I recently had a client that was going through the process of finding another job. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go in-house or if she wanted to go to a smaller firm but she did know one thing for certain: she wanted out of her current firm. As she was moving along through various parallel interviewing processes, she was struggling and feeling hopeless. On its face, she had secured some pretty amazing final round of interviews with some pretty amazing companies and pending offers. Despite all of this, she was convinced that she didn’t have what it takes and that none of them were going to work out. She resisted any feelings of hopefulness and excitement about her prospects and instead concluded that she was never going to get out of her firm. She was failing ahead of time, assuming the worst before it even happens.

So many of my clients are making career changes right now–both in and out of traditional legal roles. If that is you, grab a free consult and take advantage of my experience. Let’s craft a plan for your next step.

So many of us do this. Instead of allowing ourselves to be hopeful and believe in ourselves and our futures, we decide that it’s better to feel disappointed now and not get our hopes up so that we don’t have to deal with BIGGER disappointment later. We don’t want to be surprised by our own lack of success. So instead of allowing ourselves to enjoy feelings of hopefulness and to get excited for the future, we start feeling disappointed about the future. We fail ahead of time, anticipating the negative results and feeling terrible now, before we really have any evidence of failure or any real reason to feel terribly.

The whole process is long, drawn out, self-created misery without regard to the facts of the situation.

We beat ourselves up for getting excited. We beat ourselves up for getting distracted and thinking about the future. We tell ourselves that we’re stuck and that nothing is ever going to change.

What kind of a story is that?

If this were a movie and the main character was about to make a huge change in her life for the better, to fight for her happiness, and go after what she really wanted, would we want to watch her sit in misery and disappointment during that whole process? Or would we want to see her show up confidently, believing that she was going to make it happen regardless of the number of setbacks?

Making a change is never easy and our first “solution” rarely works out. We all know this to be true but for whatever reason we seem surprised and disappointed when our first attempts don’t pan out. We don’t want to experience disappointment over and over again so instead we sit in quiet disappointment and discontent the entire time.

This practice of trying and doing and assuming failure before it even happens is problematic for two reasons.

First, when we utilize this process over and over again in our lives, we do not become skilled at experiencing true disappointment. We withhold excitement and hopefulness from ourselves and instead wallow in a kind of a mild disappointment and failure anticipation. We never allow full on disappointment to meet us because we never allow ourselves to feel hopeful or excited. You can’t crash if you never allow yourself to soar. That lack of experience and lack of understanding of how to deal with and process REAL disappointment is part of the reason we’re so invested in this cycle. We don’t know how to experience disappointment so we just keep trying to prevent it by never giving room to hope.

We are avoiding the full spectrum of the human experience. Unless and until we learn how to experience and process real disappointment, this cycle will always be persuasive. It is a sign that we are trying to protect ourselves from feeling something negative. But the only way to make that negative feeling less scary and more accessible is to allow ourselves to actually experience it instead of trying to insulate ourselves from it. With that work we become less afraid of failure and more willing to live and breathe in hopefulness for the future. From that space, failure across-the-board becomes so much less scary because we know how to handle, experience, and process feelings of disappointment without allowing them to completely devastate us.

Second, the other problem with this cycle is that it still involves feelings of disappointment. While they may be less intense, they are certainly more drawn out. Rather than allowing ourselves to experience the positive emotions of hopefulness and excitement for a period of time and then experience full on disappointment if things don’t work out, we choose instead to live in mild disappointment for a longer period of time until we ascertain the facts to determine whether or not our disappointment is warranted. In other words we choose weeks of mild disappointment as opposed to weeks of happiness and excitement followed by a brief period of disappointment (but only if that worst case scenario actually happens!).

Why would we withhold positive feelings from ourselves and instead choose long and drawn out periods feeling hopeless and stuck? Are we really so wed to the avoidance of negative emotions that we want to withhold positive experiences and feelings from ourselves? What if things do pan out and you waste all of that time just feeling terrible for nothing? There are no rewards from failing ahead of time. It’s just self-flagellation.

I can’t imagine that anyone who has achieved anything noteworthy in this life did so assuming and expecting that it wasn’t going to work out.

Call it blind hope or delusional all you want, I know for certain that when I am living in hope and faith in my path, I show up more in alignment with who I want to be and I take actions in furtherance of my goals. If and when disappointment comes to the party, we can experience that part of our path as well and allow the ebbs and flows of life. In that way, we learn to understand disappointment so we no longer have to fail ahead of time to try and avoid it. We can embrace the yin and yang of life!

How do you get your interviewer to pull back the curtain and tell you how things really work without all the sales-ey pitching?

Here are few suggestions from my own experience and from those candidates who successfully got me to “spill the beans”, so to speak.

Ask about diversity and exit rates

If diversity and inclusion are important to you, and they should be, that is something you need to sort out before you take the job. Law firms are notoriously terrible at diversity and inclusion. Law firms are also notorious for having plenty of smart people who will devote time and energy into dressing up their warts. Most firms can easily tout their diversity awards and achievements and minority representation and show you a long list of “diverse” organizations they support and how much D&I training they spent loads of money on. That means absolutely nothing. Do not be fooled by the smoke and mirrors. The only way you will truly know whether a firm is a dinosaur promoting only like-minded individuals from the same demographic group is to start asking questions. Here’s a few examples:

In the last 3 years, what percentage of your attorneys who left the firm were women or minorities?

These numbers do not lie. If the rate is abnormally high, run. People leave firms for all sorts of reasons. In my experience, if there is a significant percentage of women leaving a firm, it is not because they all just “found the opportunity of a lifetime” or found an in-house opportunity they “just couldn’t pass up” or their partner found a job in another city. Those excuses and explanations are all break-up speak–“it’s not you, it’s me…” Those are things attorneys tell leadership when they are fed up and leave, because at that point, what good will it do to tell them the ugly truth? Besides, by the time you get to that point, you’ve probably already had the conversation 100 times and they ignored you each and every time. Why would they listen now?

Here are a few questions that might assist this evaluation:

Where do most of your candidates/new hires come from?

What law schools do you recruit at? Why or why not?

Where did most of your current attorneys attend law school?

See if you can find someone who used to work there.

You will have to lean on your network or your law school career center for this one. People who have left will be the only ones able to tell you if they truly took off because they found their “dream job.” Take them to lunch and explain your situation and any concerns you might have. If they know you are picking up on some of the firm’s true underlying issues, they will likely confirm or deny your impressions.

Meet separately with attorneys you can relate to

If you are still interested in considering the job, ask to take some of their female/minority associates to lunch or, ideally, drinks. Get them away from the firm and away from the partners/supervisors. Use this opportunity to see what their life is like, how the partners work, and how the firm operates. Ask them for recommendations as to who else you should meet with – other attorneys who have left or other attorneys currently at the firm. Get them talking. Questions to consider:

If you had the opportunity to work in (whatever practice group you are applying to), would you do it?

 Law firms are like small fiefdoms. Each practice group or office location likely operates pretty independently and according to its own norms. Most firms have a few practice groups that are notorious for destroying associates and churning through staff. Figure out which groups those are and ensure you don’t get stuck in one of those, unless you really want to learn some unnecessarily hard lessons.

Questions to consider:

In your experience, why have others chosen to leave the firm? Do you see any trends or common reasons?

What is one thing you think the firm needs to improve upon?

Have you found that people are willing to help you learn and guide your development?

Tell me about your typical day/month? When do you arrive at work and when do you leave? What about weeknights and weekends?

Do your diligence

Check online AND AROUND TOWN  for any reviews—social media or on other websites. Negative reviews of law firms likely signal a larger issue. Be sure to take all complaints with a grain of salt, but if your social media searches and casual inquiries reveal a barrage of negativity, be wary.

Check out the firm website. Is it up to date? Are the postings 3 months old? How about blog postings? How important is it to you to be part of a firm that has a sophisticated online presences? Not only will the website be your first introduction to your clients when you join the firm, but for now, it may indicate how much support you will get to market yourself and your business. Does the firm appear to have a strong marketing department and marketing presence? It may also indicate how much of your time you may be required to spend preparing blog posts for yourself or your partners (read: nonbillable time burdens).

Look at the attorney profiles. What is the attorney demographic like? Do they all look the same? Did most of them attend the same law schools? Do not be fooled by this. If the attorneys all seem to be the same person with only minor variations, and none of those attorneys are similar to you, take it as it is. No matter what they say they are doing on the D&I front, it is obviously not working. That indicates a MUCH bigger, underlying issue and that is likely a general lack of buy-in by the firm about D&I. Do not be persuaded otherwise and give some long and serious thought about whether you want to be the “other” and whether you believe this homogeneous group will truly be open to you (as a person) or your ideas (as an attorney).

In the end there is no perfect law firm and you will always find room for improvement. The key is being able to identify those shortcomings before you start so that you aren’t blindsided. The goal should be to find a firm whose shortcomings are ones you are willing to tolerate. In summary:

• Ask the hard questions
• See if you can find someone who worked there
• Isolate candidates that you can relate to
• Do your diligence:
• Check their reviews — online and around town
• Check out the firm website
• Do not seek perfection!

Are you looking for a new firm or your first legal position? Coach with me and lean on my years of experience working in and recruiting to large corporate law firms. Let my past mistakes benefit your future.