When you’re working with the law, the most difficult part isn’t remembering certain laws or procedures, even though it might seem like that would be. Really, the most challenging part is remembering that your client(s), the opposing counsel and their client(s), and even the judge and jury (if you go to trial) are exactly like you—they’re people. There is a humanness to law that we don’t always remember to consider, even when we should.

 

To take a closer look at this topic, I sat down to chat with Gina Alexandris, a Career and Professional Development Coach with nearly 30 years of experience teaching and coaching legal professionals. Gina’s past “formal” roles include: Senior Director, Law Practice Program at TMU (formerly Ryerson University), and Special Advisor to the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. Gina specializes in individual and group training, and helped build mandatory cultural and emotional intelligence training into the Law Practice Program at TMU.

 

Whether you’re a practicing lawyer, law adjacent, or a professional woman outside the field of law, we need more of you. We need more women leaders just like you represented within our organizations, but it’s not always easy to step into leadership with a level of confidence and authority that feels great to us. 

 

Maybe you think being a leader means having to be bossy, domineering, or controlling. Maybe leadership has been modeled to you as accommodating your team and clients in a way that leaves you feeling depleted and exhausted. If you want to have more influence, but neither of these options sound ideal to you, and you don’t know how to bridge that gap, you’re in the right place.

 

If you’re listening to this podcast, I know you’re deeply committed to excellence. Your career is likely marked by your ability to produce high-quality work consistently and getting rewarded for it. However, if you find yourself constantly trying to prove yourself, working to the point of feeling exhausted or bruised along the way, you might be getting caught up in the illusion of perfectionism. 

 

On the one hand, there is something to be said about perfectionism being a great motivator. Many people wear it as a badge of honor. But on the other hand, there is a shadow side of perfectionism that leaves you fixating on imperfections and feeling haunted by unrealistic expectations or possible failures, ultimately holding you back from experiencing joy in your practice. 

 

I’ve been having many conversations lately with lawyers who are experiencing the same conundrum, two of whom used the exact same language to describe the problem they’re having: analysis paralysis. 

 

Analysis paralysis feels like ruminating over an idea, wondering if there’s a right or wrong decision to be made, and leaves you unable to move forward. You might push that decision-making into the future with hopes of a clearer answer then, but the truth is making that decision often doesn’t get easier with time. Sometimes, it makes taking decisive action to align with what you want harder.

 

Partnership, at its core, is about power within an organization. Being a partner has strong historical and cultural implications. It becomes an identity for people, and connotes status and a place in your firm’s hierarchy. However, while it can offer many opportunities, you’re not alone if you’re moved by different motivations than checking this box in your career path. 

 

To dive into this topic, I’m sitting down with Allison Wolf. Allison has been a lawyer coach for the past 18 years, and she works exclusively with lawyers at all stages of practice. She’s a leader in our industry, and she’s here to offer her insights on pursuing the partnership track or doing something different, whether it’s forging into a new practice area or embracing bigger roles. 

 

After years of law school, hitting your stride in practice, and leveling up in your firm along the way, the thought of going solo and starting from scratch can be so daunting. Venturing off the organizational track and stepping into entrepreneurship is risky and requires being bold, but my guest today did it and she’s thriving. 

 

Suzi Nixon is a lawyer working out of Kentucky who made the transition from big law to running her own firm and coaching practice. She’s also the founder of a wonderful community called Legally Blissed and the host of a podcast by the same name. After eight years in trademark law, even getting close to partnership, she started having second thoughts. She took the leap, started her own practice, and she hasn’t looked back since. 

 

We’re talking about how to rebuild your confidence when you have a setback. This is an important topic for lawyers at all levels. The skill of rebuilding your confidence will allow you to take your practice so much further and make a greater impact, and I’m showing you all of the how today.

 

Any time you’re in a line of work where you’re constantly pushing yourself to the edges of your limits, learning new skills, and taking on additional responsibilities, you’re always growing, which means setbacks are inevitable. It’s a risk we take when we step outside our comfort zones, which means learning how to bounce back is essential.

 

Do you have a tendency to fall victim to distractions in your everyday? How often do you tend to leave things late in the game, even when you know you’ve got tasks at hand that need seeing to? If the habit of procrastination seems to be your default mode and you can’t figure out how to turn it around, you’re in the right place. 

 

If your life looks anything like mine or my clients’, your summer is wrapping up, you’re getting back into the swing of a full practice, and work feels like a slump. Your daily workflow doesn’t have the momentum it once did, you’ve got a laundry list of priorities to sort through, and everything just feels heavy and overwhelming. So today, I’m offering a little extra help navigating this transition back to work so you can go from dread, distraction, and avoidance, to getting things done.

 

Over the past five years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing clients who have made great strides and really succeeded in getting the results they want. When we finish our work together, they’ve reached the next level, and they’re moving forward from there on their own. But what happens next?

 

We all have strategies for what we’re going to do if something goes wrong, but how many of you have a plan to follow when things are going well and you’re seeing new levels of success? We put a lot of effort into achieving a particular goal, but if we don’t think about how we want to manage our resulting success, burnout is never far behind.

 

Marketing was something I never fully embraced or appreciated when I was practicing as a lawyer. There’s this impression in the law profession that if you’re a good lawyer, there’s simply no need to market. In a wider context, marketing is often seen as sleazy, sales-y, or annoying, and something you don’t want to do or even have time for on top of your workload. 

 

However, when I decided to become a coach, I knew my relationship with marketing was going to have to change. Starting fresh meant marketing was a commitment I had to learn to love. And even if you never change tracks, the truth is you’ve spent years in education and practice, and you are uniquely positioned to provide a service that can be so freeing for people, so why aren’t you letting them know you can make an impact on their lives?