The Wellness Esquire Podcast

Leaving Law Saved His Life - with Shaun Bernstein

• Ariella Cohen Coleman • Season 1 • Episode 21

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On this episode of The Wellness Esquire Podcast, Ariella Cohen Coleman chats with Shaun Bernstein, a former attorney turned professional ghostwriter and founder of The Write Stuff Agency.

They explore Shaun’s intense journey through a mental health crisis that ultimately led him to walk away from a legal career. Shaun shares the physical and emotional warning signs he experienced, the power of 'betting on yourself,' and how he rediscovered his true identity as a storyteller.


Guest:

Shaun Bernstein, Owner and Chief Storyteller at The Write Stuff Agency!

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Host Info: Ariella Cohen Coleman

The Wellness Esquire: Creating a bold new path where wellbeing, happiness, and authenticity drive performance and success https://thewellnessesquire.com

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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Wellness Esquire podcast. I'm Ariella, and I am so grateful for you to join me for this incredibly important conversation with Sean Bernstein. Sean is a former lawyer and journalist and storyteller who now runs his own writing and communications agency. His path to where he is today involved a courageous and life-saving decision to walk away from the legal profession entirely. Sean and I talk about his journey, starting with his unique perspective of entering law school, viewing that a JD was not a final destination, but a stepping stone to something else. We talk about the pressure of practicing employment law, where the weight of his clients' livelihoods began to feel like an impossible burden to carry. Sean talks about the darkness that began to set in, the disconnect between his high-functioning exterior and his internal mental health crisis, and the moment he realized that the speed of impact in mental health advocacy can be a matter of life and death for those in our profession. This conversation is a powerful look at what happens when we stop trying to fit into a mold that is breaking us. And Sean reminds us that there is no shame in choosing a different path and that your worth is not defined by available hour. I know a lot of people need to hear Sean's story, and a lot of people will relate to it. Thank you so much for listening and enjoy. All right. Well, I am I'm so delighted to talk to you. I, you know, we've obviously been connected to the other thing. You're real.

SPEAKER_00

There's a human behind this.

SPEAKER_01

There's a human on the other side of this. And it's so much fun to have these up and backs on LinkedIn and you know, and locked you up, liked you already. It's so fun to actually, you know, see the real human on the other side. And you know, when you posted, I I know you've been posting about this, you know, before I saw it, but when I saw your post about leaving law because of your mental health, I was like, ah, another layer that we can get into. Fantastic. Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00

Glad to.

SPEAKER_01

So thank you for you know chatting about it, but also just for already being so open about it because it's so important. Um yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00

It it's so important, and it's, you know, we're starting to have the conversation, but we're starting way too slow. And you talked about speed of impact. I mean, that's a really big one where speed of impact of you know making an actual change of the profession uh is going to save lives. And if it's delayed unnecessarily, you're, you know, with really without an explanation, uh, you're gonna see people suffer and not in good ways.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So let's back up a little bit. What led you to law school in the first place?

SPEAKER_00

So I joked that law was my plan B, which, you know, and truly it was. Um, people find that ridiculous because for most people, you know, kids who walk around bathing a toy gavel, you know, law is their their dream. For me, it really was the backup. I my mother had went uh my mother went to law school, she practiced for a couple of years, she left when I was born. Uh my uncle is a fairly uh prominent lawyer in Toronto. Uh, so I knew a little bit of what it looked like. I knew I didn't want his life, and I didn't really know what hers looked like for working since. And there is there wasn't a crazy family pressure, but you know, my mother would slide the alumni magazines across the dining room table and say, just look at what they're doing. Out of her class, she was in the 80s in a time where there were not as many women in the profession, and out of her classmates, a lot of them went on to other careers. They went on to go start businesses, they went on to uh very successful corporate careers, etc. So I was always sort of taught that law was a road to doing something else. And that the pressure was not to stay in practice, but use it as a stepping stone to accomplish something great.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Yeah. That's not commonly part of people when there is pressure, when there is sort of guidance around someone, I don't feel like I tend to hear the story of, and it can be a great stepping stone. I feel like the story that I tend to hear is once you discover that you might be miserable, don't worry, there are other things you can do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, it was a bit of a script flip, I think, in that sense. But uh, I'm glad that it was. It was, it certainly made me more comfortable with the idea of leaving and using it to do other things. And it wasn't uh it wasn't a strategic choice. I mean, I left out of illness, and I talk about that quite openly, but I think I felt maybe less restrained than I might have had I seen it as that be all end all. I was not that kid that dreamed of being a lawyer, and I wasn't that kid that dreamed of it for you know 40 years and then retiring onto a yacht somewhere. Like that was just not the life that I ever wanted. I never thought I would do it for more than about five, maybe ten years, and then I would do something else.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so that that helped with the transition out for sure.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. So what did your life look like when you were practicing, in particular from a mental health standpoint, from the outside and from the inside?

SPEAKER_00

So I'll give you kind of three different answers because it does start to change over time. So uh in Canada, we do a year of articling, which is basically a year of sort of apprenticeship where you're training as a student lawyer. And I had, and that's really hard for a lot of people. A lot of them went up at these big, you know, office tower firms where they're working like 20-hour days, truly, and you know, 100-plus hour weeks. That wasn't me. I had this great experience training, and I worked for really kind, uh, genuine, true, true, truly great people. And so I kind of got a picture of what law could be of, oh, okay, I I could see this working. I then moved into a firm which really had nobody. It was one lawyer who, after her first year of practice, decided to hire on two associates. So there were three of us, uh, and I mean, truly the blind lady of the blind. Uh, we were all way too new and just trying to figure things out, and it was not a good experience at all. Uh, and did not, you know, and without trying to be smirched anyway, did not go well at all. And I did that for about six months, and it was a really rough ride, not even so much for my mental health as for a lot of other things. It just was not a workable situation for me moving forward. My mental health suffered, but not the same way that it did later. And I I I resigned after six months, and I said, okay, so I'm I'm done. You know, I gave this a shot. I knew I didn't want to do this forever. I've tried it, turns out I really hate it. I'm good. And I I left, I walked away. Uh I had had other careers. My first run was in journalism, and I had some HR background, and I thought, you know, okay, let's let's go explore the world and see what what I wind up doing. My third time in, I had left. I went up in a marketing group at a large nationwide law firm. And my my last dint in practice, the one that I speak about regularly, uh, was my dream firm calling me and saying, hey, if you want to come join us, they actually had a Mat Leave open, which in Canada are quite long. And they said, if you want to come join us, you know, this is a great opportunity to do it. Because I'd wanted to join them for years. And I said, I'm not gonna leave a very cushy gig for Mat Leave, but if you make it full time, we'll talk. And they did, and I took it. It was a fairly small firm with some great people. Um and you know, what I thought was gonna be this great experience. Like if I was going to do the work I wanted to do, this is the place that I want to do it. Uh stop me, by the way, if I'm droning on Windows. I know you'll edit the heck out of me, but feel free to slow me down. Um so if I was gonna do that work, this is the place that I wanted to do it. And it started out really well, and it kind of started to drag as a couple months went on. I was getting married, we were planning on a honeymoon, there was a lot of moving pieces. We just bought a house. In my personal life, there was a lot of you know, change, a lot of moving pieces going on, and a very thankfully supportive partner. Um, but there was certainly uh a lot of strain coming, partly through work, and I will never, you know, blame the firm, um, but certainly some through you know professional responsibilities, even though the expectations were not unrealistic. They were not, you know, uh Bay Street, Wall Street, what have you. It wasn't nearly like that, but certainly still high expectations. And I think the work of the business itself, law is a really challenging, you know, as you know, it's a really challenging, really ugly business at times that can be very, very stressful to the people involved, whether it's the the parties themselves and you know uh a dispute or the lawyers. And it's hard not to feel that strained, it's hard not to take any of it home. It's hard not to cave into you know 24-hour work expectations. Um I was doing employment and human rights, and so I had basically someone's money on the line where you know, let's say you're a parent of three, maybe you're the breadwinner, you've just been let go, and I'm your I'm your hope of getting something decent to get packaged out with. Um otherwise you're trying to figure out how to feed the kids next week, and I'm the guy you're calling.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

No pressure there.

SPEAKER_01

None. None at all.

SPEAKER_00

Uh so that that and so there were certainly a couple files. Um, there were a lot of things that were really starting to uh starting to bother me, and I was like I can go into more of the story and sort of the the journey through if you'd like.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I I'd love for you to go through, you know, a few things. I mean, one, just like kind of paint a picture of what your life was like, you know, in terms of practice, in terms of, you know, your your personal life, how and how the work started to really take a toll on you. And in particular, could anyone pick up on this from the outside? What did you what did your mental health look like from the outside, you know, to an outside observer? And how did you feel on the inside? And how did those two things, you know, connect, if at all?

SPEAKER_00

Well, fasten your seatbelt because it gets dark. Um go for it.

SPEAKER_01

I think people need to hear it.

SPEAKER_00

I I do, and you know, and I will preface this with I do think the brain protects us from a lot of trauma. And so I don't know that I remember everything, you know, as crystal clear as I might have at the time. It's thankfully been six years. I've come up the other side of it. I started to really notice the decline and that, you know, I was I was struggling and I was struggling with the anxiety of it. I am someone who um I I trained in a newsroom. My background, like I said, is as a journalist. So I always feel pressure to get things done very quickly. If you if I come back from lunch and you leave a chip file on my chair, I expect to be working on it right away and to drop everything else. And that's not always the expectation of the person who left it there. But my brain says, no, you need to do this now. Um, if you know an email comes in, I will usually be the person to drop everything to respond to it.

SPEAKER_01

No, some people think a whole lot of lawyers can relate to that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's you know, law, practicing law to me is like holding a fire extinguisher and just kind of running it across your desk and trying to put out whatever's currently on fire while the next thing it's it's the whack-a-bole of you know, um, fighting fire. And that's a terrible mixed uh metaphor, but you know, bear with me. But you know, there's always something new popping up, and you're always sort of trying to figure out how to solve it. So I started by about the six-month mark in to really see some signs of trouble. And I I don't have a lengthy history of any diagnosed anxiety disorder, but I've had anxiety issues in the past. I have been through counseling. I was not unfamiliar with the mental health space. Ironically, I was also a workplace mental health lawyer. You know, that's a lot of what employment law is here, is and a lot of the conversation as of late is improving mental health. And so dealing with workplace mental health, and I am, you know, doing that work for others as I'm noticing my own starting to suffer, going, well, this is ironic, and let's just get the popcorn and live, you know, outside my body for a minute. Um so I started to, you know, worry and I pursued some counseling, which I'm not adverse to at all, thankfully. It wasn't, you know, I'm and I talk about how I'm so glad that I listened to my body throughout all of this and that I didn't, you know, push back because that truly might have killed me. So I went through uh some counseling that was actually provided, I think, through either our insurance or the law society, one of the two. And this is coming into spring, so I'm already about six, seven months in. And I was about to go on my honeymoon and you know met a couple times with a social worker who listened patiently, and she said, You're not stressed, you just need you're not depressed, you just need a new job. Sorry, you're not depressed, you just need a new job. And I went, I mean, that's interesting. I literally have just been at this for a few months. Also, I'm going away, maybe that'll help. I'm taking two weeks, they're letting me sort of you know shut my phone off. They were very good. It was my honeymoon. Uh, so they were wonderful, and you know, okay, let's, and I'm not gonna, I don't want to start any medications before I'm traveling. That's gonna mess up my insurance opportunities. Take a step back, just go away and see if we can, you know, help reset things. And I, again, was not a stranger to mental health, so I was probably at this point already had started meditating more frequently. Um, and I was I was really doing you know, sort of the best that I could. And we went away and loved it, and we went away, I guess, mid to late May. Um, and I had cleared as much, you know, sort of off my plate as I could, and things were in decent shape, and my colleagues were helping with my files, and it all went, you know, relatively smoothly. And I think I checked email once from Italy, but you know, I was pretty good, like I really didn't um deal with anything, and everything was okay. And when I did respond to one of the things, I said, stop, go enjoy your vacation. You know, they were they were good with me. Because I think my colleagues already by that point, I'm sure I had been open with them, and they already started to know that I was having some challenges. Um, there was uh, you know, the lawyer that I worked for, there's one other lawyer that was with me who was a little bit more senior and we're still good friends, and then three uh clerks and had been staff, and they knew, and they knew some of the challenges, and they, you know, certainly had their own job stresses. And I get back and I'm refreshed and I'm speaking Italian and I'm you know tanned and living my best life, and within three days I was basically collapsing again. I went, okay, this is not good, this is not uh a place that I can get through. And I am grateful. I I knew I knew my body, I knew what to watch for. Uh I knew, you know, and I was crying in the bathroom on breaks and at lunches, and like really difficult, difficult. I knew I was not doing well. Um, and I phoned a cousin of mine who's a psychiatr uh psychiatrist, and you know, was grateful and we were supportive of each other. Nice, nice guy. He married into the family, and I said to him, What do I watch for? Like, here's what's going on. What am I watching for that you know I need to I need to really take action? He gave me a couple things, you know, the worst thing of some symptoms were, you know, and I I knew what to watch for. And I I was not I I was not making plans. You know, I can say that. It wasn't there yet. I knew that was certainly something that, you know, when those the really dark thoughts start to come in, you're in trouble. Um, but I knew that was on the horizon, and it was getting worse, and I was trying to do whatever I could in terms of my own, I'd been through a lot of CBT. I knew my own coping toolkit. I knew sort of you know how to build some of those resources, and nothing was working. And I was, you know, meditating and trying to sleep and get you know exercise and everything, yada yada yada. Nothing was working. And I was just barely holding it together, and I had at least been good. Yes, you know, you'll chuck the email at 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. and usually 4 a.m. And um that's just law life, right? That's that's the profession. Um I was trying to be pretty good about that, um, but I was really trying to be good about compartmentalizing, at least for myself when I got home. I was newly married, my wife was very patient, but you know, again, newly married, want to enjoy our life together. I had friends, I had a social circle, I was on a trivia team that you know brought me a lot of joy. And I noticed that the I was starting to bleed through to the point where it really was impacting my personal relationships. I was no longer getting joy from, you know, going out and seeing friends, which is truly my elixir. Uh thankfully my marriage wasn't struggling, but it certainly was starting to feel the strain of, oh, this isn't the guy that I met. This this is a man, you know, in a serious, serious psychological issue. Uh loyal and un you know, and kind and compassionate to a fault, she was. But certainly at a certain point you realize that, okay, that I'm I am not, I know for myself, I'm not the person that she just married. What's happening here? This is not going well. And I started to really, you know, I was losing the battle pretty quickly. I say openly now, I left in July. I say I don't think I would have lived till Christmas. And again, I got out before that, you know, ideation stage came together. I knew that was coming next. And I really, you know, I hadn't been there in a very long time, but I knew that was on the horizon. Uh my entire team knew the thing that was not suffering until the very end was my work. Um, I was able professionally to try to hold it together. Uh, in those last couple days, my boss called me in and said, This isn't good. Like this, you know, he he for for whatever reasons, and I will never chew him out publicly, but he didn't see a lot of things. Whether I was hiding it or what have you, he didn't notice you know what I think some other people saw, and maybe we just didn't interact as much one-on-one.

SPEAKER_01

What kind of things? What what do you feel people other people noticed that he missed?

SPEAKER_00

I I certainly was, you know, I would say in retrospect, I was very muted, sunk in posture, you know, avoiding eye contact, um, very inward. I am a I've got a you're gonna hear from this. I've got a big personality, I'm an extrovert. I love talking to people. So when you see me slumped over, and you know, and I had days where I was catatonic, you could have thrown a ball at my head, I wouldn't have responded. Um in my office, which, you know, that's that's not good. Um so I don't I don't know, you know, how if I was just hiding it really well, or I have a theater background, I'm sure I was doing some performance work in hindsight. And he started to notice, and I I I broke down in his office and I said, you know, I'm once once uh my colleague I said to him initially, once my partner returns from the Mat Leave, I think I'm out, and he understood and he said, okay. And that was supposed to be September, and this was already sort of you know early to mid-July. And it was just day after day where I I knew what I had said to my cousin was, you know, at what point do I pull the goalie? Like at what point am I, you know, going to a doctor and saying, okay, this isn't good. Not thank, you know, thank God I wasn't at the point of going to emerge, it wasn't there, but I have to go see my GP. We have to do something. And he, you know, gave me those couple things of what to watch for, and I knew those were approaching. And so I did just that. I booked an appointment. It was a Friday, I had my last consult. I will tell you, and I'll never reveal, but I take a lot of solace in that I've met the fellow that I did my last consult with, I've met him since, and I told him he knows me a little bit now, and I told him what was going on, and he said, You were great. He said, You did great work, you gave great help. I I was really satisfied. I take a lot of solace in the fact that I was a good lawyer. I I was I was not the best, I was far from the worst, but I was a good lawyer and I helped my clients, and I really worked hard to get great results and and and support them. And so I I'm very pleased with that. I can look back on it with some pride. I went through that, I went through a staff meeting, I crawled out of the office, went to my doctor's at lunch, told them what was going on, and they gave me a sick note that I sent my uh office manager from the car. And they said, Okay. And then a week and a half later, they called me back to my doctor, said, What do you want to do? I said, I'm not going back. They said they spared me. They said, they'll support you either way. I said, I don't think I can go back. And they said, okay.

SPEAKER_01

What were the do you mind sharing some of the things that your cousin said to look out for and that you were noticing in yourself?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I I I will say that I'm not a mental health professional, number one, and number two, I don't remember, you know, pardon me. Again, my my brain at a certain point is protecting itself. So I don't remember the exact details of the conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's okay.

SPEAKER_00

There's certainly, you know, and there's lists you can find from professionals. Once you do start having ideations, once you start making plans, once you, you know, think the world would be a better place without you in it, people be better without you here. Um I think. Think you know significant loss of appetite, uh, significant. And I I again I wasn't I was not there, but I knew that was coming. I didn't want to wait there. That's a much harder state to come back from, and thankfully people do it, people survive depression, but that's a much harder state to reverse. And I I was able to, as much as the choice was made for me, and I will talk about it today and I'll joke about it, I was still able to have some control in making that choice. And I'm so grateful that I did.

SPEAKER_01

So once you you got that sick note, you left your practice, what were the steps you took to start feeling better?

SPEAKER_00

I'll tell you an interesting story. So I went, took my I I left, I took myself for lunch because I was a little hungry, and I I instantly started to feel lighter. I started to feel better. I knew it would take some time. I knew I was fragile, but I instantly say, okay, there's a weight off my shoulders. I don't have to deal with any of this right now. Like it truly, I don't have to check my email. I can turn it off the phone. I don't have to deal with any of this at the moment. I took a couple days, rested, walked, you know, mid-July, slept, really tried to, you know, again, very, very patient wife, really tried to uh take some time to recover. I went to and I thought I was doing pretty well. I'm like, okay, this is this is going pretty smoothly. And the following Friday, there was a regular uh coffee networking session through the Chamber of Commerce out here that I used to attend. And I used to attend it, you know, when I was in practice and trying to build my practice up. And it's an eight to nine breakfast, and I figure, okay, I can go. And so I went very gingerly. I certainly was not myself yet. I was quiet, I was, you know, a little introverted, uh, kind of shy, sat in the corner. I I felt as though some normalcy would do me good, but I really was not up to being myself. And I didn't say much, I usually contributed to the conversation. This time I was pretty quiet, pretty laid back. And I was good. I I held on and I was, you know, I felt I was relatively okay. And then in the last 10 minutes, the host, who usually, you know, will lead the discussion, said, Anybody have anything to celebrate this week? And something hit me like a shot. And I stood up, I didn't cry, it was close, I didn't exhale, I didn't breathe, I bolted upright, I bolted out of the restaurant with the you know, like cartoon speed, head spinning, bolted out, went right to my car, drove home immediately, and crawled into bed. And I I guess my I was not at the point I was doing better, but I was not at the point I was able to celebrate anything, let alone even the successes of others. And it it was such a strange reaction because it was so I I try not to be that impulsive. It was so guttural. It was just like before I knew it, I was in my bed, and there were probably 15 minutes had passed, and that time to get home didn't matter. Boom, done, out. I previously, when I'd left law the first time, I did a little bit of contract, I did some doc reviews, I did some contract review work that you know they hire lawyers for on short-term projects, and it's fairly low stress work, fairly menial, not that exciting. But I knew some folks um who had hired me previously, and I went to them and I said, Here's my story. They like me, they like working with me. I said, Here's my story. I'm I'm I'm in a messy state. I can come work, but I need some kid gloves for a bit. They said, We got you. You know, you're we'll we'll hire you on and we will make sure you don't get anything too grueling.

SPEAKER_01

How brave of you to share that.

SPEAKER_00

I I know and knew before this the importance of the mental health conversation that it can't be lip service. So I didn't expect it to fully be my own story. Uh like I said, I dealt with anxiety issues in the past. I had left my first college try at 17 because my mental health was, you know, struggling in very different ways. Um I I knew that I'd been through therapy. Um I try not to hide. But I also knew that, okay, I'm I'm a bit of a fragile lamb right now and need some extra TLC.

SPEAKER_01

So how did that that next phase end up going for you?

SPEAKER_00

So the next phase was really me trying to sort of figure out what to do next. And my thought process, and I think it was accurate, was I'm not going back to law. I worked for, I will never, you know, publicly call out my my last employer, great guy, uh, and very well respected. The other folks that I worked for, and they're all friends, funny enough, and they all know each other. Um, three Jewish guys from the same neighborhood. And uh the same line of work and they go for dinner. It's my my my Mount Rushmore, I call it, they're cute. Um But they uh they were all you know, I worked for some really great people. And if I I don't want to say I couldn't cut it because I feel like that sells it short, that it was, you know, a lack of effort and it was not. But if if if it was not for me working with these guys, a different firm would not have been the magical answer. You know, working in a different environment would not have suddenly made things better. I mean, it was truly I had a lot of problems with the business of law itself. That I don't think, you know, and the pace and the expectations, I don't think any change of scenery would rectify. And so I said, okay, so what's now? So I did some contract review stuff for the couple months it needed to get done. I mean, I needed to earn a living and you know, now pay a mortgage. And I really was not sure what the heck to do next. Uh, and that's you know, my business kind of started out of a question mark of, hey, what is this going to be? Um it took me, you know, I gave myself a lot of grace over that summer and over that fall, and it took me a while to get better and a while to really start to feel joy again where I should have felt joy and feel like myself again, you know, have my personality back again. It was it was a recovery period.

SPEAKER_01

Does anything stand out as having been particularly helpful in helping you find yourself again?

SPEAKER_00

That's a great question. You know, that's I was pursuing counseling at the time, and I, you know, was working with someone, and I did one or two sessions after I left, and he said, get out of here. I'm like, you're you're fine. Like this this will solve 90% of your problems. And he was right. I mean, it's not as though I had to continue with an aggressive program. I needed to just get out of that workplace. I think having the support of the friends and family and partner that I did made such a and now it sounds cliche, made such a huge difference. Umvaluable in that, you know, especially in a relatively newer relationship, that I had the support of a partner that was incredibly helpful, uh, that I had friends who wanted to see me succeed and you know I was open with. It depends on how I would have framed the story. If I had framed leaving law as a mark of shame, as something you know we don't talk about, etc. etc., that might have looked very different, but I never did that. I always, you know, this is what happened to me. People ask me today, and I'm glib about it, and maybe to a fault, people ask me today, you know, why'd you leave law? And I say, I lost my mind. And, you know, it kind of takes them aback, I'm sure. And I'm always happy to talk about it, as you can tell very openly. Um, but I had a mental health crisis, and thankfully it wasn't too severe of one, but it was severe enough, and it caused me to make that change, and I'm happy to talk about it because what are we doing? Who are we helping if we hide in the shadows?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Are there things that stand out of the what your friends and family did to support you that were particularly helpful? And the flip side of that is are there things that people did meaning to help, but that actually for you not so great?

SPEAKER_00

It's fun. I'm trying to think, I don't think there's anything that really stands out as a as a gesture on either side. I wish I had a better answer for you. There's nothing that kind of I I think it was sort of in the overall approach. And I had already, you know, I I'm I'm very close to my grandfather. He's 101. Um and he's starting to slow down a bit now, but he has always been very supportive. And he talked about, you know, how I this was already my second career, right? Law was, you know, my plan B. I was supposed to be a journalist working, you know, or a national broadcaster, and you know, and I was there for seven minutes, but um working in the newsroom and pitching stories, etc. So this was already, you know, me doing something else. And he said he always admired the fact that I, you know, knew how to pivot, and that I, if I hit a brick wall, I don't stop. I go left, I go right, I keep going. So I think the way that I was treated, and not with any specific gestures or specific words, and my apologies to whoever's listening if there's something that I'm forgetting, because it kind of has blurred together in my mind. Um, but the way that I was treated, this is not a mark of shame. This is not the end of your career, this is not the end of the world. This is just another opportunity to reinvent myself. And I was never made to feel like I had failed, which that alone is the kindest thing you can do for somebody.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I I think it's interesting. Um a lot of people, my my sense from having so many of these kinds of conversations is people are so worried about the potential for people to make them feel ashamed that they, you know, and that they couldn't hack it, that it, you know, it wasn't they couldn't make it work. And don't necessarily realize that I think most people, and certainly the people you want to be hanging around with, aren't gonna have that perspective. It from the outside, it isn't, oh, they couldn't hack it, oh, they couldn't figure it out. It's okay, well, good thing they figured out that this wasn't the right setup for them. And hopefully we can help them figure out or be supportive in helping them figure out what is something better. And so many people can get focused on well, what are people gonna think of me if I leave? How will I identify myself? Who am I if I can't do this? And if I'm, you know, if I'm no longer labeled as an attorney. And the answer is, well, you're still you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that's really the most important thing that we tend to forget about.

SPEAKER_00

There's an old joke, and I think it was my birthday card, of you know, that at 20 you care about what everybody thinks of you. And at 40, you start to stop caring when everybody thinks of you, and at 60 you realize that nobody's thinking of you at all.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And if they are, they're thinking about what you think of them. And I think I sort of hit some of that, and I'm not even 40 yet, but I hit some of that in that point of I don't really care. You know, I am not going to. This was never in my mind a question of, oh my god, what will the neighbors think? That would have been, you know, if I had worried about that, I and I I won't reveal anything, but I have been I've helped a lot of people with talking about this, and I've you know tried to do some one-on-one um listening. I'm not a mental health professional, but I'm always happy to listen and you know talk about my own version. And I spoke to somebody who has a lot of family pressures, and a lot of pressures sort of from all sides of family, and you know, desperately needed to make a change, and has since made that change, but was really reticent because you know, very old school traditional family of feeling like a failure. And that's that's heartbreaking to me. I'm grateful I didn't have that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it it is right. On the one hand, there's you know, the people who have the concern that people are gonna have these expectations and they don't, and then the other side is the people who actually really do, and it's harmful. And how do you how do you put that in a box and do what's best for you and not people who aren't you, which is everybody else?

SPEAKER_00

Look, I have the only Jewish grandmother who was mad that I went to law school.

SPEAKER_01

No kidding.

SPEAKER_00

She said I should have been a plumber. She would have been right.

SPEAKER_01

And do you still think about, well, maybe maybe I should go in a different direction? Maybe I should go become a plumber?

SPEAKER_00

I'm not headed for the trades, I think, at this point. My uh my body's saying no, no, no. But uh in retrospect, I mean it's a pretty funny, uh, funny way to see it. You know, she complained that legal market gets oversaturated, and you know, it's a terrible way to make a living. And bless her, she wasn't wrong.

SPEAKER_01

So what led what are you doing now? And what what were the steps that got you here? Because you seem to have found something that works for your extrovertedness, your storytelling, your personality, your values. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I found a way to put it all together. And again, those people who supported me through, um, I'm really grateful to. So the first was my wife, and I will give her all the credit to the moon and back. Uh, but you talk about, you know, who are you and redefining yourself. And what she made me realize is I'm a writer. And I've always been a writer. I was a writer. I have my old journalism notebooks when I was five. The old, you know, flipped reporters notebooks with my like five-year-old hand scrawled name and address on them. They're somewhere on the shelf. And I've been writing stories since I was, you know, three and four. And I I'm a storyteller and I'm a writer. That's just me, that's what I do. I was a writer in law, and I had a blog that won a couple nationwide blog awards of the legal blog market, and I had won some other writing awards, and you know, my last firm even hired me because I was a pretty prodigious writer, as was the firm owner, and he uh you know wanted to make sure that I could do some writing and help support that end of things. So that's always been a part of me, and that's always been part of how I've seen myself. I just didn't think I could make a living at it. One of the things that I said to myself when I was really trying to figure out what things looked like is I had had a real history of betting on the wrong horse. I had had a couple of job opportunities come up at different times where I took the one that wound up, you know, failing or failing spectacularly. Not that the others would have been magical, hard to say, um, but I felt like I was betting on the wrong horse. And I realized that if I bet on myself, I can't lose. When you bet on yourself, you can't lose. And I said this at a phone call to my mother, and she went, that's brilliant. I said, that's you know, I it kind of makes sense to me of okay, so that's where I'm sitting at with that. That's really cool. So I was trying to figure out what this looks like. And you know, I joke about starting this business, I still have the bruise from where my wife elbowed me on the ribs and said, You're a writer, go and write. And I I always I'm grateful I never had the lawyer's ego. I did I avoided the lawyer's ego because those are, as you know, can be brutal. I had the writer's ego, which is I don't care if you pay me, but you keep my name on this. I mean, my byline is all that I have. My words are my own, you can't take them away from me, so my name stays on. And I came to realize that doesn't pay at all. Ego rarely pays, but that certainly doesn't pay. And I said, okay, maybe there's some work here as a ghostwriter. And I really had no idea, I didn't know what the market looked like. This was fall of 2019. I put up the world's worst website, a couple writing samples from you know blogs that I had done. People knew I was a writer. And so when I started putting it across my socials of, hey, I'm available to do some ghostwriting if anybody needs anything, the work started coming through. And a little bit Fast and Furious, which was great. And I spent a couple months working on some projects, helped out with you know my first website, edited someone's thesis, did some web writing, did some blogging for a couple clients, and I'm thinking, okay, maybe there's something here. And I I was running a marketing business with no background in marketing or in business. It is completely, you know, pulled out of you nowhere, but figured it out, a lot of common sense. And then six months in COVID hits, and Canada shut down for the better part of two years. Uh, which on the one hand was good for this business because everybody had to be online. On the other hand, economy got tight, and so people started pulling back marketing budgets. Uh, so things got a little bit tricky, and I had to really reinvent what this looks like. And I kept doing the document review. I will be transparent about that. For like the first year and a half, I was doing both, and I was, you know, that was paying the bills while I built this up and trying to see what this looked like. And I kept at it, and it got a little better, and I was able to take it full time, and I haven't looked back. So to answer your question, as I eventually try to do, six years in, I have a content writing business called The Right Stuff Agency. I do just about everything words-related, which is your websites, your blogs, your newsletters, articles, ebooks, white papers. I'm now ghostwriting some books, which is very cool. Um, I am doing a little bit of social media thought leadership for people who you know have a big following but need to feed that audience. Um it's 95. I take my name off it. I have one or two clients use my name, so I don't say 100%, but it's 95% I'm a ghost, not just because I'm pale. Um it's uh truly uh you don't know that it's me. You you do if you start to hear some of you know my verbal cues, but you really are not supposed to know that it's me. Uh I'm hiding in the shadows. And it's been incredible and so much fun and has grown by word of mouth. And I don't, you know, I do use the law degree to get me the seat at the table and trying to earn whatever I spent on the damn thing. So it certainly opens some doors. I think it probably gets me taken more seriously, rightly or wrongly, than if I didn't have it. But I said in the beginning of this, I did not want to be another legal marketing agency. There's some great ones out there, they do great work. I didn't want to compete in that space. So I I'm industry agnostic. I work with everybody and anybody and treat them all the same. And I have so much fun.

SPEAKER_01

And you feel like yourself with this?

SPEAKER_00

I am so myself. I am the happiest myself I've ever been. Um, I'm really, you know, the joke of recovery and lawyer, I am almost 100% recovered. There are certainly elements that have played through in the rest of my life. So, you know, in the way that I run this business, for example, and I mean without getting too granular, but um part of it is really in response to some of the traumas that I had. And, you know, when I was feeling bogged down by too many tasks and too many tasks flying at me, it left me with a real aversion to tasks and processes. So I try to run this business with as little process as I can, unless necessary, which is a terrible way to run a business. And I do not recommend it. Um, but there's certainly some trauma response that comes out of that. Uh I laugh because, you know, and I I spoke at a Law Society event recently, and I will go anywhere to talk about storytelling, and I can talk about my experience and my journey, and I've done podcasts talking about mental health, and I I can speak about it openly and I don't really feel pain anymore. I went by the booth at the trade show for this thing of one of the legal softwares that I used to use, and I looked at a display screen, and it didn't it didn't hurt, but it was certainly that moment of too soon. I I could have died happy never seeing that screen again. And I wish they're a great company. I wish them well, but personally I could have died happy never seeing that screen again. So I it didn't send me spiraling, it wasn't that you know classic trigger, but it was that moment of I don't know that'll ever be 100%. And maybe that's just part of my story too.

SPEAKER_01

If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about the legal industry, um, and I guess one thing about the legal industry is specifically uh, you know, thinking about the factors that contributed to you realizing, oh boy, I'm I'm not safe here. What would that be? What would you change?

SPEAKER_00

I I think we really have to put some actual mental health safeguards in place. And I will preface that with, I don't know what that looks like. You know, I don't know if you know much about Europe and the way that you know the working life works in some of the Western European countries, like in I think it's Germany, where they have mandatory, you know, six week vacations and you know, mandatory rules about you know turning your phone off off hours. Um, and we think about that in North American work culture, and we're just balking because. You know, that seems wild. And even, you know, as an American, you're looking at me as a Canadian, going like, you guys get an 18-month MAT leave? What is wrong with you people? Because we're stuck in that sort of race to the bottom. So, you know, I say it in a way of like you could set a rule that all firms, you know, have to close at 5 o'clock. Okay, well, someone's gonna buck the trend and then go until 6. Someone's gonna say, fines be damned, we want to give our clients later service, we're going until 6. And someone else will say, F you, we're opening until 6.30. And it's just gonna, it just keeps on spiraling. So we talk about mental health as though it's a priority, but we are rushing to sacrifice it in the name of client satisfaction, meeting unreasonable demands, creating emergencies where there aren't any, which is a huge problem. My wife's a corporate event planner, so I uh she deals with a lot of that. Sometimes you're creating emergencies where they simply don't exist.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, you know, and setting up. And if I I don't know, again, what sort of the systemic structures have to look like, but I think that it needs to be dealt with, and especially with some enforcement. You know, there are going to be, I mean, here, uh one of the rules I think now is that that articling term, I believe now has to be paid, at least in some capacity. You know, the same rules against um unpaid apprenticeships. That's like there's rules here against unpaid apprenticeships. I mean, you'll always have people try to skirt those rules. Try to hire someone for the exposure or the experience. We're not a New York fashion magazine. And even they shouldn't be doing it because they have enough money. But like, and I'm I'm not this, you know, crazy socialist screaming in the streets, but I think it's humane to treat people equitably. Lawyers are humans too. What you're seeing, and I don't know if the trend is you know where you are as much, what you're seeing with a lot of younger attorneys jumping through the bar, is they're not standing for the same crap that, you know, older generations stood for. And so they're leaving. And so they're jumping firms or they're going to new environments, and the you know, the career loyalty isn't there anymore because they're not going to stand to be abused at you know, 3 a.m. around an office table while they're sleeping under their desk. Just because you know their predecessors did it, they won't. And so maybe that's where the sea change will start to come, but it really needs to be um coming much, you know. I had an interesting conversation. I mean, you you can think to take this part out, but you know, I was at a nationwide law firm, there was a fairly large firm up here, and they had you all these events for um International Women's Day, which is important, of course, but you know, they're highlighting you know the role that women play in the firm. It's like I'd much rather see a day where you don't need to highlight this because it's just effing commonplace that women are in your top partnerships and top leaderships, and we don't even have to acknowledge that we're special because of it. Like this shouldn't be a thing that we're priding ourselves on. This should be the norm, you people.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and and bringing that into the mental health side, well, we're having these very focused conversations and developing, you know, some firms more than previously are developing policies, but the individuals aren't necessarily on board. But, you know, you might now have someone in a leadership position who has a title related to you know wellness or well-being, and uh, you know, add adding uh all sorts of activities and events and you know, uh things that highlight, oh, we've heard mental health is important. Okay, but have we integrated that?

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. What are we actually doing?

SPEAKER_01

It's not enough to just say, oh, I've heard of this. Yeah, the stats say we're not doing so great. All right, let's keep going.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and the problem is that lawyers do not like to be told what to do or how to think. Uh, they like to push back against that. So, you know, you could set legislation that orders this, and the pushback will be they'll push it through the highest levels of courts to fight against it. You know, it's and we've we've seen disputes up here that all lawyers have to basically have a something of a DEI statement that was put brought in a number of years ago of just how they're gonna commit to sort of you know treating everybody. And there's a there's a sample statement you can um get from Law Society that is completely innocuous. And even then people are screaming and protesting still years later. Um, I don't think you're gonna see it, but I really do wish it would stop being such a lip service conversation because you're going to lose people.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I mean, people are being lost. And I I am somewhat encouraged by some of the people that I do see in some firm environments that are going in there and adjusting policies and actually kind of infiltrating and adjusting how people respond. But, you know, there's the systemic side and then there's the individual side. And so until we can really get the vast majority of individuals on board, along with those system changes and policy changes, uh, you know, and everything that goes along with the way we we operate as an industry, you know, there's still gonna just be way too much that's still functioning in the way that we've known, and that's problematic. My hope is that we can get more and more people, individuals on board. And so that even though, you know, I don't expect that we're ever gonna completely eliminate the, you know, all of the things that we know are problematic, but at least if people know where to go to find what they need and, you know, environments that are healthier, people that care, at least those people will know where to go as an alternative and not feel forced to go to the people who are kind of stuck in the dinosaur ages.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. We we can hope. I mean, that's we can hope. And we can be, you know, for we can hope we can push for change, you know. It's yeah, I me telling the story over and over again, and I will keep on doing it. And like I said, you know, in the last post that you read, is that I did it the fifth anniversary, and I got truly five people who were in a place that I was or much worse. And, you know, that I at least they saw some light in my story, and that you know, there is a way out because it feels like there isn't one, I'm sure. Then leading to, you know, some have made some job changes, some have made some career changes. I think most all have sought mental health support from a professional. Again, I will never claim to be that. Um, but that's that's so crucial.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. Anything else that you want to share that you that we haven't covered?

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. Thank you for having these conversations. Thank you for being them. You have a tremendous megaphone at your disposal. And people, when you speak, people listen. And I think, you know, I hope you know that.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

And you know, that is a powerful. I mean, I'm often in the same boat, you you certainly more so, but that is a powerful tool. And what you choose to do with that megaphone can change lives that you're doing that. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you. Thank you. Everyone's everyone has a platform, it just looks different for each person. For some people, it's social media, for some people it's you know, in-person communities, and your platform can be with two people. It all matters. And, you know, the the way you share your story, the way we each show up and share our stories and make that make the space for that, as you said, it really can save lives.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So if we can, I feel we have a responsibility too.

SPEAKER_00

I I will never stop having this conversation. It'll change over time, but I'll never stop having this conversation to be part of this conversation because it is a serious, serious one that needs to be had.

SPEAKER_01

Agreed. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled we were able to do this and that we found each other in the first place.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no kidding. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for listening. I hope you got a ton of value from this conversation, and that you will check out the links in the description to learn more about the guest and the wellness esquire. And I hope you take even just one minute to do something for yourself today. Maybe right now. Drink more water, say no, call a friend, do something that makes you happy, have a 30 second dance party, find something to make you laugh. Also, be sure to subscribe and send the podcast to a colleague. And if we're not yet connected on LinkedIn, please fix that. I'd love to know you. See ya next time.

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Ariella Cohen Coleman

Host
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Talya Drissman Woolf

Producer