In writing about burnout, I want to make one thing clear: this is no academic endeavor. I learned what I know about burnout by burning out. I’ve quit practicing law twice because I was emotionally and physically fried. 

I reached peak emotional burnout probably around the same time as a lot of other people: March 2020. I tried a lot of things to feel better. I quit my job as a family lawyer and went back to school in a different field. That didn’t help and I needed money, so I went back to being a lawyer. I still felt like shit, so I quit again, and decided to be a life coach (as one does). This is actually what changed everything for me, including, paradoxically, the ability to commit to being a lawyer and owning my own firm.

A few years ago in a coaching class the instructor said something that pissed me off and completely changed my life:

Boundaries cannot be violated by other people.

“What do you heckin’ mean, ‘boundaries cannot be violated’, ya yahoo?!” my brain screamed. My entire experience of life up until that point had felt a bit like one uninterrupted string of boundary violations.

I think I spent some time huffing and stomping around, debating whether to ask for my money back for this coaching course in which the instructors were obviously high.

I eventually cooled down enough to think about this and my life has not been the same since.

Times are a changin’, y’all! The legal industry is in a period of immense disruption. Law firms seem to be scrambling to adapt and the vibe is honestly a bit grim. 

It’s easy to find evidence right now that the world is utterly f____ed.* Finding such evidence seems to be a sport in some circles. But there’s also lots of evidence that this is the absolute best time to be alive, and that’s the lens we’re gonna use today.

The changes in the industry are creating the perfect environment for solo lawyers to thrive. Here are the three reasons why I think now is an awesome time to be in solo practice…

*please choose the adjective that resonates most with you. I suggest “fuddled” if nothing else comes to mind.

If it sounds like AI wrote that title, it’s because it did. I’ve been percolating on this idea to blog about my experience as a lawyer and business owner in part because I genuinely love it, and in part because I think you might love it, too. For blogging, like entrepreneurship, there’s really nothing to do but to do it. So I did some googling last week about how to write a successful blog and found this cool resource that provided comprehensive AI prompts for content generation. Not full articles, but “SEO-friendly” outlines with keywords that you fill in with your own writing.

Was this the magic solution to effortless and friction-free writing? Read on to find out.