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You're listening to the thriving lawyer with Kathleen Brenner? Are you a lawyer who's feeling burnt out, but you want more in life? Do you want to live a purpose driven life that is filled with more meaning and joy, a life where you can absolutely thrive as a lawyer, but not at the expense of everything else. So it is important to you. If you are, you've come to the right place. I'm a lawyer, a coach, a dreamer and a change maker. My mission is to help you grow and thrive, to embody your values and strengths as both a lawyer and human being and to expand what is possible for you. So you can create a more joyful, fulfilling and impactful life than you've ever previously imagined possible.
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Hello, lawyers, welcome to episode eight of the thriving lawyer, super happy to be here, it's been a little while since I've had an episode of this podcast, there's been a lot going on. But I've also really been struggling or wrestling with myself as to the purpose of the podcast, and what ideas I wanted to share with you. And part of that is, is because one of the things that I really hate about social media, and also, the things that I try and avoid in the coaching profession, is this idea as the coach as expert.
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For me, a coach is person who's really good at asking deep questions, who can take a client's will partner with a client through a really creative process, to facilitate a conversation and take that client on a journey into a place that they couldn't have got to on their own. But I don't pretend to be an expert, and to know, you know, the secret sauce, or all the answers to what the good life is, I really think that anyone who's professing that they can do that is really a snake oil salesman or saleswoman and should be avoided like the plague. So that's not what I'm here to do with this podcast. What I am interested in, though, is this idea of the thriving lawyer, and how we can as long as Thrive not just in our professions, in our work, but in the rest of our lives. And I think that I've got a unique viewpoint on this. And that's why I've got something to share. And I'm going to continue doing the podcast, you know, I am a practicing lawyer. And so I've been there and go through the same struggles that all of you out there do when you're struggling with the challenges of the profession. But I'm also a certified coach. And so I've learned the techniques to go through that process, and have made massive changes in my own life because of my experiences in coaching. And I'm really, really committed and interested in how I can best serve you as lawyers in these challenges. And in this new world that we face since the pandemic, you know, a lot of us are now working in hybrid and remote ways. We're reconsidering the kind of values that we want to live by.
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Some of us though, we're still stuck. There's so much unhappiness and depression in the legal profession. And although the profession as a whole is taking a lot of steps, there is so far to go.
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So
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that's a caveat to this podcast. I'm not an expert in all the answers, but what I will do is ask the questions, and also explore the ideas. And hopefully through doing that, be a step or two ahead of you, and able to share what I'm learning and what I've learned, so that you can take perhaps small steps, perhaps big ones, but perhaps small, that enable you to thrive as a lawyer.
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And so, with that little caveat in mind, let's get stuck into the actual topic that I wanted to explore in this episode.
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Now, I was on a walk this morning, on the beach, it's my non lawyer day, I work four days a week for a new model law firm, which enables me to have the freedom to focus on my coaching and the development of my business in the rest of the time, as well as you know, explore the rest of my life. So as part of that, I've been experimenting with how I structure my week. You know, as long as I get that extra time in it doesn't matter if I go for those walks on a Wednesday morning. And in any case, what I've discovered is they actually made me more creative. So this morning, I took the morning off from actually doing any coaching work was on my
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Walk. And all of a sudden, the ideas just flowed like a torrent. And I was thinking about this idea of identity, and how it fits with work. And in particular, the role that being a lawyer can play in so many of our lives, in terms of its placing our broader identity as humans, like, how do we conceptualize ourselves? So many times, if you ask a lawyer how they are, or what they do, say you meet them new, they'll end up talking about their work as a lawyer, they'll say, quite often, I'm a lawyer, okay,
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tends to dominate our identities.
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Now, what I'm interested in is how this can play out and really unhealthy ways. And to then also perhaps, explore what might some of the alternatives be.
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And I want to explore a little what I've observed over the last few years, especially since 2020. Because, you know, they've been society wide challenges to the previous status quo that I alluded to, earlier. And I don't think they'll come as any surprise, you know, that the remote work, the hybrid working, and general reassessment that so many of us went through during the pandemic. You know, we as lawyers are quite privileged, most of us weren't required on the front lines, we were able to work from home. And so what happened to us is that we actually couldn't do a lot of things we were restricted at home. Of course, those with families probably had an X extra set of problems with the home schooling and all of that. So, you know, of course, our experiences were very different. But overall, I think what can be said is that so many of us did kind of challenge or have our previous ways of thinking challenged, we were forced to think about what's important to us, and how we wanted to create our lives post the pandemic, not knowing what it would actually look like. And I also wanted, then talk about, you know, the kind of barriers that I think that notwithstanding that kind of reassessment can keep lawyers really stuck in the old ways. I also want to talk about a little bit about my own experiences. And then finally, round the conversation out by exploring when seeing a coach might be helpful in this exploration about identity.
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Particularly, you know, if you've taken that first step, which can be difficult in itself of really understanding that your identities a little too tied up with your day job as a lawyer, and start to consider well, how might you make even just small changes that can make a big difference, and starting to shift your identity so that it encompasses a much more complex and multifaceted idea of the life that you're leading?
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So why am I even interested in this topic? Well,
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this podcast, my coaching, it's all about this idea of the thriving lawyer. And the thriving lawyer is a lawyer who's thriving in their profession, in their work, but also in the rest of their life. And to me, we can't thrive, unless we have a healthy identity, that encompasses the different aspects of our life, and what's important to us. And that is not to exclusively connected to our work as a lawyer. And I think that's a real trap in our profession, where our whole lives can get sucked into our lawyering, at least traditionally, and it doesn't leave much space for much else for a lot of people, you know, I get coaching clients come to me, where they really are caught up so much in their identity as lawyers, they're not happy. They don't know what they want, but they know that they want something different. Okay, and to me, a lot of it. And a good starting point is this exploration around identity and values, so that you can start understanding what is actually important to yourself, you know, in my view, without a clear understanding of ourselves in all our complex, ever shifting and even contradictory selves without having some sense of the values that we want to live by, but of what's important to us, well, we're just at sea because there's no compass to guide us.
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And,
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you know, I think I alluded to earlier that, particularly since the pandemic, many of us have been questioning our identities, more broadly, who we are and the role of work in our lives and who we want to be. And so, you know, whilst there were obviously a lot of downsides to the pandemic, there weren't was an upside
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had particularly for those of us who came to it with privilege, you know, we didn't necessarily lose our jobs.
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The worst of it was being at home. The worst of it was perhaps homeschooling and dealing with, you know, the lack of space, perhaps if there were families and children to deal with. But there was a bonus, I think, for many of us in the professional class, and particularly as lawyers, and there have been unprecedented opportunities for reinventions. And you know, lawyers, we really aren't immune to this. And in my own coaching and work, I am seeing people who are doing things differently, and who are creating legal careers that work for them. You know, I think back to the interview I did a couple of months ago, with Nam and Kranz and his work with the Animal Law Institute, as an example of a lawyer who's really carved their own path out and made some difficult choices as well as part of that.
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So, you know, looking back more broadly,
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you know, I think there's all these opportunities for reinvention. Yet at the same time, there are a lot of barriers that which can keep us stuck. And it's probably not a surprise to lawyers out there as to what they are, you know, we're a high achieving bunch, often. And we're often in work environments that promote competitiveness, particularly if we're in certain parts of the private legal sector, you know, and also goes almost without saying that it takes a huge amount of work and dedication to become a lawyer. And then to get good at being one. And traditionally, a high level of status has come with that profession. And particularly in traditional and conservative legal work environments, where overwork is valorized, it can literally be all consuming, you know, in fact, so consuming that perhaps the rest of our lives get crowded out. Now, needless to say, this is a really long acknowledged recipe for misery, the very opposite of thriving, and whilst there have undoubtedly been significant changes to the culture of law firms and other legal workplaces, you know, it's by no means done and dusted and plenty of the old culture remains. Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that the burden of cultural change in the legal profession should be on the individual. You know, of course, it is, after all a matter of organizational culture. But notwithstanding that there is a lot that is in our control. And so I think that reflecting on our identities, as lawyers can be as good a place as any to start if you're really looking at wanting to thrive, or if you're already doing well, to just increase that level of well being.
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And the reality is that too many of us lawyers adopt or accept cultures that aren't good for us, we accept the overwork. And perhaps we even accept that we are inevitably a lawyer, you know, because sometimes a thriving lawyer means not being a lawyer anymore.
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And sometimes this can be because we can't imagine who we are outside of our work. And so what we do instead is bury ourselves in work, because it helps us avoid paying attention to the rest of our lives, from having to ask ourselves the hard questions and think about, you know, what it is that we actually want out of our lives.
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So, a little bit about my own experience that I think is relevant and what I've learned over the last few years. So I think it's fair to say that I've experienced quite a mammoth shift in the last few years in respect of how I structure my own work life, and the place that lawyering has in my life. And this, in turn, is at least partially linked to the shifts I've had in my identity as a lawyer and a human more generally.
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wasn't easy. And at times, it required really honest conversations, often coaching conversations about what I really wanted, you know, did I want security and to just progress up the chain? Or did I want something else? Did I want to
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have my service to the community be just through my lawyering? Or did I want something else? I think about well,
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what did it mean for me to be a lawyer? And what role did that lawyer lawyering have in my own life? And so if I think back to say the first 10 to 13 years of my career,
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a lot of that served me very, very well and I was very happy and I wouldn't give back the experience that I got. I have chosen to be a government lawyer because of
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The type of work, you know that connection to national and then state policy and politics, that's the sense of contribution that that brought, plus the Better Work life balance that it's sometimes brought, particularly at the sub manager level, you know, it's fair to say, nevertheless, that a lot of my identity was tied up with being a lawyer, you know, I'd wanted to be a lawyer from a teenager, I'd always wanted to be involved in the policy or the political arena, I moved to Canberra to take a grad job, I worked full time I gradually gained experienced,
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you know, it served me well. But it's also really true that I couldn't really imagine myself outside of being a lawyer, you know, my identity was so tied to my academic and my professional achievement.
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Now, of course, our professional lives and our contribution to society is, of course, an important part of life, it was an important part of mine. So I'm not saying there was anything wrong with any of that. But for me, what happened gradually over time, is that I started to realize that I really wanted a lot of other things, including in my professional life that I couldn't necessarily get from lawyering. And the contribution also that I wanted to make outside of law. And it's not like this all changed overnight, you know, there were beginnings pre pandemic, it wasn't all because of the pandemic, that things changed. You know, I did a manager as coach course, and discovered coaching, and then did my coach training and spent all of those hours learning how to coach but also coaching and being coached. And what that gave me was that space to explore some of those broader questions and ideas about what I wanted, and to go much more deeply than I had ever been able to do before.
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And then, of course, 2020 came along and the pandemic struck. I lived on my own in Melbourne, need I say more, you know, whilst I of course, was privileged in the I didn't lose my job, and I wasn't required on the frontlines. It was nevertheless such a challenging time. But when I reflect on that now,
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I don't think it is at all an exaggeration to say that it was actually quite revolutionary for me, I quickly realized, in 2020, that I suddenly had time, because yes, I was working, and I was busy at work. But in the rest of my life, I was living on my own, and I couldn't go anywhere. And so taking on that classic insight from stoic philosophy, the only way I could get through was by recognizing what was in my control and what wasn't, and then trying to harness that. And again, I think I would never have been able to focus so positively had I not had that coaching, training, and that coaching experience, and also that experience of being coached through the difficulties of that time.
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Because again, you know, what I was able to do is reflect on what I actually wanted, and start to make those changes, you know, I absolutely threw myself into more coach training, more hours of coaching, and more hours of being coached was just deepen the process. And it was kind of just all kind of exploded from there. And, you know, first of all, the steps were sort of little,
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after a lot of coaching are still public servant working in the state government, and had the courage to go part time. Whilst it seems now such a no brainer, at that time, it seemed like such a massive decision, there was a lot of baggage, I had to get over to get to the point where I thought that that was okay.
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I don't know whether it was sort of subconscious. But I think that there were lingering feelings that part time work was just for if you had kids, or that somehow you were lazy, if you weren't, and that it was a signal that you weren't committed, which was all crazy, because it wasn't like I was going part time to do nothing. I was wanting to increase my coaching, learning and start and develop a coaching practice and business. So I had clear goals, but nevertheless, you know, those nasty voices, you know, that the inner critic was was was hard at work there. And so it took time to get over that.
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And then once I was working part time, and of course, it was all remote, and I changed legal jobs still in the public service, but with much more management responsibilities. But as I worked part time, free of the physical office, my work as a lawyer was still important. But it was put more in its rightful place. I think what had happened was that the pandemic, by taking so much away had really made me reflect on what I wanted to reintroduce. And it also meant that because I wasn't
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Traveling to the office every day and I wasn't there, I was free in my off time to really just create what I wanted to create. And so work suddenly, whilst I wanted to perform really well when I was at work. And of course, you know, I wasn't
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slacking off in any way, when I was there, you know, it was still really important to me. But I had all this other time that was completely not focused on that. And I also
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had a friend who was a legal leader, and I could see how busy that person was, but also how they were also the best that I'd ever seen making boundaries, and really resting and recovering and that
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they were able to just switch off in a way that I had never been able to get they were so successful. And I really took that as a gold standard as something that I really wanted to
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pursue and to master being like that person, because I'd never seen anything quite like it. And you know, so things kept going. Gradually, my identity shifted, lawyering was more and more just one part of such a bigger life. And I started to think about and decide how I wanted to recreate. And eventually I recognized that even though I was getting a lot of flexibility in my job, and I was working with a good team, I had a great supportive leader in my new role.
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I also realized that I actually needed much more flexibility
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by that stage, so that I could really kind of create the coaching business that I wanted, and also the broader life that I desired, and that I needed to have less management responsibilities, so that I could really focus on those other interests. And I my lawyering was taking too much of me. So I needed the flexibility. So that, you know, when I was lawyering, I could absolutely focus and perform at my best, but that I also had the space to do those other things. So I quit my very secure public servant career and took up contracting with a new model law firm, then contracting back with government departments. And I have to say, this has really given me the flexibility still to do great work, I can work with great teams.
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But I also have that space. And it enables me to do things like this is free podcasts, which I would never have had the ability or the space to do previously. But also look after my health, you know, develop my coaching practice my business, but also more like, just as importantly, perhaps, or even more importantly, be a better family member and friend.
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And so, you know, this process has continued. And now, you know, I'm working part time.
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I'm really engaged.
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And I'm, I'm just pausing here, because it's really kind of challenging to sum up, well, that benefit, but that I've got from this.
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I think, you know, what's important here is that, I feel like what I've had the opportunity to do is to begin to create that life for myself, but also still make that social contribution.
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And at a fundamental level, it's kind of all to do with my values. Because perhaps the key realization is that
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I've been able to really reflect on through that coaching process, what was most important to me, you know, my top three values have stayed pretty steady. They are learning connection, and service, not necessarily in that order. And suddenly, when I started having that awareness around my values, it didn't matter what I was doing at a particular time. Whether I'm coaching around lawyering, the key thing for me is, am I engaging in a life where I can really live those values? Am I learning something new? Am I challenging myself? Well, certainly, I'm able to do that every day, in both my lawyering and my coaching, am I making a social contribution, I still feel absolutely, I'm doing that through my lawyer bank work, I'm able to do government work where there is a clear social purpose and to that degree, still make that social contribution. But also through my coaching now, in the course development I'm doing I've been working hard on developing some master classes that will be coming out and coming weeks and months,
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where lawyers will be able to get their CPD points to, you know, depending on the rules in their state, as recordings.
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And
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those topics that I'm dealing with are a little bit different to those that are the run of the mill kind of CPDs that people do so I feel like I'm able to make that social contribution
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One there too. And then of course connection, the connection that I'm making with my team in both my legal work with my coaching clients, but then also the space in my life that I have for the connections that I want with my family and my friends. But again, I wouldn't have been able to do that had I not explored values, and then really reassess this idea of like, the role of the up my identity as a lawyer. And I think what I've done is, I've gone from being someone who primarily saw myself as a lawyer, to someone who that's just part of the rich tapestry. It's important.
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But it's just one aspect. And I really encourage you to reflect on in your own lives. What is your identity, as a lawyer, like, where does it fit in? How does it fit in with the rest of your life? Does it dominate or is work in its rightful place? Now, if you're interested in those kinds of questions, it's useful to think about well when coaching might be able to help, because one of the most central benefits of having a coach, in my view, is that a coach asks you questions, they're thought provoking, they might sometimes be challenging, but they'll take you to a place that you couldn't have gone yourself, they'll take you through a coaching framework, a process that is designed to make you go deep, to go through a journey, to really be able to go deeper than you ever would have yourself. Now, so self coaching is definitely possible. It's a great thing to do, I do it myself. But I do think it's fair to say that it would generally not get you where you would if you had another person facilitating that coaching process. And that's just because we're subjective beings. And as beings with our own perception, perceptions, our own way of viewing the world, it's so easy to get caught up in our own stories, and to unquestionably or unquestioned, ly believe our own narratives. And these questions can be so meaty ideas around our identities, humans,
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our key values, reflecting on them can be absolutely challenging. Because at a fundamental level, they are about shedding the idea of who you are in creating a new conception. Now we can try on identities we can play, we can explore, but it's not easy. And there's certain dominant narratives out there in society about how we should be. So in respect of identity, what a good coach can help you do is really explore help you explore, help you try on different ways of viewing the world or viewing yourself, they can help you explore your values, what's important to you. And this level of exploration can be at the level of being rather than doing, you know, that verb difference to be or to do very different things. You know, I think often people think that coaching is just about the doing, you have the goal, and then you sit in the plan, and you work with the coach to be able to achieve it. Sometimes that's absolutely true. But sometimes it goes much deeper than that to this level of being.
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You know, and once you've done that exploration, perhaps then you can think about little small steps, in terms of action, the doing, because those small steps can result in big shifts in how you view software in your identity can it's a two way thing.
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It's about being but it's also about doing and then the doing effects the being. So it's a little metaphysical upon my apologies. But in a case, you know, if you're interested in considering this values exploration in greater detail, I've put my lawyer's guide to creating or to clarifying your values in the shownotes. It's a great little exercise to do that can help you start to think of what's important to you. And that might spark some thoughts about bigger questions of identity. But if you're interested in exploring these ideas further, and you want to engage a coach right now, please feel free to contact me. My social media links are in the show notes, as well as my website link. So thank you, lawyers. It's great to be back here on the podcast and I hope that you found some value from this episode. If you've got any insights or comments, I'd be really keen to hear them so please send them through via email.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
