The Wellness Esquire Podcast

Patrick Patino: Panic Attacks, Pottery Class, and Practicing Law On His Own Terms

• Ariella Cohen Coleman

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Patrick Patino spent over a decade building a bankruptcy practice that looked, from the outside, like a success story. From the inside, it was panic attacks, ER visits, and a driver's license photo he didn't recognize.

In this episode, Patrick traces the path from a poetry degree to bankruptcy law, the health crisis that forced him to rebuild his practice around boundaries instead of hustle, and how The Newfangled Lawyer became less a brand and more a test: can you practice law as yourself and still make it work.

We talk career origin stories, legal design theory, the boundaries that stuck, and what it means to decide you've built enough.

Guest: Patrick Patino, bankruptcy attorney and founder of The Newfangled Lawyer.

Connect with Patrick:
 Website: https://newfangled.legal/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickpatino/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenewfangledlawyer/

We'd love to hear from you through Fan Mail!

Host Info: Ariella Cohen Coleman

The Wellness Esquire: a bold new path where wellbeing, happiness, and authenticity drive performance and success. 

Ariella Law, PC: strategic legal support for entrepreneurs, growing companies, and mission-driven organizations — formation, contracts, compliance, and fractional general counsel, delivered project-based or by subscription. https://ariellaw.com/

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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Wellness Esquire Podcast. I'm Ariela and I'm very excited for you to hear this conversation with Patrick Patino. Patrick is a bankruptcy attorney, and you may know of him as the newfangled lawyer from his podcast. Patrick has spent many years thinking about and speaking with other lawyers about how to build a practice that feels good, that feels authentic, and that suits you for the phase of life that you are in. We talk about designing your career and your life really truly for you. And we talk about how important it is for lawyers to be happy. Thank you so much for being here. Let's get into it. Tell me why you went to law school in the first place.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, it's for a really great reason. So I graduated undergrad in 2009 with a degree in poetry, creative writing. And it was during the financial poetry.

SPEAKER_01

So I didn't think that I guess maybe I could have seen that coming. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Um, and so it's like, what do you do with a poetry degree during a financial crisis? And so at the time I was delivering furniture with my cousins um for a local furniture store. And I was at the pool with my parents, and my mom mentioned some guy was like building a new house. I was like, Oh, what does he do for a living? And my was like, Oh, he's a lawyer. And I was like, I think I could be a lawyer. I was like, what is a lawyer? What do you gotta do? I like reading, writing, and helping people. And this is to the extent I thought what lawyers did. They like read a lot, they write a lot, and they help people. And so I studied for the LSAT by reading a different novel every day. And then, yeah, because all it's reading. So I just read a ton and then I've never heard that before. Yep. I didn't take a class, I just read books, and then on Saturdays I would take back-to-back practice LSATs. Um, I did that for I think about two and a half months. Um took the LSAT the day of like taking one LSAT was then easy. It was like done because I was anticipating then, right? I had done all the practice of doing a second LSAT.

SPEAKER_01

You had the stamina.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and so I mean, this is kind of defined unintentionally my whole career, is that how I go about getting to that end goal is not really how anyone else does it. So it's like I went to law school being like I'm gonna transfer law schools, which no one does this. They tell you not to do this. So I went to John Marshall, which is now UIC in Chicago. I then transferred to University of Illinois. Um, and one of my transfer buddies was like, hey, we should um take a four-hour bankruptcy class. And I was like, that sounds miserable. I almost failed finance in college, which is why I switched my major to creative writing, but fine. Sure. Um, and so I and I took the class, and my professor, Pamfoey, was awesome. Her bankruptcy professor was Elizabeth Warren at Harvard, and we used a uh Elizabeth Warren's book on bankruptcy, and it was taught like no other law school class I had. And it was like small group format where you went through like practical like scenarios and then applied the bankruptcy code, where everything else up until that point was like big lecture, or it was like these really abstract concepts that like really don't impact everyday people, like they do and they don't. So this felt like real. This was like, okay, I can see how the law actually impacts someone's life and is the solution. Um, I callied the class, and it was like it kind of chose me. I I what I tell people is in the practice of the law, if you can find something that you're good at that brings you joy, like in the bankruptcy code is like this alien world that a lot of lawyers you mentioned bankruptcy are like, I want nothing to do with that. Like, and so this is like my place, so I just like didn't fight it. Like, I didn't try to change myself, I didn't chase anything else. I was like brilliantly naive. I had no idea what like OCIs were, I had no idea like the game you have to play. I didn't there was no competition for me. Uh like how I did law school is like when I would take an exam, I would hand write it. When I was done, I wouldn't review it, I'd just go turn it in. And so it's like this is how I just went about practicing law. Is just I'm gonna show up, do my thing, and try not to spend more time doing it than I need to.

SPEAKER_01

So even at that early stage, you had a mindset of I'm gonna do this, but not more than I have to.

SPEAKER_03

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

Like I have guardrails around this.

SPEAKER_03

That's right. I didn't study on the weekend at all. Not one time in law school did I study on the weekend. When I sat for the bar exam, I didn't study on the weekends. I actually took two weeks off before the bar exam. Um I got married um while prepping for the bar, and then I handwrote the bar in pencil. So yeah, I I just I I just always accepted like even it like by my second third year, I stopped bringing a laptop to class and I would just listen. I wouldn't take notes or anything, I would just literally listen and interact with the professor and the other people around me. So I just figured out that like there's not a way of doing this early on. Like, even in law school, I had like a beard and long hair, and I like didn't care in the best way. Like I can still remember like I did like those mock trials, and one of the judges was like, Well, you'd be really fun to get a beer with, which is not a compliment, really. I don't think she meant it as a compliment because I'm pretty informal, although I know big words, and I can be very articulate and use words like predilection, but it's like day in and day out, even then, I just wanted to be myself, and the pressures of practicing law, like you change, it tries to change you, and you have to allow it to happen to some extent, right? Like, I tell people like you can't show up to court in a jumpsuit, like in Air Force Ones as a lawyer, like maybe someday when millennials are on the bench, like it.

SPEAKER_01

We don't know for sure.

SPEAKER_03

We don't, I mean, there's there's rules of like you know, decorum and stuff, but yeah, even even early on, I just like right, I had an opportunity I could have clerked for a bankruptcy judge. I turned it down because I just wanted to do my own thing. I didn't I didn't want to do someone else's thing.

SPEAKER_01

How much like was this just like an enormous sense of self at that point? Like, did you understand what your values were, what you wanted your life to look like? Did you act like intentionally have boundaries, or were you just like or like what was letting you do this?

SPEAKER_03

I I think this was the without knowing it, without being aware of it, it was the early stages of a lot of self-work and self-discovery and seeking clarity. My whole life, yeah, I just kind of did things my own way. Sometimes this worked, you know, like in school, like if I had an English teacher who had a rubric, I would usually like completely kind of couldn't come up with a creative way to still comply with the rubric. I had some people that appreciated this, saw the value of it, encouraged me to do it, and then I'd have other times where it'd be like, no, no, no, no, you have to check these 10 boxes, what are you doing? And so I think just innately, I kind of always was this introverted creative type that lived inside my own head, which has a lot of benefits. In the legal profession, we celebrate the outspoken, the extrovert, the planner. I've never been a planner. I would say, like, in terms of being like an achiever, it was kind of always on my own terms. Like, I just didn't I just didn't care, like in the way other people cared. So like even my sister, my younger sister and I went to the same high school. When I was a senior, she was a freshman. By the time she had some of the same teachers I did, they would tell my parents like they're two different, like, how do they come from the same family? Like, Patrick never seemed to care what he got what grade he got on a test.

SPEAKER_01

Was any of the about having perspective on what was actually important? Or did he just Because like I'm I'm I'm wondering how much of this if you can relate at all to what I experienced, which was I mean, for example, when I was in law school, I was really sick. And while my classmates were freaking out about, you know, studying for everything, and and I was uh you know very type A and uh pretty high strung. But everyone, but I remember around finals, I figured out that it was better for me to study around the two L's and the three L's because they'd already been through it and they had perspective on what the process was and what this really meant. And the one L's were going through such a panic, and I was like, I'm just trying to not die every day. And so, like, my focus was elsewhere. I also wanted to do well, but I just there was only so much space that I had to think about what was important. So I'm wondering, like, for you, was any amount of this just an understanding of like, yes, I want to do this, but like, you know, the difference between this rating or this grade or whatever, like isn't that big of a deal. Was any of this perspective, or were you just like, yep, I'm my own person, I don't care about that, I'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_03

I would reach, I I had a thing I was like, I know enough. So, like, even with studying, I would just stop. I'd be like, I know everything I'm gonna know. Done. I I don't know, I'm not sure by that. I I yeah, I'm not I don't know like what drove me to do this. I I just saw like at a certain point like the diminishing return or the lack of utility, like I still wanted to be able to have a life outside of studying for contracts or property law, or you know, I I just I wanted to hang out with my friends, or I wanted to go see a movie, or I wanted to go for a run or go to the gym or write or just sit, just sit. I and so I just didn't I think even growing up, like there wasn't a big emphasis in my house of like grades or like what you achieved. It was more about being like well-rounded and trying different experiences and being creative and being your own person. And those things have served me really well. Like I don't I don't even have a core memory of like my parents even looking at a report card. It was great. Or like when I went to college, like no one was like, hey, you must do this thing. Even when I went to law school, like no one was like try to convince me not to do it. No one was like, other than just like, yeah, Patrick just goes and does it, figures it out, I guess.

SPEAKER_01

Alright, so you go through law school seemingly different from the way that a lot of parts do it.

SPEAKER_03

And I thought I I I enjoyed law school.

SPEAKER_01

I did too. I just did it with some more stress.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so you get through law school. What does that early part of your career then look like?

SPEAKER_03

I worked with my father-in-law um for the first half of my career. So for the first six years, um, so I joined his practice right out of law school.

SPEAKER_01

He was anything about you getting married in the weeks before the bar exam.

SPEAKER_03

That's he didn't nothing. It wasn't his type to it's not his personality comment.

SPEAKER_01

It's fantastic, and I'm sure there are sure there are other people to do it. I'm just so intrigued because of being wired very, very differently. And I'm amazed and frankly delighted that there are people like you out there who are just like, Well, I have a life. I it took me so long to figure out the whole living part.

SPEAKER_03

And impressed. Well, it's don't don't be don't yeah, well, it's not it's not linear, it's it's so right, like I um specialize in bankruptcy. It just so turned out that my father-in-law, future father-in-law, was a bankruptcy attorney in Omaha, Nebraska. Total coincidence. This is like, and there's not a lot of people that are like, I'm a bankruptcy attorney. This just does it's not very common. I didn't know this at the time. I also knew I wanted to work at a solo, like a small firm. I didn't want to work at a big firm. And so um, actually, in between my 2L and 3L year, I helped him with a big project, and it went really well. Um and so then he was like, Well, you can come here and join my practice. I don't think he knew what he was saying yes to. Um, and so like early on, right, like I had the benefit of stepping into a law firm that had been around a long time. My father-in-law had been practicing over 30 years, and he was also had um systems in place who was open to change, and maybe because I pushed him um to change, but I had the opportunity to kind of like early on start incubating some of the like innovations that at the time were really innovative, like only paperless. Um, and this was in 2014. I was like, we should stop printing all the bankruptcy schedules. We should like and mailing it to clients with a return envelope. Like, we need a different process. We need we were using a Micas, we then switched to Clio, we we made a lot of changes, and so early on, the the other benefit is at that point in his career, he had kind of slowed down. So there'd be like Fridays, he'd be like, Oh, it's like it's like one o'clock. Like, we should probably be done. We have no appointments, like we can be done. This is really unique. I had I used to like tell my wife, I'm like, I get the benefit of basically like being semi-retired, like straight out the gate. Like, there wasn't this expectation that I work all the time, although I right, I was working more than probably I thought, because it was all happening inside my head. So even if I wasn't sitting down physically working at a computer or on my smartphone or whatever, like I was thinking through how to solve problems all the time, and this is kind of a theme that will carry on for years and years, although I didn't appear to be working, and I convinced myself I wasn't. I was working all the time. I was working when I was on a walk with my kid, I was working when I first woke up in the morning lying in bed. I was always working because my mind never turned off. So yeah, I mean, working with him was great. Um, we then joined another law firm um after about two and a half years together to allow him to retire. Um, so then we did that for like three and a half years. He's retired, and then the pandemic then I was like, I'm gonna go solo, then the pandemic hit. And so that the early first part of my career was like a lot of kind of like incubating, iterating with in a very safe space, but at the same time being very traditional, right? Like I started conforming to what a lawyer looks like, how you behave, what you do day in and day out. You go to happy hour, you go to bar events, you you know, you're doing, you're constantly doing, and that had a lot of dire consequences for my health. That wasn't without consequences, right? I was having panic attacks. I went to the ER several times, thing I was having a heart attack, they're just really bad panic attacks. Um, I started just getting sick all the time. I was just not I was not taking care of myself. Like the first half of my career, like I just set myself aside because I turned off the best parts of kind of who I was, which was chill and having boundaries and being like, oh, like that's enough, or this doesn't matter. Like in the grand scheme of life, like it doesn't matter. I'm gonna do a good job, but I can't own like my clients' own mistakes and try to it was kind of that idea, like I was working harder than my clients in a lot in a lot of ways. Um and I sacrificed myself for the first six years, and so when I went out on my own, I was like, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm going to have very clear boundaries, I'm gonna have I'm gonna be really hardcore over what I say yes to and what I say no to. And that didn't happen. I I went solo during the pandemic, and bankruptcies fell off precipitously. My practice area basically evaporated overnight. And so, right, you make sacrifices, and when you're self-employed, it's a blessing and a curse. Like when you're a solo lawyer, the greatest thing is you get to make your own law firm, the worst thing is you get to make your own law firm. Iterating in that way, um, I still was unwell. I I had like mystery illnesses. I go to the doctor, they're like, You're healthy as a horse. I'm like, I don't feel fine. So I went through like literally everything. I had like every blood work done under the sun. They're like, You're fine, there's nothing wrong with you. Um, I went to the neurologist and had like a full scan of my brain, my spinal cord, everything. The neurologist is like, you're probably just more aware of the sensations in your body, right? And I was like, I'm like, uh no. Uh so right around this time, I was just like, I need to make some radical changes. This is about this is 2021. I just moved to Minnesota, and I was like, what I need to change radically. So I stopped drinking, I stopped using a smartphone. Um, I started like being aware of my own life and feeling stuff. I um started seeing a therapist, I started reading books, I started making art, I started like hanging out with my kids and gardening and hanging out with my wife and exercising and like going out in nature and like living, and it was like the the absolutely scariest thing. But the person I saw looking back at me, I we joke, I got a driver's license right when I moved here to Minnesota, and the my picture doesn't look like me, it looks like a complete stranger, it looks someone totally dissatisfied with life. I didn't recognize myself, and so that started kind of the peeling back. One of my favorite lines from a book, the concept is kind of like you start digging, looking for your the light, and then when you crawl the ho hole, you realize you were the light all along. Um, and so through this process of self-discovery and introspection and meditation and reading a lot of thick not han and just sitting, just being present, existing is really difficult, I think. Um I realized I was I was an achiever. I was, and that was okay. I was a very intense person in an effort to kind of turn off all the my very constantly thinking brain, I just turned it all off. And so I turned it all back on. Oh boy. So in tw so it was just like I realized at that time, like I just want to be myself. I really started thinking a lot at that time of kind of this concept of what now is like legal design theory, designing your practice around the life you want to live. Um, and so first I had to get clear like what kind of life did I want to live. Um, so I started experimenting. What does this look like? So I started working a four-day work week. I like signed up for a wheel pottery class on a Tuesday that was multi week on a Tuesday during the day. It's like me and a bunch of retirees. Um right, and like I said, like this isn't linear, it's it's it's very much Much so when someone says even they're in like recovery, right? You have really good days, really good weeks, really bad days, really bad weeks, and that's how it's been. Like some days I feel like, yeah, wow, I'm I'm myself, I'm doing exactly what I want to do. Talking with people, I'm having a conversation, I'm building a new narrative around the legal profession. And then other days I'm like, I don't have it today. I I don't care about this person's problem. Gosh, I have my own problems, but but it's the work, right? Like I've done uh so much work the last five years redefining like how I want to spend my energy. It's not it's not my time, it's really my energy, like what do I want to commit it to? So I started making some intentional decisions around my practice. So like one of them is I was no longer gonna do any emergencies. And people were like, Well, you do bankruptcy, everything is emergency. I'm like, oh no, no, no. Like, I used to be like, someone would be like, hey, my house is gonna be foreclosed tomorrow. I'd be like, I'd drop everything, I'm gonna help this person, and finally I was just like, no. So I just created like a list of non-negotiables, that was one of them. Uh another one was if you don't know how to use technology, you're not the client for me, and I'm not your attorney. Some people are like, well, gosh, that's not really access to justice of you. And I'm like, believe it or not, like some people I'd be like, well, in order to work with me, like this is the competency you need. Like there's other lawyers who you can go into their office, drop off paperwork, I can get you there. But if you want to work with me, like one lady I was like, she had no internet, no technology at all. Yeah. So I was like, uh, go buy an iPad, get it with cell service, and she's probably in her 70s, figured it out. We did it. She was like, I'm gonna. So it was about I figure out like it's about empowering people in yourself as an attorney, um, as opposed to just being like, I'll work with anything, I'll make anything work. That's just crazy struggle. Yeah, and this is what I think people mean when they say client-centered, is really they mean we um basically ignore the fact that lawyers are people, legal professionals are people will do anything for the client. And on this journey, I was like, I'm done doing that. Um, because then I'm dissatisfied, and I'm not providing showing up in my life for myself in the in the best way, or for my family, for the people around me. I'm just just gruntled then all the time. I want to why not just work with people that want to work with you and are aligned and you set clear expectations. So I just had a lot of clear expectations. I I even now in my signature block, I say, like, if you email me, I might not email you back today. Like if you email me on the weekend, I'm not gonna email you back on the weekend. If it's after hours, I'm not gonna email you prior to the next day. And what I've discovered is like it allowed my nervous system to reset. Like it didn't feel like I always had to be on or thinking or present. Um, and and it gave permission to clients to sometimes turn it off. Like they're human too. And so it's just like game respect game, like it creates trust to be like, hey, I know you're gonna have bad days, I'm gonna have bad days, or I might not always be the most immediate. That's not what it means to be a good attorney, um, or be responsive.

SPEAKER_01

It is not so it is wild that there are still attorneys who play that game of like you know, in order to do this job, you have to respond ASAP. Yes, simply cannot.

SPEAKER_03

Or it's yeah, this idea that we're like in a profession that requires a hundred percent self-sacrifice. And so I I really just started playing with like there is no emergency, and there might be urgency, but even then uh I started telling clients like that's a 30-day from now problem. Like, there's no benefit, like we first have to see how the next 30 days plays out. I could spend all this energy going through 15 hypotheticals, or we could wait 30 days, then we actually know with that time passing, there's gonna be like probably one or two options, and this probably came with confidence, this probably came with just experience, but largely it came to like this is what I wanted my day in and day out to look like, and that and that vacillated over the last six years because I was trying to figure it out. I was trying to figure out both how to practice law, play by the game, and also be myself. And this is where the newfangled lawyer was born was almost like a a hub, a way for me to like split test. And so the newfangled lawyer was born out of my desire to create and create a different narrative, and really what it ended up getting me was the fact that you can show up professionally in your own way, and that's what resonates. And so I did it. I like took then that everything I'd built there, kind of the vibe, the branding, me, and was gonna plug it into my law practice. I'd been flirting with this, but like actually bring it to see if when I was practicing law as myself, as the newfangled lawyer, did it bring me more wellness, more satisfaction, more capacity, more breathing space, more time to just walk in my yard barefoot and drink coffee? Because I had iterated, I was searching, right? I was searching for a way to practice law that didn't kill me. I didn't want to die. And this might sound extreme, but you talk to lawyers, there is at least some prevailing narrative where it's like, yeah, I'll probably die by a heart attack by the time I'm 50.

SPEAKER_01

Did you feel like if you didn't change things?

SPEAKER_03

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, because I'm intense. I I bring it, even though I might not work on the weekends, so like figure in a four or five day work week, I was bringing I was bringing it.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it you're making an interesting point because I think a lot of us can create these kind of narratives around like I've created this, I have this structure, I have these boundaries, and I'm not doing it that way. That was bad, but I'm I'm doing it this way, and I'm s but I haven't changed sort of the underlying part of me that's actually been what's struggling. I've just so I've just reshaped the challenge.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so yeah, exactly. It and part of it has to do with the culture around practicing law, right? Like you're still interacting with other attorneys, courts, the expectations of clients, right? Um, and everything got accelerated. Figure the last six years, everything now is accelerated. People just their expectations have shifted. Um and so yeah, it's like I I brought them back to my practice, like, hey, I'm gonna practice law as me, and it crushed. People people were like, hey, I hired you because you're wearing a backwards hat and a hoodie. What? I hired you because you had pink on your website. I hired you because you just look like a normal dude. I and it really, I mean, I was the busiest I'd ever been. And yet, and most successful, I was making the most money, I was doing all the things, right? I did the biggest case in my career. I did a hundred million dollar debt case where uh in the deal too was lawyers from curculum and ellis. So it's like I I right like as a small lawyer had achieved, I'd done all the things. I'd filed every type of bankruptcy basically you can file. I had I'd done all the things. And yet, and I'd made all these changes, right? All these changes in life, and yet I still felt incomplete, burned out, dissatisfied, even though I created my own environment and was the decision maker. Ultimately, I had had partners and I went back off my own. Even when back off on my own, you know, and transformation is hard, change is difficult. And sometimes you can reach a point and you can fool yourself that there's still more to be done, as opposed to just accepting like I've done enough, I am enough. I've achieved maybe everything I want to achieve here. That doesn't mean I hate my clients, that doesn't mean like I don't I wasn't good at the work. I just no longer didn't light me up. I I I didn't wake up in the morning like, oh gosh, I I am really looking forward to this. Um but when I was doing, let's say, new finger work or the podcast or speaking, presenting, talking to law students about kind of these concepts of creating a career around you and what you enjoy, what you're good at. Um man, those were the best, those are the best days. Um, I left those situations. I was like, how how do I create more opportunities for this? So I mean over the last several months, I really have slowed down. I I was seeking other opportunities because it's not that I was like disgruntled, I wasn't even jaded. I wasn't like the legal profession's horrible. I didn't reach those conclusions. I what I reached was this worked for me for a long time, even if it wasn't always in the most balanced way, it for a long time, right? Like it afforded me the opportunity to live the life I lived, have the house I have, have the lifestyle I have. And it was time to be done. So I just stopped taking clients. I said no. I referred people to people were like, hey, bankruptcy. I was like, I'm not doing it that anymore. Um I turned off my Google listing. Um I removed it all from my website. These are things that seem super counterintuitive from any kind of like rational, reasonable standpoint.

SPEAKER_01

But why do you say that?

SPEAKER_03

Because I think there's a normative standard of if you build something that's successful, particularly in the legal profession, you figure out how to 10x it. Um and I wasn't interested in that. I wasn't interested in growing something. Basically, took something that fed me, my family, and it was like, I could I could continue to do this, but it's not like feeding my soul or my life or my relationships. I I gave so much to my legal practice. Um I just don't that cost wasn't worth it for me anymore. Um at one time maybe it was, or I convinced myself it was, but so yeah, so like now it's like letting go. Sometimes, like my wife, she's like, Well, leap, the net will form, and it does. It always does, you know. You might not even see it, you might not know what form the net's gonna take, but you have to trust yourself. So it's like even when I started on this path, you know, five-ish years ago, I can still remember I was gonna present uh in front of lawyers, and usually I'd wear like business casual, and I was like, told my wife, I was like, I think I'm gonna wear like backwards hat and like Birkenstocks and joggers, and she was like, do it, and I did it, and nothing bad happened.

SPEAKER_01

Tell me more about that. What was the environment? Where did you go? What was the event or the program?

SPEAKER_03

It was uh an event for solo small lawyers. I had been invited to give a talk that I had started giving about uh like choosing the life you want to live, kind of like practicing law is like a choose your own adventure. And I'm saying things like right, like that are like there are no client emergencies, we're not 911. Don't don't respond to client emails at 11 p.m. People were this is like controversial stuff five, six years ago.

SPEAKER_01

Still there there's less that way, but Pat's not seeing the debates on LinkedIn about to wear a suit or to not wear a suit, and are you can you even think if you're not wearing that's right, and so like I yeah, like what like my brain's still the same.

SPEAKER_03

Actually, I might think better.

SPEAKER_01

I do better when I'm not wearing stuffy clothes that don't feel good.

SPEAKER_03

Same. And so yeah, it's like how to just keep making the next brave choice um and listening to your intuition what feels right. Because in going back to the concept of ahimsa, do no harm, remove harm, is a tenet that we live by in my family. So it's like I'm not doing any harm by showing up as myself. Someone it might make someone uncomfortable, but I'm not trying to cause harm to anyone, or even the system. And so this is why like I I don't I don't commit energy to saying things like, oh, big law is bad, the billable hours is bad, wearing a suit is bad, this is bad, this is why we have a mental health problem, the billable hours is why we have a mental health problem.

SPEAKER_01

It's like no, it's all it's the package.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's a my it's a a lot of it's just a mindset in your relationship to the environment that you're in, and the expectations. And so it's like some people thrive in the expectation of a bulb-a-a requirement and big law, like that that aligns with their expectation. That's what they work for. That and the costs are worth it to them, and maybe at some point they aren't, and you have to reevaluate. But this is where I think we could just do so much better service to the profession of stop uh saying like you should do this. It's like uh people are like, Well, Patrick, I'm not going to start wearing a hoodie. Cool. I I'm never suggesting that. Like what I'm saying is like you do you, but you gotta figure out what that what that means and what are the costs and benefits associated with making the different decisions. I didn't I didn't really do that the first part of my career. I was just on default setting. Uh I just went. And the second I stopped and started kind of figuring these things out, you go, okay, and I'm gonna try I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try some different ways of being or practicing or different boundaries, and it's not always going to work in the way that you expect, or what works for one person, how they design their day or their life or their practice, so like might not work for you. So one of my buddies here, his name's Inti Martinez, he likes telling uh this story when he does like a wellness CLE presentation about how he saw I posted an article about doing a four-day work week. I did it for the bar. So he tried it. And he was like, it was the worst thing because he's like, he tried to then pack everything into four days. And I was like, Well, Antie, you didn't read then the whole article because it was about a mindset, not actually doing the four-day work week itself. It's about what works for you. So some people, it's like my paralegal, she used to work best at 10 p.m. at night. Cool. Great! We shouldn't have this expectation that then everyone works at 10 p.m. at night or everyone does X, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Because you said that, I will tell you this. I mentioned to you that I'm like everybody else right now, building my own practice management platform. And if of course it has a peak performance well-being angle to it. One of the features or sets of features is around all this kind of customization so that when you do have a team, whether it's just you and a paralegal or you know, you know, you're a much bigger firm, everyone can set just for transparency, for communication purposes, so that everyone's on the same page. Like, when are your best working hours? When are your quiet hours? When can you like really not be engaged with except for an absolute emergency? What's an emergency? And reminders to take breaks, reminders to just like understanding how to think about is this a priority? Is this actually important? How are we just all of the questions that we're not taught how to think about, but that are just so essential to actually at least attempting to build a comfortable law practice and and doing it in a way that is good for you and allowing everyone to do it in a different way because by the way, we are all different and we need different things. There's no there's no one perfect system.

SPEAKER_03

No. The the system is the identification that everyone does differently, and and finding where there's overlap, and we're finding where there's absolute divergence. And this happens in other professions with like logistics, right? There's there's this idea that in the law, you never really have to do any planning or be that intentional because your expectation is always, and so right, like this still now, and now, and so this just makes it where um if everything's an emergency, nothing is. It's kind of like the boy who cried wolf. And you know, if you're always saying, like, this is urgent, this is urgent, this is urgent, this is urgent, well then at a certain point nothing is, and so then when their true emergency comes in, it's hard to hard to plan for. And so for me, I think the future of legal practice is really going to be about this alignment, this this value-based alignment, and helping lawyers do the work and figure out like, is this working for me now? Is this gonna work for me in the short term? In long term, I think we do too much long-term planning. Like, there's no you don't know, and it's actually a waste of energy, and a lot of times that's displaced as opposed to dealing with immediate things that need to get resolved and talked about now. And we need happy lawyers. We need, we need uh people who love lawyering. I mean uh we need people who are gonna do the hard work, because it is hard work, to be out there fighting good fights and upholding kind of our systems and doing good work and being vocal advocates of why laws are important and why lawyers are important and why judges are important, and all you know, the system. But we also need a culture reset. Otherwise, with the acceleration of data and information and speed, we're just gonna end up burning out a lot of really good lawyers who love lawyering because either they're in the wrong environment or the culture of practicing law hasn't shifted to a modern way of living, right? And addressing the fact that like we need really good female lawyers who are moms practicing law, like like we need people who aren't sacrificing and saying like it's an either or but a both and um well that's gonna require us rethinking much like you are. I think from a design standpoint, like what does a day look like? What does a week look like? What does a month look like? How do you get work done? What kind of work do you need to do? Do you need to do all of it? Some of it? A particular kind? Can you say no? It's like is that gonna become a superpower? Is just and accept it. I think this is the thing is like thinking about changing systems, you need stakeholder buy-in. Um, and change of a culture um is gonna require more than just a couple people out here saying, Hey, we need to change things. So that's okay.

SPEAKER_01

I I think we have stakeholder buy in. And the reason that I think I mean you and I are building communities in such similar and overlapping ways because we're we're both very focused on lawyer well being. And and that we need each other.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The deep apart. The really teacher.

SPEAKER_00

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

And so the way I'm thinking about, at least with the wellness esquire, and then more broadly, is I know that there are so many lawyers who are really good at what they do, who really enjoy what they do, but they really don't like how they do it, and it is not working for them. And they're looking for ways out. And then there are the ones who have figured out a way out or are figuring it out. But so many of these stories of people who are are figuring it out or are ready for a change, they're quiet. And so one of my goals with the Wellness Esquire is to just be like, hey guys, there's actually like a ton of us out here. And I believe we're actually the dominant force. We've just been quiet. But if we can just get loud and say, you know, we're just gonna grab onto each other and have a big like friend circle.

SPEAKER_03

A human life raft will be like those ants that hold onto each other.

SPEAKER_01

One person sees, oh, I it's not just me, I'm not alone. Oh, there's one more person. I mean, someone just said to me, I had no idea that there was this group of secretly happy lawyers out there, and now I'm one of them. And like that came through as it often does with me. It's just like one kind lawyer at a time making one introduction at a time, and it's a slow process.

unknown

It's incremental.

SPEAKER_01

It's incremental. So we've gotta, we've gotta, you know, boost it. But I think when we get that big community sense, it it will take over. I don't think it's gonna change the entire industry. I think we're still gonna have dinosaurs who are fighting that you can only be smart if you're wearing a tie and you know it's oh, there's one way the ones that we don't want to engage with, but I'm I really feel very confident that we can get it to where we want for so many more people, and that the culture can end up feeling very, very different. Not tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, it's uh it's a iterative glacial process. Um, but no, I'm I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful. I think too the younger lawyers I've interacted with um have done a lot more like introspective self-work. They know what they value much more than I think people did before when they were 23, 24. Um so, right? I think part of it's just gonna be like labor dynamics is that the industry's gonna have to change because the people working um are changing um and are demanding different a different environment, a different how, um, like you said. Um so no, I'm I'm hopeful. I you know, I really think the prax law is varied and nuanced, invites more diversification than people I think historically have even acknowledged. Um, and so that's why I advocate it's like I think early on law soon should be exposed to more ways that people practice the law.

SPEAKER_01

Um you know I agree. I I think I I'm constantly amazed in law and beyond law, just how many ways there are to make a living and to practice law. And I I think if you have the brain for it, you know, if it's a good fit for you, I think there are so many ways beyond what most people realize that being in law in some capacity can be the right fit. And I think a lot of people leave the industry sooner than they might otherwise need to, just because they don't know what the options are and they don't have the support system. Now, if you want to get out of the industry and that's what's best for you, go for it. I'm not trying to keep anybody in just who it's not good for, but I think there, as you said, there are so many possibilities that most people just don't even know about.

SPEAKER_03

And don't dis don't knock until you try it. Sometimes you you have to go try um and have the growth mindset of abundance in trying, and because you don't know, like you don't think people get scared.

SPEAKER_01

A lot of the questions that I get, especially from law students, is well, what if I start something and I hate it? And then I'm like, well, then you will try something else. And I get it because I've gone through those phases of you know, I don't think I like what I'm doing, this isn't the right fit, but how do I get a job doing a thing I haven't done before because I can't prove that I know it? And I like I I totally understand the fear. I also can tell you that most of the work that I'm doing now is not what I was doing when I first started. I think that's the case for for I don't know if it's most, but certainly it's a very common story. And you can either just evolve slowly or you can do a whole big crazy pivot.

SPEAKER_02

Sure, you can just jump. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I mean, yeah, I uh and a lot of it stems from the kind of work that I think you're now looking to do more of, which is really sitting with people, I think, tell me if I'm mistaken, one-on-one and in groups, and whether it's workshops or coaching or you know, standing in front of a room and um, you know, bigger room, talking about values and systems, and how do you understand what's right for you right now? What do you think is gonna be right for you in maybe not five years, but maybe six months, and then how do you get there? And how do you really what's the life that you want, as you said, and then how do you build the the career around the life that you want? That's how we're gonna get to having more happy lawyers.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and being uh creative and clear and specific. So it it can't just be like I want to be happy. Well, what does happiness look like to you? It's like my kids and I will talk about this. I'm like, well, you need to be kind. And then uh I'll be like, what do you think kindness means?

SPEAKER_01

And then my kids have these conversations with colleagues, also with lawyers.

SPEAKER_03

Maybe I will. What does kindness look like to you? Please tell me. What is kindness and what does that how does that manifest itself for you?

SPEAKER_01

But I I I'm I actually really mean that because I think a lot of the misery that people end up experiencing is a lot of lawyers, they've lost track of kindness. There's so there's so much stress, there's so much overwhelm. So people are not always treating each other well and not thinking about that, the impact of it, and what to how to change it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, kindness goes a long way. Um, and we sh need to just accept that you know people have the capacity to change and they're not always out to get you. I think there's this idea that like people are out, you know, out to get you or paranoid, or you have to send a CYA instead of just sometimes asking a question, like maybe maybe the client isn't responding to you because something bad just happened in their life. Like, you know, and instead of just assuming the worst, how I frame it is usually I'll just reach out and be like, I'm just seeing how are you doing? Yeah, like are are you okay over there? Um, as opposed to getting like angry and mad or creating your own narrative. I think the same goes for colleagues, is you can create your own narrative as opposed to sometimes just saying, like, hey, you haven't been showing up at any bar events lately. Is everything okay? How are you doing? Um, we need we need more of this. Um, because this is what normal this is what functioning healthy groups of people do who show up for each other.

SPEAKER_01

Um, you know, so yes, and it's you know, I when you said the kindest thing, and I it was like we should we should just start with that. I I I really mean it because you know, just in the last couple weeks, I've seen quite a few posts from colleagues on LinkedIn about both recent and anniversaries of suicide. And you know, uh the stories tend to be like that, you know, no one saw it coming. And it's you know, the last person we would have expected. And we're not checking in on each other. You know, we have this way of just saying, like, hey, how are you? It's just like a fancy hello, but most people are not actually checking in to see like, but nobody really, how are you? By the way, if you're not okay, like come talk to me. And one of my dreams actually with the wellness esquire is to end up in a place where if someone has, you know, a the wellness esquire mug on their desk, whether it's through Zoom or in person, and someone walks by their office or sees it, you know, through the screen, they can say to themselves, oh, I think that might be a safe person that I can talk to about, whether it's my mental health or this, you know, ethical dilemma that I'm facing, or I don't know how to set a boundary, or whatever it is. Because we people aren't okay and we're not checking on our on each other, and we're not figuring out how to take care of ourselves or or those around us, and then we're shocked when when we end up discovering that someone was was really not okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's um providing the resources. So, like here in Minnesota, we have lawyers concerned for lawyers. Um a lot of states have these services available um to lawyers or other legal profession professionals that's you know free and confidential, and there's no shame in it. As a profession, we're predisposed to you know anxiety, depression, ADHD, you know, and right, it just attracts people that are already innately that way, right? And then, you know, kind of compounds it by the pressures. And you know, any anyone who's done this work knows that one of the most powerful things you can do is just share and hear that someone else went through it too, and know that it's okay, it's okay to struggle, right? Like it's uh it's okay to sometimes just be like, you know, I'm not doing okay. You know, it's what you and I talked about before we have recorded is like you know, it's not linear, it ebbs and flows, and there's uh good days and bad days. Um hopefully you have more good days than bad days. But life life is that way, it's not it's not binary, it's not black and white, it's all part of the experience. And so I think for me at least, it's just been acknowledging that you gotta feel all the feels, and one of the things that drives is deeper connection with clients, because then when they need to feel the feels, you go there and you can empathize, and it's real, right? Like when people are having their worst day, you're like, I see you, I know, because I have bad days. Um, I don't I can't even tell you how many clients I'm like, you know, it just it'll be like I've been where you're at. You know, life life's hard, life's expensive. Like, you know, life doesn't go as planned. Um, and it's not just lip service, it's the truth.

SPEAKER_01

I think that ends up also, you know, for those of us who end up really developing relationships with clients in that way, which I also do, and I I think it's key to also like providing maybe it maybe not for all practice areas. I think probably certainly with the work that I do, I'm uh I'm a better lawyer for my clients when I really know them as people. And what that can offer, you know, part of that is just like because then we're really knowing each other as people, there's a lot that goes with that. But some of that is like the client doesn't necessarily know what I need to know, what's important, what kind of updates are important. And so when they're just comfortable like shooting the wreaths with me and chatting about whatever, and then you know, blah, blah, blah, and then they say something and I'm like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_03

I'm acting that stop, pause.

SPEAKER_01

But but part of the challenge also with developing those closer relationships, which can be so valuable to that attorney-client relationship, is then there are times where you kind of become the client's therapist.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And yes, you're already struggling with your own stuff, and which maybe your personal stuff, and then the workload, just the workload itself without sort of the emotion attached to it, if you can detach it, and then you become counselor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And I've had to tell I've had to tell people I can't help you with that problem. I care. I care because I'm a caring human, and that's uh difficult, but that's not a problem I can solve. And that's sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is say, I can't help you.

SPEAKER_01

I care.

SPEAKER_03

I care, but I can't help you. And that's the most caring thing. I'm not gonna lie to you. That's and I can tell you what you want to hear, you know, and some people take that, most people take that very well, actually. Um, and so I mean, there's that too, is like, right, with boundaries, people would be like, Oh, you, and this is how I'm gonna wrap it up. This is how I'm gonna wrap it up. You and I could talk all day, but I I um my computer's about to die because I didn't plug it in. But uh a practical thing. Um is right, like I helped people typically in the worst situation of their life, and that would be compounded sometimes. Like I had cases where then like a spouse passed away while I was helping them, or their mother died, or they got cancer, or you know, ran the gambit, right? I had one during COVID where my client, his college age jot daughter, died of COVID right when they were about to lose their family farm. Right? This is this heavy stuff, right? And processing people's trauma and their grief and holding it and having sometimes be like, and the court does not care, like the system does not care about your emotions or your feelings, but I do, and I'm gonna hold space for that. Um, I'm gonna create systems actually and automate things so I have the capacity built in for your humanity in the situation. Is I think I hope I'm hopeful that with innovation and everything we're seeing in the legal profession, with AI and technology just in general, automation in general, really frees up lawyers to be kind of that counselor from a legal perspective or community member, right? Where it's not just all about more, more clients, more billables, more revenue, instead of saying we have enough. Now what are we gonna do with this extra capacity? Um I that's what I really am hoping the conversation and where the profession goes, as opposed to just, well, now that I can do that thing that used to take an hour and ten minutes, now I'm gonna do six of them. So I actually don't have more time or more capacity. If anything, now I went from having one client doing one hour work to now I have six clients doing an hour of work. Well, now you have six human beings on the other side. That actually is gonna require more of you. And I just don't think we're talking about this enough to say one is an one is enough, so to kind of bring the theme full circle is just like satisfaction and enough and finding that for yourself, for your firm, for your family, for your friends, for whatever community you find yourself in, I think is really what we're up against is just saying, like, well, that's enough. I'm satisfied. I don't need to grasp or search or long for anything more than what I currently have.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Patrick.

SPEAKER_03

You are very welcome. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01

This was fun. Let's uh let's keep in touch.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm sorry it took two hours instead of uh I had the time because I didn't know perfectly.

SPEAKER_01

I'm in my nighttime. I think I'm gonna go have some chocolate cake.

SPEAKER_03

That sounds awesome. We'll have fun.

SPEAKER_01

The restaurant closes, I think, in my please, please go get yourself some chocolate cake.

SPEAKER_03

I don't want to stand between you and chocolate cake. Never want to be that person. So I'll talk to you later. Peace.

SPEAKER_01

I appreciate that you know that. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed. Please be sure to check out the links in the show notes and to rate and subscribe the podcast. I hope you have a wonderful day, and please remember to be kind to yourself.

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Ariella Cohen Coleman

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