Episode 19. Nonlegal Lawyers With ex judicata

[Neil Handwerker]

A memo came around saying that all office plants had to be less than 16 inches. 

(Kim laughs)

[Rhia Batchelder]

What?! 

[Kate Bridal]

Oh my god.

[Neil Handwerker]

So there was a couple of things. One, what if your plant grew? That wasn't...

(Kate, Kim, and Rhia laugh.)

But even more importantly, I swear, I never saw a single plant anywhere in the office.

[Kate Bridal]

Who was this memo for?

[Neil Handwerker]

I thought it was a joke actually at first.

[Kate Bridal]

I'm Kate Bridal, a former non-profit attorney who never cared that much for the law.

[Rhia Batchelder]

And I'm Rhea Batchelder, a former big law attorney who loves it but has some suggestions.

[Kate Bridal]

And this is our podcast where we talk about all the stuff that leads to burnout, offer solutions, and keep it as real as possible. Welcome to The Legal Burnouts. 

Welcome everyone to another episode of The Legal Burnouts.

I am joined today by the effervescent Rhia Batchelder, my lovely new co-host.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Ooh, effervescent. I love that compliment.

[Kate Bridal]

I'm feeling that one for you today. How are you today?

[Rhia Batchelder]

I'm feeling effervescent, really. 

[Kate Bridal]

Perfect.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I'm excited to be here. I love recording days with you and I cannot wait to talk to our guests.

[Kate Bridal]

I was just thinking about how sometimes it's kind of tiring, but overall, I actually find it really energizing just to get to talk to you and Josey and our guests. And it just puts me in a good mood all day.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I strongly agree. I've actually been feeling more invigorated about other work tasks because talking in long form about burnout and all of the things that we get to discuss together is kind of a dream. So that's my update on how I'm feeling.

[Kate Bridal]

I love that. I'm so glad. And we have amazing guests this episode. I'm so excited. They are so on point for us. 

This week, we are joined by Kim Fine and Neil Handwerker. They are the founders of ex judicata, which is the only employment platform specifically built to help attorneys find non-legal positions.

ex judicata is Kim and Neil's second business together actually. Previously, they built and sold Fulcrum Information Services. Kim is a legal industry veteran.

She served as managing director at ALM, formerly American Legal Services. She was the director of educational content for LegalTech, the world's leading trade show for legal technology and contract project manager at Marsh FinPro. She also went to Cornell, so we have a little connection there. 

Neil is an attorney by background. He graduated from Fordham Law with honors before becoming a firm associate on Wall Street. He quickly realized that wasn't for him and quit three months, he thinks, to the day, actually, after starting. After he and Kim sold Fulcrum, Neil wound up in legal recruiting for 18 years, placing partners in law firms. He also had a brief fling with journalism, writing for publications, including Cosmopolitan, National Lampoon, and Spy Magazine, which I love as an array of publications.

Neil and Kim, thank you for joining us and welcome. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

Welcome, welcome.

[Neil Handwerker]

Thank you so much, Kate and Rhia.

[Kimberly Fine]

Thank you very much for having us.

[Neil Handwerker]

Such a pleasure. Big fans. 

I guess the genesis for ex judicata begins kind of in the ice age back when I was a law firm associate. This is the late 80s. 

As you mentioned, I quit after three months and I thought that I'd find people that valued my law degree, that I could use that law degree, leverage it into some other job because I'd grown up my whole life. “Oh, you have a law degree, you can do anything.”

What I found is that's not true. So then I went out and I found some jobs on my own. As you mentioned, Kim and I had a business.

We sold it in 2000. Kim went in one direction, I went in another direction. In 2022, I approached Kim with the idea for ex judicata because in my 18 years of legal recruiting- I can't believe I lasted that long- in my 18 years of legal recruiting, I frequently heard people tell me that they were not interested in going to another law firm. They weren't interested in going to a law department. But if I had a business job, they would love it.

So I had that in the back of my head. And I had my experience as an associate in the back of my head. And I saw that things hadn't changed much.

Honestly, I had thought in all these years, somebody was going to come along and do this, but nobody did. So that's when I called Kim up and I asked him, what do you think about this as an idea? And she thought about 15 minutes and then said, I'm going to drop what I'm doing and I'm in.

[Kate Bridal]

That's amazing.

[Neil Handwerker]

I would never have been able to do this by myself.

[Kate Bridal]

I love that. And it's true. I mean, even when I burned out, which was only a couple of years ago, there were not, I mean, obviously you all didn't exist.

So there was no employment service for this kind of thing, but there were hardly any resources to tell you how to get out of the law or how to figure out what else you might want to do. I mean, it was really barren. So I love that you're doing this.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I know. I agree. As y'all know, I coach a lot of professionals trying to make career changes and I talk to a lot of lawyers and a lot of them, the first question is, how can I get out?

I feel stuck, but I'm not happy. Where do I go? How do I figure this out?

And I agree with Neil. I think when you go to law school, I was told the same thing, you know, your legal degree, you can use that for anything. Like that'll help you land any job.

And then when you're trying to leave, it's very confusing. I think this is going to be, I mean, it already is such an incredible resource for so many people and it will help a lot of people who are burned out and miserable, figure out how to take the off ramp into something more fulfilling.

[Kimberly Fine]

It's the, where do I begin? Right. So when you come to our site, we actually have a dropdown and where do I begin?

And what we did is we invested, gosh, probably close to a thousand hours and worked with a team of PhDs in organizational behavior and analytics to create the first ever diagnostic specifically targeted to the transitioning attorney. So overlaying the skillset, overlaying practice area, overlaying job descriptions, and it will give you an output of five different career paths with the probability of success in each of those paths. We then have a panel, if you will, of coaches that can help either rebrand the resume, the LinkedIn, talk about strategy, things of that nature to prepare for that transition.

So we're a great resource even before somebody is a hundred percent ready to make the change. I mean, the only thing people pay for, right, is the job board, the diagnostic and some of the courses. So even if somebody's thinking about it, they can come and they can look at story upon story upon story of people who have made these transitions and what's worked for them and what hasn't worked for them and where they've leaned into their JD to find success.

So it's really a resource, even if someone's in the decision-making process.

[Kate Bridal]

Yeah. And I love that because when I Googled this, I think I was like, “how lawyers leave law,” something like that. And I looked for alternative careers and they were all like still the law.

And I was like, that… In-house is not an alternative legal career. Like, I'm sorry, what completely different industry can I get into with this degree? And that just wasn't out there.

And so I love your page with all of those stories of people who have done everything from shifting slightly into a legal adjacent role to people who started a bakery, whatever it is. I think that it's amazing.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Totally.

[Kate Bridal]

Neil, I was just going to ask, what was it about that Wall Street jo- Like, did you walk in that first day and go, “no way”? What made you know that that was just not for you?

[Neil Handwerker]

I was among all the eager beaver associates. I wasn't comfortable in an environment where people were going to stay till midnight, even though they didn't have anything to do. That was the first red flag.

And then the more I spoke to people, the more interaction I had with people in the firm, the more I realized I really don't want to be here. So at that point, like everything changed in terms of I did whatever I wanted, shirt and tie in at all times in the hall, and actually in everybody's office back then. And I was like going around in a turtleneck, no problem.

At five o'clock, I was out the door. One smart thing that I did was I found, well, he found me a guy who did space law. Nobody understood what space law was.

And that year, there was the first ever Space Act passed, which regulated commercial space travel, of which there was none. And there also was a United Nations Office of Space Travel or Space Affairs. So with the space law guy, I had cover for a while until somebody caught on.

And then they gave me an assignment like in corporate. And at that point, the clock started to tick. There were two things which put me over.

One was the plant memo that came around, that was inciting incident number one. And inciting incident number two was when I was sitting in a partner's office and he was talking about something and I was looking around and I saw his bookshelves, he was a young partner. There's like one book that stands out a different color cover paperback, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I just asked him if he read it and he said, “No, I have had it on my shelf for two years. I just haven't had the time.” And the minute he said that, I knew that I had to leave.

And I left later that week because if you don't have time to read a book, it's too much for me.

[Kate Bridal]

It's funny. I was just talking about how- the fact that I have read, since law school, one book for pleasure. And I used to read like three books at a time and law school killed reading for me and I still haven't gotten it back.

[Neil Handwerker]

I think that will come back to you actually.

[Kate Bridal]

I hope so. And also my husband used to tell me to go into space law. 

(Kim laughs.)

[Rhia Batchelder]

Oh my God. What?

[Kate Bridal]

(Laughing)  Yeah. When I was in law school, he was like, “Do space law. That's the future. Like go for it.”

[Rhia Batchelder]

When I first met Neil, we realized we have a lot of connections. One of which is my first legal job was on Wall Street at a very fancy white shoe firm. And Neil was very disappointed to hear that a lot of the things are still the same.

Like for example, when you're walking through the office, it is like business formal at all times, very serious environment. I had the same red flags. I remember the second week, we didn't have any work. We're completely useless. We're right out of law school. We don't know how to practice. We don't know how to do anything. Everybody knows it. 

I remember being in my office and we just didn't have anything to do, but everybody was staying there.

And it really did feel like it was a competition to keep your butt in the seat as late as you can, for no reason of only just to look like you were dedicated or you were more impressive than everyone else? I'm not even sure what it was, but the red flags were waving right in front of my face from the beginning. And yet I stayed for six years.

[Kate Bridal]

I'm so impressed with you that you managed to make it for that long.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I mean, I'm impressed with Neil that he followed that gut instinct immediately. That's also impressive. I think that's more impressive, frankly.

[Kate Bridal]

Kim, I would love to hear more about your background and how you kind of got entwined in the legal world and your thoughts on it.

[Kimberly Fine]

Oh, sure. So, well, my second job out of school was working with Neil at age 23. You know, when you put together professional educational conferences, regardless of the industry, regardless of the subject matter, something's going to be legal, right?

Because you always have like a regulatory component or what have you. So from that opportunity, we parlayed that into Fulcrum Information Services where we didn't just do legal, but again, legal slice through everything. So once that was sold, as Neil said, he went into the executive search path.

And from there I went to American Lawyer. You know, that kind of solidified the expertise in that arena. But I've also done a tremendous amount of work around women corporate directors and then women aspiring directors.

But then when Neil mentioned this to me, I was like, you know, if we can help smart, bright, interesting, dedicated people find another path and along the way perhaps help their mental health, that's a giant win. We're so passionate about what we're doing because we're really here to help. So that was some of my reasoning to jump in and do this with Neil.

And then plus, you know, as we know, it's an annuity, right? You always have law school graduates every year. You have associates that are elevated every year.

You have partners that retire every single year. So it's not just like a moment in time. It's a continuum

[Rhia Batchelder]

Just made sense.

[Neil Handwerker]

One thing that made this idea different between startups, I had many different ideas. This was the only one that I thought was good enough to bring to Kim. And I'll just briefly mention the one that I had beforehand, because in addition to legal recruiting, I always had to have some side project or I would have lost my mind.

So the side project here was I decided to create a new umbrella. I had no idea how umbrellas operated. I just had this belief that somebody can come up with an idea that's better than the current umbrella.

I spent like six years doing it and I have three industrial patents for everybody out there. Those are actual engineering patents, the hard ones to get. My goal here is with Kim to hopefully be successful here and then circle back to the umbrella.

[Kate Bridal]

I love that.

[Rhia Batchelder]

The umbrella dream lives. 

[Kimberly Fine]

And when Neil goes back to his umbrellas, I'm going to equine therapy. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

Ooh!

[Kimberly Fine]

Yeah, I'm going to equine therapy and I have a whole children's book about a talking cactus.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Oh my God, cute.

[Kimberly Fine]

We have our plans.

[Kate Bridal]

I went to drama school and then I worked with signing chimpanzees and then I went to law school and now here I am, right? And I was just telling Rhia this morning, I was like, now I have this wild idea that maybe I'll go back to Hollywood and do like screenwriting and acting again, like all of this stuff. 

[Kimberly Fine]

There you go. Absolutely. 

[Kate Bridal]

I used to call myself a flake. So I love talking to other people who are the kind word that I learned, which is multi-potentialite, which means you just have a lot of different passions and lots of things that you could pursue and that you want to pursue and you just have to figure out the right time to pursue them.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I agree. 

[Neil Handwerker]

That's great. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

Kate, I'm the same way.

[Kate Bridal]

Yes. So I 100% support the umbrella dream because I do struggle with umbrellas. I agree, there has to be a better way.

They pinch my fingers when you open them. It's the worst. How did the two of you actually meet?

[Kimberly Fine]

I worked for Neil at Executive Enterprises, which was my second job out of college. 

[Kate Bridal]

Got it. 

[Kimberly Fine]

Because I started out of college doing M&A research and quickly decided that was not a career for me that I was cut out for.

These were the olden days when you could actually answer an ad in the New York Times and get an interview. That's how old I am. Neil was literally my second boss out of college.

So that's how we met. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

You must have impressed him.

[Neil Handwerker]

It's just, it's a nice business story. It makes what we're doing here a little more special. And Kim will rein in some of my wackier ideas.

So I did sneak one by her. We put up an ad on LinkedIn that was a photo of a partner lecturing what looked like a young associate. And under that was “no more having to listen to bitter old windbags.”

[Kate Bridal]

Oh, that would sell me.

[Neil Handwerker]

And Kim said, you can't put that. I put it aside and then I kind of snuck it in and nobody cared.

[Rhia Batchelder]

That's hilarious. Partners see that and they're such serious people, but then associates see it and they're like, “exactly. That's exactly how I feel.”

[Kate Bridal]

To my core.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Yeah. A lot of people feel like they don't want to talk about it publicly, but the amount of like DMs and messages I get on LinkedIn from people just kind of dumping their experiences in law firms is extreme. Like people really are struggling and they also feel like they can't say it out loud.

And they're kind of like, is everyone else feeling this way? I think that's hilarious, Neil, because it's like, yeah, tongue in cheek, but also just relatable. Unfortunately.

[Kate Bridal]

And it's true. And like, that's why I wanted to start this podcast was I was like, I want to get real. Like that is how you feel.

You're getting blustered at. And all of the content that I was really enjoying around law was calling that stuff out in a funny way. And so I always love that stuff.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Me too. 

[Kimberly Fine]

Well, Neil has a lot of them lined up, so we could just get a little bit more of a solid foothold. Just wait until you see.

He's got people hiding under desks and he's got like, you know, people getting to actually read books. He's got, he's got a treasure trove, a very interesting post.

[Kate Bridal]

Leave the law and you'll get to read a book.

[Neil Handwerker]

Exactly. And we have beautiful photos accompanying that. 

On a more serious note, one of the things that also bothered me was I thought that if I stayed on to become, I don't know, let's say a partner, I would probably have a very, very narrow view of the world because I have spent all this time becoming an expert in XYZ and the bankruptcy code.

[Kimberly Fine]

Or space law. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

(Laughing) Or space law.

[Neil Handwerker]

It's just the thought that if you have the intelligence to go through law school, you could pretty much do anything. And law is one thing to do, but there's so many other things to do.

[Kate Bridal]

So true. And it is so easy to get pigeonholed in the law because it's so vast. It's impossible to know all of it.

You have to specialize to some degree in order to be competent enough to practice. And that makes it even harder to leave, right? Because you're like, well, I can't even just jump into a different area.

Even though you can, you can learn new areas of the law. But so many places require you to have experience in that specific niche that it makes it even harder. Even if your first thought is, maybe I don't want to leave the law, but I would like to practice in a different area.

People just shut that idea down in themselves a lot of the time. “Well, I have no experience in it. No one's going to take me.”

You can learn.

[Rhia Batchelder]

And you can zoom out on your expertise and think, how can I apply this elsewhere? I was just working with a client on redoing her resume because she has a very, very, very specialized knowledge of the law. And we went line by line and we can zoom out and you have a lot of powerful skill sets that you can apply in other careers.

That's what I did for myself too. When I was thinking about what's next, it's like, okay, sure. I had counseling experience.

I had six plus years of counseling experience. I had a disgusting amount of training and research and presenting information. And then in my personal life, what skills do I have that I could also bring in?

And then there are other options, even though it feels like there's only one path for you, but it's very hard to do that by yourself, which is why I think like getting a coach, having the platform to start giving you those ideas is crucial.

[Kimberly Fine]

Yeah. Even having the ideas. That's like, so we have a section on what we call the EXJ interview.

And right now they're about 35 stories up. We mentioned the general counsel of Audible who now started a bakery, but there's so many good resources there for people to just be like, you know what? I could do this or, Hey, I really like playing guitar.

Maybe I could, I don't know, whatever, like wherever their passion might be to pivot into.

[Kate Bridal]

And dreaming big and not dismissing those ideas that you're initially going to be like, well, that's nuts.

[Kimberly Fine]

Absolutely. So Neil and I have been talking a lot one-on-one with people who will come to our site who are users. And I think some of the hardest calls are when people don't have sort of a passion or a love or a direction they want to go in.

You're kind of like trying to pull out of them. Okay. So you've done this, you have this experience, but if money were no issue, which of course it is, what are the kinds of things you'd like to do?

And then how can you maybe pivot that background to a path for a business situation?

[Rhia Batchelder]

I know, people have a lot more in their heads than they think, right? It's like the power of coaching. Even if you're feeling like, “Oh, I really don't know. I don't have any passions. I don't have any interests. I don't have any hobbies.”

When you start asking someone, “okay, well tell me about the tasks that at least you don't hate in this job, previous jobs. What do you do on your time off? What are the things that you want to stay away from that you never want to do again?”

I often get into sessions with people who are like, “I have no idea. I don't know. I'm so lost.”

And then I end with four pages in a 90 minute session of single space notes of all the information that we got out together that gives them a starting point. It's just possible is I guess my point, being open to the idea that you can find a path that is going to work for you, I think is important.

[Neil Handwerker]

That's a great point. That's really well said. We talk about people following their passion.

And usually what's involved is there is a leap of faith at some point. It cuts through all of the interviews. You've got to believe enough in yourself.

And it's hard because the stereotypical lawyer is a certain way. And that's in the back of lawyers minds. Like why can't lawyers take positions in sales?

We're also kind of chipping away at these stereotypes by putting up the interviews.

[Kimberly Fine]

Yeah. And talk about helping people early on. We're actually talking to a lot of the law schools.

We're in touch with 58 of the 199 ABA accredited law schools. A lot of the really innovative law schools are bringing in experts to help with JD advantage positions and innovation and different ideas for students to lean into with their JD even upon graduation.

[Kate Bridal]

That's great.

[Kimberly Fine]

It's really interesting to see the different philosophies with the different schools and how they're handling it.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I bet. When I was in law school, it was very much like you should go into big law. So I'm pretty sure I know how UChicago responded to your email.

[Kimberly Fine]

Yeah, they haven't yet. Yeah, yeah. 

[Kate Bridal]

Actually, Cornell wasn't that bad about that. They had a really robust public- They were good.

[Kimberly Fine]

I was speaking to them in March. 

[Kate Bridal]

Cornell? Oh, good!

[Kimberly Fine]

Yeah. Well, April. Actually, April.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I remember I went to law school and I was like, I want to help people. I want to impact culture. These were my big ideas, my big passions.

I'm doing that now, which I'm very thrilled to say, after a little deviation into big law. But my school was really pushy. They kept saying, “if you go into public interest, there's no guarantee you'll get a job.”

[Kate]

Such bull, for one thing. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

I know. I know that now.

But when I didn't know anyone in the legal field, I didn't have connections, which is another reason I think I really could have benefited from ex judicata. I felt like everyone around me in law school had family that were lawyers. They knew everything about the law firms.

They knew everything about the different paths and had those connections to get interviews and all these things. And I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm first generation college student. So I feel way out of my league here.

I don't know what's going on. I don't know one attorney. I'm just going to do what I was told, because they told me this is the way to guarantee to get a job.

And then when you're in a firm setting, especially if you're doing big law, you're so busy, you're so stressed out that it's really hard, even if you know if it's not right, to think about what's next. And so people, if you're like me, you just keep going. You just stay stuck and keep walking down the path.

So I love that you're going to law schools too, because I wish I had been more open to different paths and ways of harnessing my skill set and my dreams right out of law school.

[Kate Bridal]

Yeah. And I got lucky because I didn't go to law school wanting to be a lawyer. I was going to join the FBI was the original plan.

So I was already going to law school with an alternative career in mind. So that was one thing that helped me stay, “I don't want to touch big law.”

I didn't do law review. I was like, I'm not doing any of that. And I had a professor early on say, “Good for you. Do not let anybody drag you out of that mentality because they're going to try.”

[Rhia Batchelder]

They do try.

[Kate Bridal]

I always had that in the back of my head. And I'm so grateful that he said that to me so early on. In like my first semester of law school.

So if you go in saying, “I want to help people,” just don't let go of it. 

And I'm curious as well, if you find any resistance- this is something that Josey and I have talked a lot about that she encountered a lot, this mentality that leaving the law is a step down. Like when you mentioned lawyers going into sales, a lot of people will be “oh, that's a less prestigious career,” right?

“You're in sales. You used to be a lawyer. Why would you give that up?”

[Rhia Batchelder]

I got that.

[Kate Bridal]

Do you run into that mental block a lot as well?

[Kimberly Fine]

We've actually been doing a lot of work around it on our wellbeing hub. There's a gentleman who is actually a psychiatric nurse. His article's about burnout, but he breaks it down.

What he talks about is the identity and the change of identity. And the fact of the matter is you're always going to be a JD and you could go back to the practice of law if you wished to go back to the practice of law, which is why some of our courses are CLE approved because people want to keep their licenses intact. But what we found when people really open up, it's not so much necessarily their own thinking.

It's they don't want to disappoint their parents or their grandparents or their siblings. So it's kind of moving past that to say, okay, but now if you have this new career and it's fulfilling and it's bringing you more joy, the sky's the limit.

[Neil Handwerker]

Maybe the benefit of growing up in New York City and being in the midst of so much stuff going on, I always thought that there were so many ways to make a living where you could enjoy yourself. Law was just one of them. I never felt that it was a step down to leave.

In fact, I thought it was a step up because- That's what I felt. You're taking a chance and look where you wound up doing something that's great that you like to do.

[Kimberly Fine]

Well, and also not to get too heavy, but we get one life, right? Why would you stay in a situation when you're miserable? If you have gone to law school, you're obviously a smart person.

You obviously have a college degree and a law degree. Why wouldn't you take that education and parlay it into something else? Because it's not just yourself, right?

It's your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your spouse, significant other, kids. It's everybody that's impacted by your state of being, if you will. That's very true.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Yeah. I think that couldn't be more accurate. I will say when I left big law, I got a lot of handwringing, a lot of judgment, a lot of people clicking on my LinkedIn page and creeping.

I knew that there was going to be that. And to Kim's point, when you are thinking about burnout and really trying to build a fulfilling career, deconstructing yourself, your identity from work being this thing that is defining you where you need to chase this external validation of having the most prestigious job. It is going to impact the rest of your life if you could move through that, right?

It is going to change everything for you. It's going to open up so many doors. It just allows you to start really building a life and a career that is going to suit you for the rest of your working life.

[Neil Handwerker]

It also helps to be among positive people that have done this and are happy where they are. One of the things that we have on the website, which is kind of semi-humorous, semi-information, we have a travel section, places where you're less likely to run into other lawyers that will question whether you have lost your mind.

[Kate Bridal]

I love this.

[Neil Handwerker]

Like Vermont is one of them. I think that's the first one we have, Manchester, Vermont.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I love that. Low on lawyers. No, that is important because when I left a firm, I mean, I had this idea of starting to do corporate culture consulting and giving workshops on burnout and all of those things.

But for the first two years of being an entrepreneur, you could not pay me to go talk to a partner or other lawyers. I needed a break. I needed a big break.

And I only now am willing to talk to lawyers again. I'm like, okay, I could see myself in law firms having conversations with all those types. I'm reconnecting with old colleagues and peers.

And it's just so funny though, because that is so real. I would have loved that.

[Kate Bridal]

I love it so much. I feel like most people who have gone to law school and are that personality type, they're already shaming themselves endlessly about whatever their decision is or questioning it, or they've run over it and analyzed it a million times before they've made this decision. You're like, nothing you can say to me is anything that I haven't already told myself or questioned in myself.

It's not helpful. Just let me leave and be happy for me, which thankfully in nonprofit, I didn't experience any of that. I think everyone was just like, we get it, go take care of yourself.

And then my struggle was a little different. I've talked about this before a little bit ad nauseum, but my identity was more tied up in the idea that I was helping people all the time. And when I got this job that was in legal tech and was completely for profit and was marketing and nothing to do with being on the ground and helping anybody, that was my identity crisis.

How can I walk away from that? And my therapist finally was like, why do you have to do it as a job? And why can't you volunteer or do something outside of work and do work that is not burning you out and preventing you from helping people in the way that you were wanting to anyway?

Because I was sitting there frozen in panic and anxiety and not being as productive or as helpful to those people as I could have been anyway. If you're in that position, if you're not in the big law space, but you're in more of a nonprofit space, it's okay. You're allowed to step away from that and take care of yourself because you are not going to be as helpful to the people you're trying to help if you were burned out.

[Neil Handwerker]

We would encourage people who are a few years in who want to try something else to not feel that that's it. If it doesn't work for whatever reason, you can go back.

[Kate Bridal]

Absolutely.

[Neil Handwerker]

You'll never lose that identity and that credential provided you pay your bar.

[Kate Bridal]

Yeah. And people will take you. I think people panic that if they have this gap in their resume of doing something else, then no one is going to be interested in them.

[Rhia Batchelder]

All you need is the ability to talk about what you're doing now in a way that's going to sell people on the idea that you are still keeping up with those skills. Yes, it does feel like you're stepping off a path, but I think that getting a little more creative with the way we're talking about our career paths and our skill sets and how it really does translate gives you that power to come back if you want to. Yeah.

[Kimberly Fine]

And that whole interplay between the practice of law and legal ops, as well as legal tech and legal services, those are really interesting adjacent spaces where somebody can take a turn. It's not linear.

[Kate Bridal]

That's what I want to scream at people. Your career does not have to be linear!

[Rhia Batchelder]

Right. And you can let what you like change over time. When I was in my 20s, I would have never imagined or envisioned myself being an entrepreneur.

I never wanted that. If you would have asked me, I would have said, I could never. I could never.

It's just like staying open to what feels good in the moment and doing those check-ins of like, do I want to keep doing this? Lawyers have these incredible skill sets and they have a lot to offer and they're incredibly smart. Getting creative and allowing yourself to explore and think outside the box is going to potentially open you up to having even greater success.

[Kate Bridal]

I think a lot of lawyers don't view themselves as creative.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I used to say that.

[Kate Bridal]

Which is interesting to me, because I think it's an inherently actually very creative profession. You have to come up with alternative arguments. You have to think outside the box all the time.

If you're an attorney, you are creative. I promise you. Even if you feel like you're not, you have that in you. And you might need someone like Rhia or like ex judicata to help you bring that out and like figure out where that is, but it's in you, I promise it is. 

And also opportunities come from places that you do not think that they would. Like I, you know, I am speaking at a panel on, at WonderCon at the end of March, which is a comic book convention, which I am a big nerd for that kind of thing. 

If 10 years ago you had told me I was gonna be speaking at a comic book convention, I would have been like, yeah, I was probably in a superhero movie, right? But no, it's because I started guesting on this podcast called The Legal Geeks, where we talk about law in pop culture. 

My law degree is what led me to being on a panel at a comic book convention. 

[Kimberly Fine]

That’s great.

[Kate Bridal]

I never would have imagined that in a bazillion years, you know? And so you can still get around to doing things you never thought you were going to do from these completely different paths, you know?

[Kimberly Fine]

Absolutely.

[Kate Bridal]

And I think just coming from a place of immense privilege, I've just always kind of taken those leaps without thinking about it too much. I'm also very much a doer and not a thinker, which is good and bad, depending on the aspect of my life that I'm immediately acting on.

But then I started encountering people who were like, “well, I would really love to do this, but I can't.” And I was like, “but why?” And for some people, there really are practical blocks. There are financial reasons or a number of obligations that I am privileged not to have. But...

Just give yourself the chance to kind of think, “but what if I really could, what would it take to do it?” And break it down and see what the steps would be and then see if you still think you can't do it. Because sometimes you think it's a lot harder than it is.

[Neil Handwerker]

Great advice.

[Rhia Batchelder]

True. Or sometimes it's very hard and you're just going to figure it out anyways. 

[Kate Bridal]

Yeah, or then you can put it aside and be like, well, never mind.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Opposite to you, Kate, I grew up with very strict parents. So there was a lot of pressure to be ultra successful. And then there was a lot of breaking that down when I was at a law firm. Because I mean, let's be honest, when you walk into a room and I tell people, “I got a full ride to U Chicago and now I'm working at XYZ law firm…” people look at you differently.

[Kate Bridal]

Ooooooo!!!

[Rhia Batchelder]

Yeah, a hundred percent. And my parents love that too. So I had to kind of deconstruct getting that from people. And just being the one who does that for myself of like, I am actually incredibly impressed with my career, impressed that I had the balls, um, excuse my French, to leave and do something on my own and really in my own vision and, and that is like more impressive than working at a particular firm. 

[Kate Bridal]

And you're modeling it for other people! When I left the law, I got so many messages from people who are still in it. They would say, “It makes me realize that I can leave.” People just don't realize it.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Yeah.

[Kate Bridal]

And so I think it's so important to have folks like you, Neil and Kim, and a business like this, finally, that is aimed at showing you like…

[Rhia Batchelder]

It’s possible.

[Kate Bridal]

…yes, you can do it. And doing it for yourself is powerful and models it for other people. And you can help others just by helping yourself.

[Rhia Batchelder]

I agree. After all the judgmental LinkedIn scrolls I got (All laugh) about six months in when people were like, “Oh, she genuinely looks happy. That's weird.” I'm gonna, I got those messages too of people being like, What are you doing?

[Kate Bridal] 

How?

[Rhia Batchelder]

How are you figuring this out? You look like you're happy. Is that true every day? And it was just, it was funny. 

[Kate Bridal]

Well, I'd love to just hear anything else, Neil and Kim, that you would love to share about es judicata. 

[Neil Handwerker]

Yeah. It’s not only young attorneys that we want to help or are helping. It's also partners that have come at a different standpoint. They've kind of already done everything and they ask themselves, “well, what is there for me to do now?” And they don't know.

And we had an example of this play out. It was really wonderful. Marsh-McClennan asked us to find them a senior bankruptcy partner that would come over to Marsh in a non-legal role. If I were recruiting to get somebody to go from one law firm to another, and I made 50 calls, I might have gotten one return phone call.

When we left a certain message that this was not a law job, like 48 out of 50 people called back. 

[Kate and Rhia]

Wow.

[Neil Handwerker]

And it worked out tremendously well. 

Kim, you want to talk about the “if I leave” lawyer series?

[Kimberly Fine] 

Yeah, that's what I was going to share, actually. We've started an “if I leave the law” series. And it's really terrific because they have panels of speakers, why they left, how they left, what worked, their fears, their successes, their failures. And so just as really a terrific way to give people an idea of how they can leverage their JD into a whole other business path. 

These are all complimentary. All somebody has to do is come to the site and just fill out a little form. 

We’re really excited to just continue to evolve. Ovision is actually no more unhappy lawyers and that's kind of what we live by. 

[Rhia Batchelder]

It's a big task. I'm out there with you. 

[Kate Bridal]

We're dreaming big!

[Rhia Batchelder]

We’re dreaming big.

[Kimberly Fine] 

Absolutely.

[Rhia Batchelder]

But I love that. And I think for anyone listening, even if you're not thinking about a pivot right now, it sounds like a great idea to sign up and just kind of get that inspiration and have the ideas to just roll around at the back of your head.

[Kimberly Fine]

Yeah, I'll share one more thing. We actually just instituted a profile that's complimentary and confidential, and it's $0. So you can go into the site and you could fill out the profile and you can make it active, or you can make it inactive. If you're not sure, but you wanna fill it out and make it active, any of the employers that are coming to the site can then see your profile. So you might not even have to register for the job board.

[Kate Bridal]

Oh! That's so great. I love that so much. 

Well, this has been so fantastic. I really appreciate both of you coming on and it's been, what an amazing resource. We will make sure that we put this in any social posts we make about this and in the episode description, will put ex judicata’s website. Go and check it out.

As Rhia said, even if maybe you're not thinking about leaving yet, maybe you just want to poke around a little bit and…

[Rhia Batchelder]

No pressure perusing. That's what I always tell my clients. I'm like-

[Kimberly Fine]

Yes! Perfect!

[Rhia Batchelder]

just get no pressure perusing. Don't worry about it, but just poke around. Look, keep your options open. It's a great way to approach job hunting, I think.

[Kimberly Fine]

I love it. 

[Neil Handwerker] 

Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate the opportunity.

[Kimberly Fine]

Thank you very very much.

[Kate Bridal]

Absolutely.

[Rhia Batchelder]

Thank you for spending a part of your day with us. 

[Kate Bridal]

The Legal Burnouts is produced by me, Kate Bridal. Our music is by Keegan Stotsenberg. Our art is by growlforce. Thanks for listening.