Why We Stay At Our Firms, And What To Do When We Shouldn’t

// Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Melissa Keyes to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

There has been much ado about the Thompson Reuter’s “2022 State of the Legal Market” report. Not immune to the Great Resignation, the legal market saw a record high 23.2% associate turnover rate in 2021. The authors speculated that it was not just compensation driving the high rate of turnover but that it was driven by more concern with flexibility and personal control over their working arrangements. Relatedly, a 2021 survey reported in The American Lawyer, found that 60% of associates would consider leaving their firm for a better work-life balance. Let that sink in … 60% would consider leaving and now almost a quarter of associates have done so.

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Ask any parent or caregiver almost two years into a pandemic the reason for these results, if you can find any conscious and standing upright, and the answer is obvious. We. Are. Exhausted. Not the “pulled an all-nighter to finish that brief” type of exhausted, but the kind of exhausted from running on fumes for almost two years. The kind of exhausted from never having a break, the kind of exhausted from having to navigate a society that demands a return to normal without acknowledging the reality of shut-down classrooms and tracking down rapid tests to get your kid back to day care. The kind of exhausted from worrying about every sniffle and headache from your littlest not yet eligible for the vaccine. The kind of exhausted over and above the normal wear and tear of being a parent. The kind of exhausted not alleviated by being able to work from home two days a week.

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The reason we haven’t left yet boils down to one thing: we are too exhausted to put energy into one more thing. We don’t have the mental bandwidth to network, update our resume, or even sit and figure out what it is that we want from our next gig. And so we stay … for now. Burnt out, stuck, without an ounce of energy to know what to do next.

This is where I found myself in the fall of 2021 — stuck between feeling burnt out from my current gig and the paralyzing fear to quit for something else. Add on top of that a complete lack of energy to do anything about either, and you have a recipe for a severe case of ennui. I wanted to quit it all and work at a dog park. Or work in a different field of law. Or not be a lawyer anymore. Or both, or neither. All I knew was that something needed to change — I either needed to fix the burn out I was feeling or find a way to make my exit stage right. Luckily, I stumbled upon an executive coach named Teresa Sabatine who specializes in women who are burnt out. Now, I am not a touchy-feely person. The idea of mindfulness, vision boards, and deep cleansing breaths is not my jam at all. Fortunately, Teresa’s program had none of that. Instead, through weekly small group discussions and individualized targeted homework she guided me through a number of practical exercises designed to get my inner analytic moving.

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Through this program, I have not only learned to recognize when I am starting to feel burnt out, but I also learned how to set healthy boundaries to try to prevent it altogether. And because it involved small groups of other similarly situated bad-ass women, the work felt truly individualized and reflective of me and my needs while also building a sense of community. Her program cut out the fluff and got right to the heart of the issue. No long-winded articles or self-help podcasts (although, if that works for you — by all means, you do you), just nonjudgmental opportunities to get unstuck in a way that feels uniquely you. It was a highlight of my week.

If you are reading this at 2 a.m. because you can’t sleep, thinking about all the unfinished work on your plate, wanting a change but not knowing what, you may want to give executive coaching a try. At the very least, it’s a once-a-week time to shut the door, drink a glass of wine, and talk about what’s bothering you with other bad-ass women going through the same thing.

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And as a final note, for you firms who do not find a way to embrace truly flexible work arrangements, once we do get that energy back, we might just be out the door with the rest of our colleagues. But for now, the dog park will have to wait. I’ve got more lawyering to do.

Melissa Keyes is the Executive Director for Indiana Disability Rights and a mother of two. Melissa is a fierce advocate for self-determination and self-direction, advocating at the state and federal level for policy change. You can reach her by email at [email protected].

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