About
Professional Coach for Lawyers
ESQ., PCC, CPCC
Elizabeth Lynch Phillips
I went to law school 35 years ago, and practiced law for nearly 20 years - first as a prosecutor and then as Counsel to a Chapter 7 Trustee in Bankruptcy - for all of the wrong reasons. (See Back Story if you’re interested in my reasons. You may well have some wrong reasons of your own.) I went through the motions, did what was expected of me, kept the hamster wheel spinning at a good clip, made sure I had flexible enough hours to be there when my 3 kids were sick or had school plays, and made a reasonable living. On paper, it looked like a set up I had no right to complain about. And really, other than a growing sense of emptiness, and feeling like I was a fraud, pretending to care about practicing law, it wasn’t THAT bad.
Ultimately, a chance encounter (with a squirrel… again, see Back Story) led me to realize that there had to be more to life than pretending 40+ hours a week. I hired a coach in hopes that she would tell me what career would make me happy. Apparently, this was not how coaching worked. Bummer…
My coach asked me questions like “What was most important to me? What lit me up? What was true for me?” Initially, I just blinked at her. I really didn’t understand the questions, or see what they had to do with being less unhappy at work. Why wasn’t she looking at my resume and listing alternative career paths? She gently persisted and, with an internal eye-roll, I humored her and started to ponder these questions.
BOOM.
I was finally able to articulate for myself that what I care about most is heartfelt human connection, compassion, understanding why we each do what we do and react the way we react, and about authenticity and inner integrity. I cared about feeling that I was contributing to something beyond just my own children, as amazing as they were. Underneath all of this was my insatiable curiosity about what’s bigger than our individual selves and dramas, that we just can’t put our finger on, but which gives all of our lives deeper meaning, and has nothing to do with what we do for a living.
The fact was that I’d been reading about world religions and contemplation, meditation, philosophy, spirituality, and the inner workings of the personality in my spare time for years, and had carved out time to go on several silent, contemplative retreats, but in my mind, they were completely separate from ‘the real world’ of work, achieving goals, and having a respectable-sounding profession. They were not topics that my family or colleagues or the professional world in general seemed to care about, so I relegated them to the way back burner. Maybe even down in the warming drawer. They were the most important things to me, but I’d convinced myself they were irrelevant because I seemed to be the only one who thought about them.
The aforementioned BOOM led me to have the courage to change careers and become a Professional Certified Coach in 2012. I wanted to help people uncover their own answers to these questions about who they really are, what’s important to them, and what gets in the way of their showing up authentically.
In the years since, with the help of what I’ve learned from working with countless lawyers, studying with numerous master-level coaches, as well following my own ongoing hunger to understand more about the deeper questions of how we are evolving as humans, I’ve come to know that happiness, meaning, fulfillment, and the freedom that comes with authenticity are inside jobs. Helping lawyers learn to connect with aspects of themselves like presence, wisdom, authenticity, and access to awe, wonder, and a sense of deep meaning – often without leaving their jobs! - is my great privilege, and my joy.
PS - While helping the profession as a whole is not why I do what I do, I nonetheless have an unshakeable sense that what is ultimately going to change practice of law from a soul-sucking to a life-affirming profession, is for more and more attorneys (and of course law firm leaders) to learn to access grounded presence, self-awareness, compassion and wisdom. It is this, and not the band-aids that many firms are applying (paying more money, free gym access, and occasional happy hours) that will lead to the practice of law becoming more humane and sustainable.
The Back Story
I am always so moved and inspired when I hear about attorneys that went to law school because they have a clear calling to serve a particular cause or segment of the population, or at least a somewhat clear path that they want to pursue. That was not me.
-
I confess that I went to law school almost 35 years ago because I had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do, and I knew that it would, at least for 3 years, look and sound to the outside world and to my family full of lawyers that I was doing something impressive and respectable.
Ultimately I fell into my first job as a prosecutor in somewhat the same way - not because I decided it was the career I wanted to pursue or that it aligned with what was important to me. I still had no idea about either of these things nor, frankly, had it ever occurred to me to ask myself these questions. I started and continued this job because I was, by then, a single mother with a daughter to raise, and bills and law school loans to pay. While I liked the chance to interact one-on-one with other humans (lawyers, witnesses, judges), and to know that I was being fair, balanced and approachable, I lacked the confidence, competitiveness and love of winning I saw in my talented colleagues. Again, some part of me was looking ‘out there’ to see how my life looked. I liked saying I was a prosecutor because people seemed interested and impressed, but every time someone asked me what I did and I told them, a tiny voice in me that I kept extremely silent said “but that’s not really me. I’m kind of just pretending to be a prosecutor….”. Shut up tiny voice….
After 5 years and some intervening life events (remarrying and then expecting my second child), I left prosecuting because I could not see myself going to court every day with a feisty 6-year-old and an infant at home. This time I fell into the first job that came my way that offered more flexible hours, namely as a counsel to a Chapter 7 Trustee in Bankruptcy. Again, this was not an area of the law I was interested in, but it paid the bills and helped me feel that I was putting my family first. Again, I loved the chance to be fair and compassionate with debtors, and having the chance to interact one-on-one with other lawyers and judges, but cringed every time I had to crack open the Bankruptcy Code. I knew lawyers that LOVED going down code-based rabbit holes, but I was not one of them. And collecting non-exempt funds from debtors so that their creditors could be paid pennies on the dollar and the Trustee and I could be paid, just did not feel like a contribution to the world, even though I understood that that was how the system worked. By now, I came to dread being asked what I did for a living, because I felt like my answer was factually accurate, but also kind of a lie. Some version of the following conversation happened more times than I can count:
Question from whoever: “What do you do?”
Me out loud: “I’m a lawyer.”
Little voice: Hmm, that does still sound impressive. Please don’t ask me any more questions…
Whoever: “Oh, what kind of law to do you practice?”
Me out loud: [Sigh…] “I’m a bankruptcy lawyer.”
Little voice: I get that that makes me sound kind of smart, but that’s not really me! It’s just a job – I don’t care about it, I’m not excited by it, the Bankruptcy Code is the worst, and I’m just a cog in a machine, and I hate it, I’m just pretending!”
I trudged on this way, actively trying to avoid having to answer this question, for over 10 years.
As the years went by, and my children started becoming a bit more self-sufficient, I accidentally recognized that one evening that I had no idea who I was, really, or what was important to me other than caring for my family. This realization hit me like a brick one random evening after work, while I was unloading groceries from the back of the minivan, just like I’d done a thousand times before. Why at that moment? I blame the squirrel who’d caught my eye as she was scurrying around gathering nuts for her family. As I watched her, I had the initially amusing thought that I was like that squirrel …. scurrying around, gathering food for my kids, just as my mother had done for me, so that my kids could grow up and…what, gather food for their kids? Wait – is that really all there is to this whole thing?
At the risk of sounding clichéd, time ground to a halt. No kidding. I stood there with the hatch open, bags of groceries in my hand, unmoving and on the verge of tears, for what felt like an hour. I just couldn’t pick up any more bags of groceries.
I snapped out of that state (we did have dinner that night, and I did not serve nuts), but knew I had to get some help ‘figuring out’ who I was, and whether there was a profession that felt more authentic. I wanted more for my kids than just to grow up and ignore who they were so they get a decent job and provide for their kids, so their own kids grow up and do the same thing, etc. And I realized I’d been using ‘putting my family first’ as an excuse to not admit that I had no idea what I wanted or what called to me.
I hired a coach, and you’ve already read what happened from there.
The one thing I would add is that this whole story started in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC, where was I was born and raised. It was around the time that I decided to change professions and become a coach that I also started to realize that I really, REALLY longed for more open space and access to natural beauty without having to sit through hours of traffic on the Beltway. I wanted to see more sky and fewer buildings. I was also disheartened by the hyper-focus on which preschool one’s kids were going to get into so they could eventually get into a competitive college, etc. Didn’t anybody else just want to wait and see who their kids turned out to be and what was going to make them happy? I had almost started to raise the idea of just maybe considering someday moving out of the DC area when my husband came home from his DC Big Law firm, with the crazy idea of moving to his father’s hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Coincidence? Maybe….
We made the move in 2013 and have been grateful every single day that we did what was authentic for us, and that our kids still stop and marvel at a beautiful sunset, or a storm in the distance. My heart is welling up as I write this.
Thank you for reading this far (even if it was only to see what the deal was with the squirrel).
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
— Albert Einstein
Are you looking for a sense of meaning and purpose in your life and work?
Let's have a quick, no obligation chat.