The “No Assholes Rule” (And Why It’s A Joke)

In this episode of The Former Lawyer Podcast, Sarah Cottrell talks with Victoria Collier, founder of Quid Pro Quo Law, about the process of preparing a law firm for sale. Victoria shares her own journey, from building her practice to successfully selling it, and offers critical insights into the steps lawyers can take to make their firms scalable and attractive to buyers. From establishing processes and delegating tasks to cleaning up financials, Victoria breaks down the key factors that make a law firm a valuable asset.Whether you’re a law firm owner thinking about your long-term exit strategy or simply curious about what goes into selling a legal practice, this episode is packed with actionable advice. Learn how to position your firm for sale, maximize its value, and set yourself up for a successful transition beyond the law.See show notes at formerlawyer.com/242If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

The Former Lawyer framework has recently received a glow-up, and this podcast episode covers all the fun updates. Sarah has a few things that stuck out to her and would be the most helpful to anyone considering becoming a former lawyer. She covers those items in this episode to highlight them for all the podcast listeners considering joining.See show notes at formerlawyer.com/241If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

Today’s podcast episode features a conversation between Sarah and a member of the Collab, Liza Hanks. Liza made a career transition out of practicing law after 22 years, and they discussed how the Collab played a role in her transition and decision-making process. This conversation is helpful for anyone considering making their transition out of law and looking for some assistance in the process. The Collab has undergone some fantastic updates recently, and it’s a perfect time to join. Read on to learn how it helped Liza ask the right questions.See show notes at formerlawyer.com/240If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

You may have worked in a workplace or more than one legal workplace where they said that they had a no-asshole rule.Clearly, there are many people who have worked in similar workplaces because this episode is one of the most downloaded episodes. Again, it's one of the ones I hear about the most from people because there is so much agreement with the fact that the no-asshole rule is, in fact, a myth. Here are my thoughts about the no-asshole rule.See show notes at formerlawyer.com/139If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

The next episode in our summer re-release series is Burnout is a Feature, Not a Bug. This is one of the things that I honestly think is the most important for you to realize if you are working in a toxic workplace, if you're working in a large law firm, or in Biglaw. Burnout is a feature of the way that work is organized in these organizations, it is not something that inexplicably happens that you could have some of life hacked your way out of.See show notes at formerlawyer.com/93If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

I originally recorded the episode Your Job Should Not Make You Cry back in the very early days of lockdown when I was still editing the podcast myself and needed to be able to edit some shorter episodes, which ultimately I discovered was a happy accident because this episode is one of the most popular episodes of the podcast.It is one of the most downloaded. It comes up all the time. I hear all the time from people who have sent it to friends and coworkers because apparently there are a lot of us who need to be reminded that your job should not make you cry. If that doesn't tell you something about our profession, I don't know what will. Here is the next episode in our summer re-release series, Your Job Should Not Make You Cry.If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

The next episode in our summer re-release series is one of the episodes from our Collab member question series. If you've listened to this series before, you know that I asked a bunch of different people in the Collab to answer some questions about their experience, what they've learned, the things that they have taken away from the process of figuring out what it is that they want to do that isn't practicing law. This series gets mentioned to me very frequently when people reach out to me. So I wanted to bring it back and highlight it. In each episode, you are going to hear a number of people who are answering the same question. In this episode, the question that people will be answering is, “What is one thing that you resisted doing in this process of figuring out what it is that they wanted to do that isn't practicing law, that they wish they had done sooner?”Listen to the rest of the Collab Member SeriesFormer Lawyers Share an Obvious Thing that was Transformative Myths Former Lawyers Believed Before Leaving the Law What Has Been the Biggest Surprise for Former Lawyers in the Collab? What Would Former Lawyer Collab Members Tell Themselves Five Years Ago Why These Former Lawyers Decided to Join the Guided Track If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

Next up in this summer series of the most popular episodes of The Former Lawyer Podcast is an episode that I did about malignant narcissism in the legal profession and specifically signs of malignant narcissism because no surprise, narcissists are very common in our profession and a lot of the things that you experience in your legal workplace that seem honestly a bit crazy making are frequently the result of working with a narcissist or multiple narcissists or being in a narcissistic system.In this episode that you're about to listen to, I talked a bit about what the characteristics even are of narcissism and in particular, malignant narcissism, and how to identify it. See show notes at formerlawyer.com/127If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

The reason that I recorded this episode originally is that so often when lawyers are thinking about leaving, one of the things that holds them back from leaving especially if they work in a law firm is that other people are going to look down on them and think that they're making a terrible decision, et cetera.I think it's critical to remember, as I talk about in this episode, especially if you are not wanting to be in a law firm long term, that not fitting in is actually a good thing. Let's get into this episode, which is one of the most popular episodes of the podcast.If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack

Today we're kicking off a summer series with episodes of the podcast that have been released over the past, well, honestly, almost five years the podcast has been going. These episodes that we're going to be re-releasing are all episodes that have been extremely popular, they're some of the most downloaded, or they're some of the ones that I hear the most about from people.This first episode that we're releasing the series is the first of a previous series that we did, which was based on the book Bullshit Jobs. This is a series that I did with Annie Little, one of my good friends, who's also a former lawyer and a career coach. Complete Bullshit Jobs Series Is Being A Lawyer A Bullshit Job? The Misery of Ambiguity and Forced Pretense in Law Firms The Artificial Power Structure and Feeling Helpless as a Lawyer with Annie Little The Misery of Not Feeling Entitled to One’s Misery as a Lawyer The Misery of Knowing That One Is Doing Harm as a Lawyer If you are looking for support between the self-paced nature of the Collab and working with Sara one-on-one, then what you are looking for is the guided track.The Guided Track is a live eight weeks small group intensive for lawyers who want to jumpstart their search for an alternative career, starting on October 4th, and running through November 22nd.Enroll at formerlawyer.com/guidedtrack