The Legal Burnouts

Kate Bridal, Josey Hoff, and Rhia Batchelder

Join former nonprofit attorney Kate Bridal, former paralegal Josey Hoff, and former BigLaw attorney Rhia Batchelder as they get real about all the stuff that leads to burnout in the legal industry and beyond. Through honest, good-humored conversations with each other and their guests, Kate, Josey, and Rhia offer solutions, laugh to keep from crying, and normalize the conversation around burnout.

If you're interested in booking Rhia and/or Kate to speak at your company, firm, or conference, send an email to kate@thelegalburnouts.com.

The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information provided on this podcast is for general informational purposes only.

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Episode 28. Pivots and Recovery With Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First

Episode 28. Pivots and Recovery With Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First

We’re ending Season 2 with a bang!In this episode, Kate and Rhia are joined by Reshma Saujani, leading activist and the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, formerly Marshall Plan for Moms. Reshma has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women and girls’ economic empowerment, most recently advocating for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic. She is also the author of the international bestseller Brave, Not Perfect, and her influential TED talk, “Teac...

Episodes

Episode 28. Pivots and Recovery With Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First

Episode 28. Pivots and Recovery With Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First

We’re ending Season 2 with a bang!In this episode, Kate and Rhia are joined by Reshma Saujani, leading activist and the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, formerly Marshall Plan for Moms. Reshma has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women and girls’ economic empowerment, most recently advocating for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic. She is also the author of the international bestseller Brave, Not Perfect, and her influential TED talk, “Teac...

Episode 27. Farewell Josey and Career Clarity

Episode 27. Farewell Josey and Career Clarity

It’s Josey’s last episode as co-host of The Legal Burnouts, so Kate and Rhia bid her a fond farewell and learn more about why she’s leaving and her next steps.Josey opens up about her current burnout, which stems mainly from physical injuries she sustained over a year ago. Josey didn’t address the injuries at the time they happened due to a combination of existing, unaddressed burnout and her impulse to overwork. However, she recently took the brave step to request leave, to give herself...

Episode 26. Creating Your Own Spaces With Faridat Arogundade

Episode 26. Creating Your Own Spaces With Faridat Arogundade

This week, Kate and Rhia are joined by Rhia’s law school classmate Faridat Arogundade, a former Biglaw attorney who has created her own high-quality, plus-sized fashion line, Ìfẹ́mi. Faridat honestly and insightfully discusses her experience as a plus-sized Black woman in Biglaw and society in general. In her 8 years as a Biglaw attorney, Faridat experienced discrimination based on size, race, and culture. From not getting cold-called because of her name, to being short-change...

Episode 26. Changing Lanes With Kyle Kelly

Episode 26. Changing Lanes With Kyle Kelly

In Kate and Josey’s final guest interview together, they talk with the man who inspired them to start The Legal Burnouts, Kyle Kelly. Kyle, a former digital forensics professional, worked at tiny companies like Salesforce and Coinbase before deciding to break off and create his own legal technology. He is now the CEO and founder of Zubu, the world’s first native genAI legal holds solution.Kyle opens up about the challenges he’s faced in entrepreneurship: Pivoting away from an idea he’d had fo...

Episode 25. Pregnancy, Parenting, and Entrepreneurship With Megan Senese

Episode 25. Pregnancy, Parenting, and Entrepreneurship With Megan Senese

This week, Rhia and Kate speak to Megan Senese, cofounder of Stage, a women-owned legal marketing and business development firm that offers- among many other services- a free program to support working parents before and after parental leave. This program, called Courderoy, was partially inspired by Megan’s previous experience hiding her pregnancy from her firm for SIX MONTHS. Though nobody told Megan she had to hide her pregnancy, there were plenty of cultural indicators that she s...

Episode 23. Infertility with Emily Petrich

Episode 23. Infertility with Emily Petrich

Content warning: This episode contains discussions of infertility and miscarriage. In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week, Kate and Rhia are joined by fertility activist (and aspiring cyborg) Emily Petrich, who went from suffering through infertility in silence, to speaking out about her experience on social media, to becoming an activist in the infertility community. Infertility is taxing on your mental, emotional, and physical health, and comes with many stressors that ca...

Episode 22. Crossover Episode With The Newfangled Lawyer

Episode 22. Crossover Episode With The Newfangled Lawyer

This week, in a very special episode, The Newfangled Lawyer (Patrick Patino) crosses over with The Legal Burnouts (Kate Bridal and Rhia Batchelder) to talk baked potatoes, burnout, and how to make the law a kinder profession. Patrick, Kate, and Rhia discuss unleashing themselves on social media, whether it’s possible to practice law in a way that aligns with your values, how to cure-ify (curate and diversify) your LinkedIn feed, and why it’s important to break the illusion of perfection....

Episode 21. The Enneagram With Enneagram Ashton

Episode 21. The Enneagram With Enneagram Ashton

Josey and Kate’s dreams come true when they get to nerd out over the Enneagram with none other than Enneagram Ashton!Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober is a community psychologist, certified Enneagram educator, author, and Enneagram Type 2. She walks Kate (Type 3) and Josey (Type 5) through each Enneagram type and how burnout may manifest for them. The Enneagram can be a great tool to get to know yourself, your habits, and your motivations so you can operate in an anti-burnout way. It can also help y...

Episode 20. Triggers and Glimmers With Paula Liub

Episode 20. Triggers and Glimmers With Paula Liub

Kate and Rhia are joined by Paula Liub, an anti-burnout coach specifically for neurodivergent and highly sensitive women. Paula talks about grappling with burnout as a neurodivergent woman, her struggle to get a diagnosis, and how she came to her work promoting neurodivergent wellness. Paula uses a unique blend of science-backed and mindfulness techniques to help prevent, manage, and heal from burnout. Her mission is wellness for all neurodivergent people, but she focuses on women ...

Episode 19. Nonlegal Lawyers With ex judicata

Episode 19. Nonlegal Lawyers With ex judicata

Kate and Rhia chat with Neil Handwerker and Kimberly Fine, founders of ex judicata, the only employment site specifically designed to help lawyers find nonlegal jobs. Lawyers are told that their law degrees will open all sorts of doors for them, but they often feel stuck and struggle to find suitable alternative careers.Kim and Neil saw this gap and wanted to help attorneys apply their degrees and experience to nonlegal work. From their attorney-specific career diagnostic to a tool that helps...

Episode 18. DEI Layoffs and That Alabama IVF Decision

Episode 18. DEI Layoffs and That Alabama IVF Decision

This episode was originally supposed to be a discussion of recent DEI team layoffs, then a lighthearted career clarity session between Rhia and Kate. But when recording happened… that wasn’t the vibe.Instead of the career clarity portion, Josey, Kate, and Rhia grappled with their feelings around the recent IFV decision in Alabama. In what is maybe our most vulnerable episode yet, you’ll hear tears, laughter, and some much-needed venting. Plus, they manage to tie the issue back to why DEI is c...

Episode 17. Unlearning Toxic Perfectionism With Coach Jordana Confino

Episode 17. Unlearning Toxic Perfectionism With Coach Jordana Confino

This week, Kate and Rhia are joined by Career Coach and recovering perfectionist, Jordana Confino. Jordana shares her high achiever origin story, from chasing achievement in high school, to law school at Yale, to a series of career choices that kept burning her out. She then shares how she used science-backed, positive psychology to go from debilitating anxiety to thriving in a career where she helps others get out from under the thumb of their “inner drill sergeant.” If you feel li...

Episode 16. Trans Rights, Elections, and Job Hunts, Oh My! With Vanessa Joy

Episode 16. Trans Rights, Elections, and Job Hunts, Oh My! With Vanessa Joy

This episode contains references to genocide, violence, and self-harm. Listener discretion is advised. On their first guest episode together, Kate and Rhia interview Vanessa Joy, champion of equality and communication, Host/Executive Producer of the Transcending Humanity podcast, and former political candidate (who also happens to be transgender).Vanessa talks about her leadership philosophy and the exhaustion that comes with job hunting while trans, then gets into her disqualifica...

Episode 15. Welcome Back, Barbie!

Episode 15. Welcome Back, Barbie!

We’re baaaaack! In the Season 2 premiere Kate, Josey, and new cohost Rhia Batchelder nerd out about crosswords, logic games, and puzzles. Then they dive into that Jo Koy comment at the Golden Globes, Barbie’s Oscar snubs, and how those events reflect the burnout crisis among women.**At the time of this recording, we hadn’t seen the news about the snubs of The Color Purple. We’ll be addressing that in a later episode, closer to the Oscars. If you're interested in purchasing the book Rhia ...

Episode 14. Bonus Episode: Kate and Josey Play the Newlywed Game

Episode 14. Bonus Episode: Kate and Josey Play the Newlywed Game

We know we said we were done, but we couldn’t end a season with 13 episodes. It’s too spooky. So in honor of Halloween, Kate and Josey got together in Seattle for a special bonus episode.Dressed as best friends Keeley and Rebecca from Ted Lasso, Kate and Josey were quizzed by Kate’s real-life best friend Larkin Harrington (AKA Ted) on how well they know each other after doing a season of the podcast.In this episode, you'll learn all sorts of things about Kate and Josey, like:How many tat...

Episode 13. Season 1 Wrap Up With Josey and Kate

Episode 13. Season 1 Wrap Up With Josey and Kate

In the final episode of the first season, Kate and Josey take a deeper dive into their most recent, shared burnout experience, including how constant change is a recipe for quick and severe burnout, and how hopping to something "easier" from the legal field can make you feel unentitled to burn out.They also discuss what they’ve learned this season, address things they wish they'd addressed in earlier episodes, and shout out some folks who made this season possible.We want to thank every singl...

Episode 12. Unspoken Rules With Chloe Diaz

Episode 12. Unspoken Rules With Chloe Diaz

WARNING: This episode contains discussions of, and references to, sexual assault and abortion. Listener discretion is advised.On our final guest episode of the season, we’re joined by Chloe Diaz, who gets real about all the unspoken rules law school and the legal profession are riddled with. Chloe opens up about her difficult experience as a first-gen law student, and how clear it became that the legal space was designed to exclude her. From how you eat to how you dress, these rules are ...

Episode 11. The Episode That Almost Wasn't With Henry Nelson-Case

Episode 11. The Episode That Almost Wasn't With Henry Nelson-Case

This week, Henry Nelson-Case, aka That Corporate Lawyer, discusses his burnout experience on what he calls “the most unhinged podcast I’ve been on.”This episode set the record for longest recording time of any yet at over 2 ½ hours. But because Henry, Kate, and Josey got on too well and couldn’t stop laughing, they only got 45 minutes of serious content. The rest, which contains tales of Henry and Josey’s dating lives, many references to Xanax, and a lot of howling laughter, will remain...

Episode 10. Being Kind to Yourself With Anti-Burnout Coach Rhia Batchelder

Episode 10. Being Kind to Yourself With Anti-Burnout Coach Rhia Batchelder

In the most universally applicable episode yet, anti-burnout coach and former Biglaw attorney Rhia Batchelder joins Kate and Josey to talk about her journey from working in New York firms to building her own business. Rhia gives a ton of actionable tips on how to prevent and recover from burnout, as well as advice for companies on how to build anti-burnout cultures.On top of all that, Rhia, Kate, and Josey nerd out about the Enneagram, analyze that challenging moment when men realize that not...

Episode 9. Law School Burnout With Rilee Harrison

Episode 9. Law School Burnout With Rilee Harrison

Rilee Harrison, lead attorney and head of marketing at Cain Law, sits down with Josey and Kate to share how he burned out during his first semester of law school. He also discusses how that experience with burnout affected his ability to pass the bar on the first try.Rilee discusses how the entire law school process, from having to get a potentially irrelevant undergrad degree to taking the bar exam, is a recipe for burnout. While discussing his experiences, he shares how he developed h...