This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Becoming a lawyer is a reality shock transition from school to the office. This is a transition Stephanie, today’s guest, did during the covid years and the reality of a lawyers work was discouraging – in the isolation she felt. So she posted her thoughts and feelings on LinkedIn and the response was incredible. Jim and Tyson talk to Stephanie today about the effects of isolation in the workplace and what we can do as law firm owners to help with that.
Listen in!
Episode Highlights:
3:26 Why become a lawyer? Was law school what you expected?
6:05 The post where Stephanie shares that she’s lost her spark as a lawyer
7:53 Trigger point to raise your hand and say “yes” I’m struggling
11:15 We are all connected but we don’t share the toughest parts of our lives
12:27 I’m struggling more than I lead on – How are you doing now?
14:42 I wonder if it is the profession of being a lawyer that makes you feel lonely?
17:19 What are you looking towards for the future?
18:52 What advice do you have for law firm owners – when they need to figure out who is struggling and what can leadership do to help lawyers who feel isolated
20:45 What can you do to increase connectivity with a virtual office
Jim’s Hack: Time insights from Google – How do you spend your time?
Stephanie’s Tip: Book: Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work: Bill Burnett here.
Tyson’s Tip: Fill Ethic requirements for at the end of the year with Downing Law Group here.
🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.
Connect with Stephanie:
Resources:
Join the Guild Membership
Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
Join the Facebook Group
Follow the Facebook Page
Follow us on LinkedIn
Transcripts: When You Feel Like You’ve Lost Your Spark
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson matrix. What’s up Jimmy
Jim Hacking
Tyson? How are you, sir?
Tyson Mutrux
Doing great. We just got done with our L 10. Meeting for the week, we’ve made some good progress on our new project. That’s an old project that we’re rebooting some of it. So I’m doing well, man. How about you? I’m getting a little tired today, to be honest with you. I don’t know why. But otherwise, I’m okay. Well, by you.
Jim Hacking
I feel great. This is my last assignment of the week after this. I’m leaving to take my son Ibrahim up to visit the University of Minnesota and Macalester College tomorrow. And then we’re going to go up to see I really want to see Lake Superior because I’ve been reading these series of novels about a cop of near Lake Superior. And then on Sunday, we’re gonna go see the Vikings play the bears of Chicago.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s exciting. One of these days, you have to tell me why this particular college in the middle of Minnesota, that’s kind of an interesting choice. But I think that’s another story for another day.
Jim Hacking
Well, speaking of college, we have a recent Law School grad, a newer lawyer on the show, when I first saw that Becca had scheduled our guests, I was sort of scratching my head. But now it all makes sense, because Becca has sent me straight and explained to me why we needed to have Ms. Stephanie McDonald, Attorney at Law, Esquire extraordinaire from the land up North Canada itself. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Stephanie McDonald
Thanks so much for having me. And I don’t know if you know this, but in Canada, we are not called attorneys. They call us counsel or just lawyers, not as fun of a title. But
Tyson Mutrux
we have some guild members and the Oh, a bunch of weird rules and regulations. And like they audit your files and a lot of different things. It’s kind of crazy. So I want to get into the social media posts, the LinkedIn posts in a little bit. But before we do that, we tell people a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are at this point.
Stephanie McDonald
Sure. Yeah. So I took I actually didn’t have the most straightforward path to law school. But I always knew that I wanted to be a lawyer after undergrad, I didn’t immediately get into school. So I did a paralegal program in Canada. Paralegals can attend court, and they have kind of broader responsibilities than you United States paralegals, as I understand, but it felt like a good stepping stone to law school. And then while I was in the program, I got into law school, and really enjoyed law school had a great time. And after law school got a job at an employment law firm at that employment law firm I learned so much about representing employees, and how to be a lawyer and all that stuff. And then because my firm was operating solely remotely, and there was no, you know, sign that anything would ever change, I made the choice to come to a fully in office environment, because I was feeling a super isolated just working from home. And I’ve been here for almost 10 months or so. And I’m doing well. I still represent employees in their employment law issues. And it’s a really satisfying gig because employees come to you and they’re feeling very distraught. Most of them had just been fired. So it’s really cool to be able to assist them through a really difficult time.
Jim Hacking
What made you want to be a lawyer in the first place? Stephanie, thinking back, I
Stephanie McDonald
think I loved the idea of a litigator, being in Court arguing your case, public speaking was always really interesting to me. And my dad had always encouraged me to try a profession. He’s a planner and works with a lot of municipal lawyers. And he just always raved about how cool of a career that would be. And so he kind of planted the seed at a pretty young age and having studied philosophy in my undergrad, and then realizing that would not result in a plethora of career opportunities. I felt law school was like a decent choice. And so that’s kind of where I am now,
Tyson Mutrux
just out of curiosity, was law school what you expected?
Stephanie McDonald
Yes, and no, I think I expected to be taught a little bit more practical skills, but it was very heavily theory based, which was frustrating, because my professors then being academics and you know, having to research and write papers on all these issues, you know, their lens of teaching was different than what was actually useful to me going forward. So that was a bit frustrating to like dial back, the practicalities of actually being a lawyer and to think about the theory of like tort and like all that interesting stuff. So yeah, of super different but the good thing about law school was I was heavily involved in our legal clinic. And that was the best experience of law school because I was able to actually represent people before I was a lawyer and learn how to kind of be a lawyer and see what that might be like. So that was good.
Jim Hacking
And same question as it relates to being a lawyer was being a lawyer different than what you expected. It seems. Like you really get drawn to the practical part of helping people and that the sort of esoteric law that my wife likes to like, think about highfalutin legal issues and those kinds of things. That doesn’t seem to be your back. So at both firms, has it been different than you expected?
Stephanie McDonald
Yeah, I think the main difference is like, and this is taking me back to my post is like, I didn’t realize how lonely this career is, to be completely honest, at my first role as an articling. student, I was not lonely, because there’s all sorts of helpers, wanting to teach you and mentor you and, you know, show you what it’s like to be a lawyer. And so I had a great articling experience. But when I transitioned to be coming a lawyer, it was a lot of just leaving alone. And yes, I had support to, like, help me make decisions and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, but it was on me to kind of make those decisions. And you know, most of the time a client can’t afford to have like multiple lawyers on a file, or it just doesn’t make sense financially. So you end up just being alone a lot. And that’s been a huge challenge for me to try to, you know, combat that feeling.
Tyson Mutrux
So Stephanie, I brought up on the screen, the post that then this brings us to the post as to why we brought you on the podcast, and I can either read it, or would you be okay with reading it? I think it would be interesting. If you read it, can you read the post for everyone, so they have an idea as to what we’re talking about? Sure, I’d
Stephanie McDonald
be happy to. So since I started practicing, as a lawyer, I’ve completely lost my spark. I started practicing as a lawyer in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, my first day as an associate was in July 2020. Since then, I have struggled with depression, anxiety, binge eating, lack of interest in doing things in general, and a general loss of interest in life. Is it the profession? Is it the industry is that the pandemic? Is there just something wrong with me still trying to find the answers? My passion lies in helping and serving people, I like to make people’s lives easier, lighter laugh, you’re a term coined by me just now exciting and better. I’m hoping that having such a hard time in my own life is building my character. And I like to think that my tribulations are for the plot. But I’m struggling more than I lead on. I’ve been practicing law for just over two years now. And I’ve not figured out how to make this part of my life work yet. The intention of this post is to share my situation with others and hopefully connect with some other youngsters experiencing similar feelings, or better yet, some mentors who are inclined to share their wisdom, please connect with me, if you’re in the city, maybe I can take you out for lunch.
Tyson Mutrux
And I think this is great. And I’m thank you for doing that. I’ve never actually had someone do that on the podcast. And I thought it was better to come from your voice as opposed to my voice. So one, thank you for being vulnerable, and, and sharing that on social media, but then also reading it, because there’s so much that we see out there, especially on social media, where everything’s wonderful. And I’ve got a wonderful life, and I’m making a billion dollars and all that, what was the trigger point for you to want to share that?
Stephanie McDonald
Well, I had been struggling i Since I think since July 2020. So it took me like almost two years to really get the courage to do that. And I think I just realized, you know, I felt like at the moment, like, frankly, I felt like I had nothing to lose by putting it all out there. So like, I came to a point where I was like fed up with my current situation, but also the realization that I had to take responsibility for how I was feeling, I think it’s really easy to you know, blame the people in your life who are supposed to help you, your employers, your mentors, and, but that kind of distracts from the issue, which is really, it’s up to you to figure out what you need and set enough boundaries so that you can get what you need. So that’s kind of what precipitated the post. I wanted to take responsibility for my own well being in the profession, and just wanted to see what the power of LinkedIn was. I had heard that it was a powerful tool, but I had never experienced it. And happy to say that it is a wonderful community of professionals. And I can’t wait to tell you like what happened after the post because it’s really cool. The support I received from strangers. So that was super cool. But yeah, I would just hit a breaking point. I said, why not? Let’s go for it.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I’m picturing you writing it was your finger. button like were you hesitant to send it did you think about like how your employer would respond? Are we did you have any worries in hitting send? Absolutely.
Stephanie McDonald
But the worries actually came after I hit post. I’m a quick decision maker. So I was like I started the post and like you don’t I’m doing this after I made the post I had definitely like what Brene Brown calls a vulnerability hangover definitely felt those feelings like let’s just delete the post. Nothing ever happened. You know, nothing, nothing will come of it. It’s not a big deal. But shortly after the posts, like I started getting likes, like more likes and views than any other post. So I was like, Okay, let’s see what can come of this and decided to be brave and keep it up.
Tyson Mutrux
Have you had anybody reach out to you that has experienced similar feelings as you? And if so, how have you reached out back to them? Yeah, so
Stephanie McDonald
there’s been a good handful of people who messaged me, privately a lot of people commented on the post. But I think the people who had messaged me privately, you know, we’re looking for connection. And I did connect with a few people who are going through the exact same thing. And we met up and the ones that were in the city anyways, and we just kind of were able to vent about our issues confidentially, and just kind of try to figure out how we could support each other. Yeah, so that was a really cool aspect of it to just people all over the world, saying the same things and requesting to connect. And yeah, so I still have people in my inbox that we talk regularly about these issues. And we’re creating kind of a little support system.
Jim Hacking
As we sit here today, the post has over 2100 reactions, 493 comments and 13 people have reposted it, obviously, it hit amazing nerve. And I’m sure that you’ve had lots of interesting conversations and back and forth with people like you were just saying, what surprised you the most about the reaction,
Stephanie McDonald
I guess I was surprised that everyone, like he got a lot of praise for being authentic and brave, and all that. And it’s so funny, because when I was posting it, I really didn’t feel any of those things. And so I was really surprised by how, how much it resonated with people. And it really made me think that a lot of people are feeling this way, but just aren’t talking about it. And I think that’s one of the weird paradoxes in our society is that, you know, we’re all connected, and yet we don’t share, you know, the toughest parts of our lives. And from the outside, it looks like everyone is just going along, and they’re okay. But I think realistically, a lot of us are not okay, so I was really taken aback by how many people it resonated with that was really confusing, because when I wrote the post, I had not seen similar posts on my LinkedIn, or maybe, you know, there was a few, but not necessarily to depth of me saying, you know, being a lawyer is miserable, which is essentially, kind of how I was feeling that moment. So yeah, that’s, that’s what surprised me about that.
Tyson Mutrux
So there’s a line in here it says, But I’m struggling more than I lead on. And I’m just wondering, how you doing now?
Stephanie McDonald
A much better Lots has changed since that post, I have a really cool network of helpers. I like to call him that. Because I don’t know if you remember, but the person from oh, what’s his name from? There’s a quote about, like, finding the helpers in life. And I feel like this post has really shown me a lot of helpers. And when I say helpers, I just mean Mr. Rogers. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it. And so lots of people have just offered their time. Some have bought me lunch, some have connected me with their colleagues. And so that has been super amazing. Many people have offered free services, like from career coaches, and stuff like that. So that was super, super interesting. What else? Yeah, just more connections, suggestions. People want to follow up with me and just knowing that people genuinely care kind of gave me a little bit more motivation to just continue. So that was super, super cool.
Becca Eberhart
The Guild is maximum lawyers community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level. As a guild member, you’re granted exclusive access to quarterly in person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20, and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hotseat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential. During the hotseat sessions, you’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you’re facing in your practice. For a limited time, you can get your ticket at the lowest early bird price, head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.
Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast Our guest today is Stephanie McDonald. She’s a lawyer not an attorney, and her passion lies and helping and serving people. She tries to make people’s lives easier, lighter, laugh easier, more exciting and better. In your post, you talk about you wonder whether it’s the profession. And I wonder if we could since this is a show for lawyers that we could talk about the profession itself because I think your posts could have been written by tons of lawyers that I know I think you gave voice to something that people with much more time in the profession would like Tyson say be reluctant To share publicly talk to me about your thoughts now, two months later on the profession itself of practicing law. Yeah,
Stephanie McDonald
I think one of my frustrations with the profession is it’s very slow to change. And I think maybe that’s a result of you know, jurisprudential principles, that case law, you know, should only change very slightly over time. But I feel like it’s misplaced in law firms, and I feel like law firms could maybe do a better job at, you know, changing the way that things have been done in the past. That being said, I feel like there’s so many people who, who do care a lot about their, you know, employees and care to make significant changes. But yeah, I think the billable model is obviously a challenge with, you know, just the efficiencies of all that, as well as it really prevents a lot of collaboration, because a lot of times, you just can’t, your client can’t afford multiple people working together. So I feel like in addition to the issues with billable hours, not changing enough in the firm’s in terms of like in enhancing culture, enhancing mental health supports. And then lastly, I feel like the happiness of being a lawyer is taken away when you have to be super isolated all the time. So I feel like I would love to see a different model of a firm where you can work more closely with your colleagues still provide good results at a decent price, but just have a little bit more collaboration, I feel like two minds are always gonna be better than one. And it could also just help retention in the profession. I feel like a lot of people leave for similar reasons as me, or the reasons that I’ve just talked about, like they might leave because they feel lonely, or, you know, other professions provide more of a holistic or like balanced environment. And I feel like law is missing that a lot. That being said, I’ve only been in two firms. So I haven’t seen a lot. But just talking with other people. I know that you know, burnout is a huge thing. And I don’t have all the answers, but I feel like the isolation is a huge part of it. And I would love to see firms trying to combat that somehow.
Tyson Mutrux
70 with your newfound perspective and your newfound friends, I wonder what you’re looking forward to when it comes to the future? Because this I think the sounds like this experience was pretty good for you. It was you’re going through a rough patch, but things have turned around. So what’s on the horizon for you?
Stephanie McDonald
That’s such a good question. I’m really looking forward to just coming into myself as a lawyer, I feel like I’m starting to nail down some of the substantive parts of my specialty. But I really want to kind of branch out and learn how to be just a really great litigator, I’m in my third year, so I’m still very junior, I’m still, you know, most of my work is assisting senior lawyers. So that’s great. And I think I’m just really excited to get to a point where I won’t freak out when when someone cold calls me or, you know, without speaking to my boss, I can make decisions on my own. I’m really looking forward to that. Also, looking forward to one day having an impact on the profession, I feel like maybe a purpose of all these struggles is to maybe help other people as a, you know, quote, unquote, grow up. I feel like I have some good ideas. And I would love to see them put in motion one day, I don’t think I’m quite ready for it yet. But I would love to collaborate with other people and firms and students and, you know, senior professionals and just try to attack some of these problems that I talked about my post,
Jim Hacking
Tyson and I both own law firms. What advice do you have for law firm owners on spotting people that are struggling people that are feeling isolated? And then what steps or suggestions do you have for us to take when we noticed that?
Stephanie McDonald
Yeah, I think a lot of people and lawyers are pretty good at masking their issues. And a lot of them might feel embarrassed or too vulnerable to talk about that with the you know, their boss, the person who they’re reliant on further income. I know that it’s hard for me to talk to you know, leadership sometimes and that’s not anything personal, it just the dynamic is kind of difficult, but I think the best thing to do is to ask the question, how are you really I feel like a lot of times you get asked how are you and I’ve been trained as a human to just say I’m good and leave it at that. But I think the reality is when you give them space to really talk about how they’re feeling, they probably will so I think that question How are you really is super valuable and also just paying attention to nonverbal cues, like closing your door a lot, you know, not being as friendly or you know, joki and like, for me, for example, like on my good days, I’m out in the main area, you know, chatting with my law clerk and the assistants and having a good time. But when I’m really not feeling good, that doesn’t happen. So I feel like asking them giving them space to really talk about how they’re feeling in and outside of work. And then also just trying to pay attention as much as possible to nonverbal cues would be huge.
Tyson Mutrux
You know, that really reminds me of I heard this, and I don’t know who I heard it from. But um, instead of asking someone, can I help instead, instead say, How can I help? It’s just a small little change of the sentence. But it does make a pretty big impact. But I want to ask you about like, our office is a hybrid office. So we have remote workers, we have in seat workers, and you can basically work in the office or at home, wherever you want to, you can work from anywhere. And I have kind of noticed some some of the employees that they kind of do struggle with that kind of activity. So I wonder what your advice may be when it comes to virtual employees remote employee is your advice to increase that connectivity? Even though we’re not in the same building? Not sometimes not even the same country? That’s so
Stephanie McDonald
hard? And frankly, I don’t have a great answer. I know that my last firm had a lot of like, drop in meetings, or, you know, game nights and stuff like that. And I feel like that’s helpful. I think it depends on the size of your firm, too. But for me, I didn’t really attend the game nights, I felt like I really wanted to connect with the lawyers. But like the events were for anyone and people I hadn’t met. And we had firms like in several provinces, so it was kind of hard to connect, when you hadn’t met them in person. But I think like as many in person outside of work, things are great. I think team building activities now that we’ve learned to live with COVID. Now I feel like in person activities can come back a little bit more. And I think those are, you just can’t beat that, like team building escape rooms, or like, I don’t know, like a murder mystery party, like just something cool that you might have had done before. The other thing is just like finding ways to just connect on interest, like my old firm had a book club, which was really cool, even though I wasn’t part of it. And just like trying to connect that way. I don’t know. It’s it’s, I think it’s a question we’re all still trying to answer. But connection is so complex, and i Everyone has different connection needs to that’s another thing, I think it’d be really cool to figure out what employee needs what for me, I feel like I’m a very high maintenance connection person, like I need a lot, a lot of connection and others are happy, just you know, talking to their colleagues once a week. So gauging what your employees want in their social connections at work would be number one, and then figuring out their interests, and hopefully planning something in person once in a while, those would be my suggestions.
Jim Hacking
So Tyson, and I help people who’ve sort of started their own law firm. So I got to ask, do you ever see yourself as maybe going out on your own and building the firm that you want?
Stephanie McDonald
Absolutely. I think it would be really cool to have a say in how things run? Absolutely. I’m just not quite ready to take the leap. But absolutely, I think that would be really cool and effective way to make some changes from the top down for sure.
Tyson Mutrux
Well, don’t wait too long. Don’t get those golden handcuffs on. Because next, you know, might be too late. So that’s great, excellent stuff. All right. Well, we don’t want to give too much of your time. So I’m gonna start to wrap things up. Before I do, I will remind everyone to join us in the Facebook group. Stephanie, if you’re not in the Facebook group, you should join us there because search maximum lawyer on Facebook, and you can find our big group, there’s also the maximum lawyer guild. And if you want to join us there, go to max law guild.com For more high level conversation. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind, giving us a five star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week,
Jim Hacking
my hack of the week is called time insights from Google. So Google will share with you on your desktop only the data as to how much time you’re spending in meetings, it will scrutinize your calendar. And it’ll even tell you who you’re spending the most amount of time with. So if you just type in view, how you spend your time in meetings, Google Calendar, we’ll put it in the show notes. It lets you sort of dig into the data of how much time you’re spending in meetings versus doing other legal work. So it’s a helpful little tool.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and also say there’s an upgraded version of Google workspace. And I think that that’s the only way you can get access to this. But on my calendar, I’m looking at my calendar now gym. And on the left side, there’s a time insights. And I can see it’s color coded because I color code, all my all my different meetings. It shows me on a little line, how much of my time is spent on different things. And I’m proud to say that the vast majority of my time is all my personal time. So I’m happy about that. Which means like that’s like fitness that’s going to my kids events, all those kinds of things. So I think it’s a great visual on the Wii. You will learn. And for me, it’s a great visual representation of my schedule. So I didn’t know that there was a separate thing that you could go find. I’ve just seen it on my calendar. So go check out what you’re talking about. That’s pretty cool. Stephanie, we always ask our guests to give us a tip or hack of the week, it could be a podcast episode, it could be an article, it could be a book could be a quote, whatever it may be, do you have a tip or a hack for us? Yes, I
Stephanie McDonald
was recommended this by one of the connections on LinkedIn after the post, and I’m only about 100 pages in but so far, it’s really good. It’s a book called Designing your work life, how to thrive and change and find happiness at work. And the authors are Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. And it’s, it’s really cool. It’s how to basically make your work life work for you and how to how to thrive in the workplace. So it’s super relevant to me and very good content so far.
Tyson Mutrux
Love it. Excellent stuff. For me, Jim, I don’t know about you. And 70 I don’t know if you have these requirements to but we’ve got to get our ethics requirements every year. And we are in Missouri wills have bias requirements. And I’m sometimes at the end of the year scrambling, because I’ve gotten my CLE hours by either by teaching or some other means. So I don’t have those ethics hours. And I want to I want to pitch a friend of the show Michael Downey he on his website if you go to Downey law group.com It’s from Missouri in Kansas only, but I’m if it’s if you’re in a state where it’s like Missouri, I can request pretty easily through the Missouri bar website to get credit for even though it may be for another state. And he has free CLAS every other week. I mean, it’s free. You go on there, it’s an hour and it’s really easy to get. So my tip is to first of all start on your ethics hours now get them out of the way, but then also just go to I think it’s Downey law group.com. If that’s not the right one, it’s just search Michael Downey ethics attorney, and it’s easy to register us it’s a couple of clicks give your name and email either he doesn’t spam you with a bunch of stuff. It’s really easy, so highly recommend it. So check it out. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a really good episode really enjoyed it. And I appreciate your willingness to be vulnerable. Really important.
Stephanie McDonald
Thank you so much for having me. This has been really really fun as well. feeling’s mutual.
Tyson Mutrux
Thanks, Stephanie. Excellent. Thanks, Debbie. We’ll see.
