If you listen to this podcast, you’re probably very curious about and interested in hearing from lawyers who take a different approach to practicing law. If going off the tracks is something you’re wondering how to do for yourself, you’re in luck because this week, I’m speaking to Erin O’Rourke and Piper Riley Thompson: two lawyers who are experts in this realm.

 

Erin is a solo practitioner who started her own firm in the midst of the pandemic, and Piper recently retired her license to practice law and is currently working as a senior career advisor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law. They are also the hosts of the award-winning podcast Off the Tracks. From going in-house, niching down, and transitioning to diversity and wellness, they cover it all on their show, and they’re here to share their expertise with us.

 

Sometimes, our confidence isn’t quite where it needs to be for us to play bigger, go after the things that are important to us, and make the impact we want to have on the world. Whether you identify as someone who doesn’t have a great deal of self-confidence, or find yourself playing smaller than you’d like, this episode is for you. 

 

This week, I’m inviting you to examine the areas of your life and practice where you’re playing small when you would rather play bigger. Where are your confidence levels? Do you have the capacity to grow? And what could increased confidence translate into? These are some of the tough questions I’m offering you so you can find a way to create greater flow in your life and practice.

 

I was recently invited to speak at an in-person event where the topic was time management and executive functioning, and how these two things fit together in a legal practice. One of the guests asked a question about procrastination in relation to a situation that comes up in their practice, and I’m inviting you to think about this for yourself in your own life.

 

Procrastination is a very common challenge for all of us with human brains and executive functioning skills. We simply don’t leap into tasks we don’t want to do. Whether it’s drafting an argument, doing your billable hours, or making a doctor’s appointment, there are tasks that feature regularly in your life and practice that you chronically push off, and it might be a sign there’s something going on there. 

 

In celebration of this huge milestone episode, I’ve invited the most spectacular guest to the show this week. I’m sitting down with Montessori school teacher turned screenwriter, songwriter, and animator, Pamela Price, whose screenplays, songs and animation have received international recognition and awards. She also happens to be my mother.

 

On this episode, we’re exploring how we can take what we know about fiction and apply it to have more control and creativity over how we’re choosing to script our own experiences. If you’ve never considered how you are writing the story of your career, I invite you to listen in to hear the parallels between screenplay writing and the evolution of your career. 

 

This week, we’re talking all about confident communication. It’s a topic that comes up frequently in my coaching conversations with clients because it has a huge impact on your entire professional life. Confident communication isn’t just reserved for trips to the courtroom or boardroom, but it’s truly at play in every conversation you have at work.

 

Confidence looks and feels different relative to individuals. Whether you want to present with greater confidence in interview situations, when you’re negotiating the terms of your position, or as you navigate increased leadership, today, I’m inviting you to reflect on what confident communication might look like in these instances.  

 

Think about the obstacles you currently face in your life and practice. What are the goals that you aren’t making progress towards and why? Is it a lack of time or resources? Maybe it’s a difficult relationship in your life, not getting the level of support you want and need, or simply feeling exhausted. 

 

We usually think of obstacles as problems that get in the way of where we want to go. We’re told that things should be easy, and if they’re not, something is wrong. You might be waiting for the stars to align for a time when there are no longer any obstacles in your way, but the hard truth is that obstacles are here to stay. Let’s find a way to change the way you relate to obstacles. 

 

The feeling of anxiety is extremely common among legal professionals. Whether anxiety is part of your personal experience as a lawyer, you have friends and colleagues who struggle with it, or it’s something that you understand anecdotally, there’s been an increased awareness of anxiety in the field of law, especially during the pandemic.

 

There are lots of places anxiety can show up in various aspects of your legal practice, and it might be prevalent in your personal life too. From smaller day-to-day triggers to bigger-picture stressors, we’ve learned that the number of lawyers struggling with anxiety is significant. Today, I’m offering tools to help you navigate anxiety as it comes up. 

 

Do you feel like you’ve constantly got a full plate? Maybe it seems like you’re always running behind or there’s just too much to do and too little time. Perhaps there’s so much on your calendar that you’re often left feeling snowed under with no clue where to start making headway.

 

Even as a coach who spends her time living and breathing time-management strategies, I still find moments in my life where I need to revisit my own systems to address feeling busy and overwhelmed. Many lawyers and other busy professionals have multiple things competing for their time and focus. If you feel like you don’t have a clear idea of how to run your practice with a sense of calm, you’re not alone. 

 

One of the questions many lawyers reach out to me for is to understand what career options are available to them, and I offered my insights on last week’s episode. Another question that comes up just as often is about career transitions for lawyers, and this is what we’re diving into this week.

 

During the height of the pandemic, transitions were top of mind for many people. It was a theme we all dealt with in some form and it continues to come up in my practice. Transitions can be inherently scary, especially if you don’t know what to expect on the other side. However, we can all be more welcoming and excited about transitions, and this is what I hope you walk away with this week.

 

The question of alternative career options for lawyers comes up a lot in my work. What I often see are lawyers who are busy practicing in their day-to-day, trying to squeeze in their personal life, and aren’t entirely satisfied with their careers but find a large part of their professional community doing the same.

 

Maybe you feel like there’s a lack of information about what else is out there, or find it hard to access those resources. Maybe you start looking for alternatives and your initial discoveries aren’t that fruitful.  Perhaps everything has been lockstep in your journey up to this point, and stepping off the beaten path feels completely foreign to you.