was like a specific specialist in neurodivergence and I think if you have access to those kind of services, of which obviously that's a huge privilege, do take them up. I started to kind of unpick, I guess, where that pressure was coming from, why I didn't trust myself, even with things that I knew deep down I could do and weirdly... 

because weirdly I've always been really good at figuring things out on my own. That's how I've learned most things. At university I never attended half the seminars and lectures, I just learnt it by myself. But I get stuck in this kind of emotional storm, too afraid to start something in case I did it wrong, and then if it did go wrong, which, you know, happens, particularly at start of your training contract, I'd spiral into self-blame. 

which is not the most productive mindset to be in, especially in a kind high pressure perfectionist environment. But that's kind of where I was at at the time. But I worked on that. I worked on that. I acknowledged that that was a problem and I took ownership of it. And, you know, I did get to a point where... 

I was much more at peace at work and was able to tackle things which were way out of my comfort zone and I started actively putting myself forward for things which were way out of my comfort zone. The second was to kind of stop idolising senior people and I mean really stop seeing them as some sort of separate species. I remember one of the first partners I overspoke to 

She asked me where my families were from and because she was from nearby and I completely blanked. Couldn't remember the name of the town. I just stared at her like I was buttering. I mean like it's a classic autistic person attempt small talk with authority vigour. It's funny now but at the time I was mortified and I did that with everyone. Even associates who were two months qualified and were exactly the same age as me. I'd immediately put them on this kind of pedestal because I hadn't been around these kind of 

people before, these very intelligent, you know, corporate people before. So when something went wrong, I'd always assumed it was my fault. Not that everything went wrong, I'd like to reiterate that, like I said, I got very good feedback from my training contract. Just if like, you know, you'd made a small mistake. If someone gave me very vague instructions or, you know, communicated in something that was... 

directly conflicting with how I interpret things as an autistic person, it didn't follow. It was because I was bad at the job. It wasn't because of, you know, a different working style and because of that you don't start to look at things critically and you don't start to look at kind of how you can action that and how you can work with different people with different working styles, which I did eventually figure out and actually did figure out. 

in a good way and now I would say it's kind of a one of my main skills I would almost say. 

I never stopped to consider that, you know, things weren't clear. But, you know, eventually I realised most people are just people. You know, some people are stressed and communicate badly. It's not personal. And letting go of that idolisation meant that I could actually see situations more clearly and stop seeing myself as a problem all the time or stop even needing to blame anything or anyone. 

you know, the one thing I would say is that people often said things to me like, well, you know what you signed up for. And sure, I understood the nature of the job, the long hours, the pressure, the expectations. you know, and I wasn't asking for special treatment. I wasn't really even complaining about the hours or anything like that. I just knew that the way I was trying to cope and the way that people were trying to cope with me wasn't sustainable. And I just had this feeling that 

If I had the right support and boundaries, I could actually do the job a lot better, even though I was doing it rather well at the time, just massively masking at my own expense. And I mean that not by doing anything less, but, you know, just not by burning myself out just to survive the week. So, you know, what did I take away from it all? 

 Was it a firm that I wanted to stay at forever? No. Did I learn a lot and feel grateful for the opportunity? Absolutely. Do I now have a clearer sense of what I want and what I don't want in a workplace? Yeah. Did I struggle at times? Definitely. Do I regret doing it? Categorically not. 

So I hope that provides kind of a nuanced view of the last two years. I know some people will be wondering more about kind of what's expected at these firms and hours and things like that. And I'm happy to talk about that. But to be honest, I can respond to that on an Instagram story like it doesn't need to be on a podcast. So, yeah, I hope that answers any questions that anyone may have. But yeah, so what am I doing now? That is the question. 

A week before I was due to leave Munich, a family member went into hospital and had quite major surgery. They were given some live tuning news and that has kind of turned everything on its head. Had that not happened, I imagine this podcast episode would sound quite different. There's probably a version where I go straight into the next steps bit, but I'm not quite there yet and maybe that's okay. Maybe we don't need to transition every package. 

And that's okay, maybe we don't need to package every transition into a success story. I'm not going go into much detail because, well, to be honest, it's quite difficult to talk about and I want to respect my family's right to privacy, but essentially, it's been very useful for me to be at home right now. Other opportunities offered at the time just didn't feel feasible after that news and being at home is what I need and prefer to do right now. 

I do plan to apply to and hopefully get a role in the upcoming cycle. There are lots of options and I'm still weighing it up. I've always wanted to keep things a bit fluid. It may look a little different but that's okay. But anyway, that's me for now. I just wanted to reflect a bit with you and remind you whatever path you're on, it's fine, it's valid, it doesn't need to be linear. 

The final thing that I wanted to talk about was, you know, I have been quite quiet lately and it's not just because of the whole family situation. But I did just want to address it briefly at the end of the podcast because I realised this is the bit that most people are not going to be that interested in. So I thought I would just kind of shoehorn it on the edge. I've been doing the whole neurodivergent advocacy thing for a while and for a long time it felt like I had something really important to share. 

But I think somewhere along the way I started to feel quite disconnected, not from the community, but I think from myself and the constant pressure that comes with being on all the time. There's this unspoken expectation to always represent, to always be the one explaining and educating and show how things can be different. And I wanted to be that person. I still do to a certain extent, but at the same point, it started feeling like too much. 

I found myself wondering if I'm not posting, does that mean I've stopped caring? Am I letting people down? And honestly, I didn't always know the answer. Life through quite a lot with me, family stuff, work stuff, just, you know, life in general. And I didn't really know how to talk about it without feeling like I was dumping all my problems online. So I just retreated, not with the dramatic exit, but more like quietly slipping into the background. wasn't planned, but it definitely felt necessary. 


Somewhere in that space I started to realise that I wasn't feeling the same connection to the whole kind of neurodiversity movement, or at least not parts of it that I saw online. There was this growing sense that everyone else had to reach this place that I couldn't get to. You know, people saying things like I never mask anymore, I only work for neuro-inclusive employers, you I won't accept anything less than full accommodations, and honestly that's great. 

very happy for anyone who's in a place where they can live fully and authentically but it also made me feel a bit like a fraud because I do mask, I do work in systems that aren't built for me, people like me, I do compromise, not because I want to necessarily but because that's the reality of where I'm at right now and when I tried to talk about those kind of messy grey area bits, the ones where you're just kind of surviving or making hard choices, it felt like there wasn't much room for that, like people either wanted 

the inspirational LinkedIn story or a total rejection of the system. There didn't seem to be much space for people kind of stuck in the middle somewhere. And honestly, I don't have the kind of emotional energy anymore to keep sharing in that way. Being vulnerable online, especially on platforms where everything's supposed to be, you know, as much as I try and not do that polished and professional takes its toll. 

you know, you second guess every post, will this come across badly, will this be used against me in future jobs, am I saying too much, not enough, am I helping or hurting the cause, it's honestly exhausting. So yeah, I've been quite quiet. Not because I don't care, not because I've given it up, but because sometimes I think when you're trying to get through your own stuff you need to step back and breathe. And now I'm here again, not because I've figured it all out, but because I want to share what's been on my mind. 

No agenda, no perfect narrative, just trying to be honest about what it's like to exist in this space, with this brain. Trying to make sense of a world that doesn't always make sense back. Thanks for listening.