24: Brionna Ned on Leaving the Law Firm, Changing Your Mind, and Leaving Well
Brionna is a self-described multi-dimensional misfit. She started her career in law working at various firms in California before she became the second legal hire at a nascent electric vehicle company. She left her full-time role as in-house counsel 5 years ago to pursue entrepreneurship. Since then, she's facilitated corporate wellbeing workshops and guided countless people through monumental life transitions.
She's worked with everyone from C-level executives at Fortune 100 companies, to new solopreneurs, to stay-at-home caregivers, to teenagers. Most recently, she launched a new venture, The Everyday Lawyer, that's focused on teaching freelancers and solopreneurs the foundations of business law so they can make better and more confident decisions in their work. Brionna is also working on her first book (of many), a collection of essays and poems called On Remembering.
“When I look back on that time, I don’t have any regrets. I know to the best of my ability with the resources that I had at the time, I tried it. everything I possibly could to make that world work for me and make myself be a fit in that world and ultimately couldn’t find a place that felt good and worked for me. ”
Additional Quotes:
We weren't talking about neurodivergence in the way we are talking about it now, it would have helped me create boundaries and maybe manage expectations better. It also would have given me some permission to be gentler with myself when my brain wasn't dialed in and I was having a really hard time getting things to click.
One of the things about capitalism is that it does a lot of work to narrow you and tell you you are defined by this one thing, and this is the only narrow path that you're allowed to walk in this lifetime. And I think that one of the things people forget, and often don't consider about the whole idea of leaving well and transitioning and change, is that it's an opportunity to expand that pathway and reclaim your inherent multidimensionality.
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Transcript:
When I look back on that time, I don't have any regrets. I know, to the best of my ability, with the resources that I had at the time, I tried everything I possibly could to make that world work for me, and make myself be a fit in that world, and ultimately couldn't find a place that felt good and worked for me.
This is Leaving Well, where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose, and when possible, joy. I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace, with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief.
Leadership and career development braided throughout will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving. Well framework expect to be inspired challenged and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice of leaving. Well, as you seek to leave your imprint. In this world, Brionna is a self described multidimensional misfit.
She started her career in law, working at various firms in California before she became the second legal hire at a nascent electric vehicle company. She left her full time role as in house counsel five years ago to pursue her entrepreneurship. Since then, she's facilitated corporate well being workshops and guided countless people through monumental life transitions.
She's worked with everyone from C level executives at Fortune 100 companies to new solopreneurs, stay at home caregivers, and to teenagers. Most recently, she launched a new venture, The Everyday Lawyer, which is focused on teaching freelancers and solopreneurs the foundations of business law so they can make better and more confident decisions in their work.
Brionna is also working on her first book, Of Many, which will be a collection of essays and poems called On Remembering. Brionna, I am so glad to have you here with us today, and I would love for you to tell us in your words about your transition and change story. I am here today because I wanted to talk to, speak to the idea of not just leaving well, but returning well, so obviously in the bio you just read, you heard A lot about how my career started in law and how I essentially pivoted away from law after experiencing a significant amount of burnout and sort of like banging my head against the wall of trying to figure out where in that profession that, you know, I actually belong and ultimately decided to leave it the first time around because I couldn't find a place where I really felt like I fit.
Um, or that felt good to me. And, you know, at the top of this year, now being in a place where I actually had to create my own space in the law, which is what the everyday lawyer is all about and coming back to something after leaving it and being like really frustrated with what it was and taking a few years away from it, and then finding my place in it by essentially, you know, having to create it.
So I wanted to talk about. Not just leaving, but well, but like how maybe leaving can also open up a space for returning, which I don't think a lot of people necessarily consider. I love that, especially when you think about, like you just said, there, there's always. The hope that you could return to something and I wonder what you would have to say about a specific process or a particular thing that you did when you were planning to leave your full time role.
That really helped in that departure. You know, I don't know if there's anything specific that I did. I think when I. Decided to leave my various legal jobs. The one thing that I did do was that I, I would leave them with nothing left on the table, if that makes any sense, I'm very much a person that's like.
I'm going to kind of try anything and everything to like, see if there's a way to make it work, whether or not that's healthy, I could probably, you know, cut out of a lot of situations in my life, but especially looking back on when I was still working in the corporate world, you know, leaving things before they got like Or things like that.
But I also like, I had to give it my all. I had to kind of try every possible way. I had to try a bunch of different jobs, like working at different firms, working as in house counsel. And you know, I really wanted to be thorough about, is there a place for me here? And so that's something that I think that I did that I don't know necessarily if it constitutes as leaving well, but it does constitute for me as.
When I look back on that time, I don't have any regrets. I know to the best of my ability with the resources that I had at the time, I tried everything I possibly could to make that world work for me and make myself be a fit in that world and ultimately couldn't find a place that felt good and worked for me.
Do you think that the idea or the concept of being able to return well or return to the same industry or sector or body of work? Is that something that's innate in you? Or have you had to learn your way into that being a priority for you? It's definitely something that I've had to, I think, learn. So a big part of What was happening for me at that time was a whole lot of things.
I was working in very white, very male dominated environments as a Black woman. And at the time I also was, had not been diagnosed yet with ADHD. And I was in situations where things like deadlines are really important in the law. Like you can't miss them. You just can't miss these things, right? So I was trying to function in this environment with ADHD and didn't know that I had ADHD.
And one of the most important things to, like, just understand about it is that, like, you, You are essentially unreliable in a corporate environment. At the, like, base of everything, you're very, you're actually unreliable. Particularly when you hit an ADHD wall and your brain is not braining. And that was really hard for me because I would have these deadlines and I couldn't get my brain to brain because I had hit these walls.
And so, at the time it was like a really, it was a painful exit. It wasn't like I didn't enjoy practicing law. It was that I didn't enjoy. Practicing the type of wall that I was doing. I didn't feel like I was helping the right people, so there was a values issue. And then the pace and kind of way that that industry is set up, kind of no matter where you are in it, didn't work for what I was having to deal with mentally and emotionally with ADHD.
And then on top of that, having just kind of the, the social dynamics of like, Being in those places and spaces where people who look like me aren't traditionally welcomed. It was like this compounded thing. And so returning well for me was more about a personal journey of working through a lot of the trauma that I had endured to try to make something work that quite frankly wasn't designed to work for people like me.
So you kind of touched on some things that were out of your control, and I'm wondering if you've ever thought, and you also said that you don't want to look back and have regrets, but is there anything that you have looking back now that you had wished either was available for you or to you, or that you wish you knew?
I think it would have been very helpful to have been diagnosed with ADHD, like before I started working at a law firm, because, you know, even now, right in the, in the vein of returning. Well, there are things about the way that I've set up everyday lawyer where it's like the pacing and things like that are sustainable for the way that my brain works.
And similarly, right? Like I do some part time overflow work for a smaller law firm and that's designed the way that I've designed that part time work is sustainable for like what I What I need and how my brain works. I don't think it was a conversation we were necessarily having. We weren't talking about neurodivergence then the way that we are talking about it now, but it would have, I think, helped me create boundaries and maybe manage expectations better.
And it also would have given me some permission to be gentler with myself. When my brain wasn't dialed in and I was having a really hard time getting things to click, you know, I think one of the experiences that I really had that is different for me now is I couldn't understand why in some instances my brain would latch on and I would get it instantly.
And in other instances, it felt like no matter how many times I looked at the thing, it was just gibberish to me, this legal concept. And I couldn't get together the work product that I needed to get together. By the deadline, because my brain just quite literally refused to compute it. So things like that, where I would have had better languaging to be able to communicate things like that.
And I think it probably would have even shifted, you know, my whole leaving well journey, how I left, all of those things. What, what three words come to your mind, or it could be a phrase when you think about your relationship to change and transition. So. Definitely. Excitement is the first one. It's hard to say three words.
It's like me, quite literally the word me is the second one because it's the thing I'm the most obsessed with in my life. I'm really obsessed with change and transitions. I'm really into the unknown. I'm really into talking about what things need to be moved on from so we can embrace new beginnings. So maybe the third word would be the phrase new beginnings.
I love that. It's, I don't want to say it's rare to come across people who are excited about change, but we don't talk about it as something that can be exciting. We so many times we equate it with fear or trepidation or scary stuff. So it's exciting to hear you say that you are inspired by and yeah.
Look forward to exploring change and transition. How does that come into play with the folks that you work with? Do you find that the majority of people you work with from the entrepreneurs and the solopreneurs and the folks that you have as in your space? Are they generally averse? To, to change and transition, or do they share your, your love for it?
No, they absolutely do not share my love for it. Um, all of my work, like in wellbeing, and I bring some of this into the everyday lawyer, but I still do like wellbeing education work. And it's all about change. Like I have a newsletter, it's called the submissive list. The only thing I talk about in that newsletter.
Is what it looks like and why it's important to align with change and resources for doing that. That's all I share there and the people who work with me in that space are super, super, super averse to. change. They hate it. They're scared. They're like in denial about it. I have like a whole methodology where I actually teach change through the concept of death cycles because my theory is that people fear change in the same way that they fear death.
Like they fear the unknown and it's like a, it's a survival thing. It's wired into us. And so that work often looks like me helping people resource themselves to work through that initial fear. And often denial, and also like usually some sort of ego death over like what was or this thing that was quote unquote like working for them, but actually was just like comfortable to them, they were like comfortable being harmed.
That work tends to be, it can be light and but most of the time it's really deep because I don't have a filter. I'm very, if it's bullshit, it's bullshit. Um.
That work is quieter work of mine. I don't necessarily advertise it, but people do still come to me. And it's a very specific kind of person who's at a very specific place in their life that's ready to go deep and, and root out some of that stuff that they're going through. I like that you don't have a bullshit filter, because honestly, I mean, I think about, you know, when I'm working with someone who's also come to me to say, I'm ready for something different.
We don't get somewhere new. If we keep doing the same thing we've done. Right. Yeah, and I think there's also something really interesting around decision confidence is something that I'm learning into with clients, um, that a lot of times we have been, I think, conditioned out of knowing that we can make our own decisions, um, and that includes work, it includes legal stuff.
So I'd love if you talk a little bit about the work with everyday lawyer and what that might have as a correlation between leaving well or making decisions around what's best for us. Yeah, so it's interesting as you're saying that the first thing that I actually thought of was way back in the day of my beginnings of entrepreneurship when I was running a corporate well being company.
And I talked a lot when I was facilitating those workshops about how people forget. One of the first things that happens when you're living in a capitalist society is that you forget your agency. It's very easy to forget your agency because, you know, your programs, like, follow the program. And so people forget their agency a lot.
And the everyday lawyer is sort of a growth on that. All of my work is about how because I think when people know how they can also they have this light bulb go off that helps them remember. Oh, yeah. Like, I have a choice. I have agency in this situation. And so one of the things that tends to be missing right is.
We can be in a very dogmatic society, like even in the entrepreneurship world, where people will be like, do this, do that, do this, do that. But they don't necessarily tell you how, right? They leave out the critical details. And that is something that has never not pissed me off. I will be on my desk bed ranting about it.
Like you have to tell people how. And so that is why I created the Everyday Lawyer because I started to see all these things. People were, you know, the brand girlies were like, Oh my god, you gotta like protect your brand and like do all these things and blah blah blah blah blah. And they're talking about, you know, like a five figure investment.
And there's no details on how, and then people are like, here's 15 things that you have to do when you first start working for yourself to protect yourself legally. And I'm looking at the 15 things. And not only are there no instructions for how to do it, but also two of them are necessary. And the rest are like, really, no one has the budget for these things when they're first starting out, unless, you know, they have a lot of.
Money just sort of laying around, which is not what's happening for the very vast majority of people. And so my work with the everyday lawyer is about making things more accessible through explaining the how of things and the why of things in the law. And I also weave in, you know, my background and where I started with an entrepreneurship and well being is.
nervous system regulation. So I bring that piece in, you know, you have been purposefully trained to have like an insane nervous system reaction when the law comes up. And so you're already triggered because you're not doing what capitalism says you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to be working a nine to five and you've got this business thing going on that belongs to you.
So you're already like one layer shed and triggered about that. And then the next layer is, oh my gosh, instead of people just telling you how the law is going to work, right, in an employment contract where you have no negotiation whatsoever, Now you're in a space, you actually are kind of molding and shaping what the law looks like and what it does for you.
Especially if you provide any sort of services to other people, right? You're molding and shaping the law all the time via your contracts. And that is not a position that people have been in before and it really freaks them out. And what often happens is people think that, like, if they make this little mistake, or they think they already made that little mistake, and so now, because they've made it, and because we talk about the laws, this thing that has really dire consequences for everyday people, it's like, Oh, I'm going to lose my house, my car, my dog, my kids, everything's going away over this little thing.
And so it's about bringing accessibility to people. It's about getting them clear on the how. And it's about helping them make the right choices for themselves. By just showing them and being more practical like yes, this is a quote unquote best practice But it might not be for you If this this and this applies like if you're tight on money and this is the best practice Maybe a short term solution for you is this And then you save money to do this thing down the road.
So just introducing choices to people when it comes to the law, as opposed to just, you know, this is what you have to do, kind of like looking down my nose at people, which is, I think, what we've been taught to, we're taught to do as lawyers. Is what that world and what this venture of the everyday lawyer for me is all about.
I love that. And so many things came up as you were talking. One thing I was reminded of was our conversation about trademarking and it had a conversation around. And I think that comes into play with a lot of entrepreneurs. One of the things that. Almost everyone is taught is that you need to trademark.
And I remember one of the things that you said to me was, do you have the resources and the cash to defend the trademark once you get it? And that's, that was something I had never thought about. And I love your generosity and your accessibility and just giving those options. Like you said, it doesn't have to be one way or the highway for everybody.
I wonder what you would say around. Folks that are maybe listening and are doing the side job or the second gig, what would you say to them when it comes to, and maybe this isn't a legal framework from your side, but when would someone know? How does someone know when to stay or when to go or when to pivot?
You were doing several things at one time. And I'm curious what you would have to say to those folks. First, I'm still doing several things at one time. I need, I really need that stimulation. When to stay, when to go, when to pivot. I think the answer to these questions really actually lies in people's bodies.
So a lot of the work that I do when I'm doing well being work is I get people to feel into their bodies. And understand what it feels like when your body is expansive and what it feels like when your body is contracted and being able to distinguish between those two sensations in your body. And so for example, people who are entrepreneurs, whether that's like you're going to be a solopreneur of your own and small business or, you know, you're going to be a founder and you're trying to create like a.
You know, a billion dollar company or something like that. I don't know. Being able to understand, does it feel expansive or is it still contracting? And then the same situation, like, you know, say you've got like a nine to five gig and a side hustle at your nine to five gig. Is that expansive or is it contracting and it can actually be both, but we just want to be like aware of what the scales are doing there in terms of your energy.
Do you have energy after you're doing your main thing to actually go and work on this other thing that for you and your business or whatever, and if you don't. Then like you maybe have to start making a plan for how to leave because if you never have energy to work on the thing that you actually want to be doing, then you're never going to do it right.
You're always going to be in this space where you're holding both and making moves on either. Which is not, and so many people I encounter are like, Oh, I'm so stuck. I'm so stuck. And I'm like, yeah, because eventually there has to be a leap of faith. I think a big part of the side hustle conversation is people are like, yeah, I worked and I built up my business and then it was like doing this much money.
And that's when I decided to leave. There was like this perfect seamless, perfectly planned transition. And you know, I think that some people are able to pull that off. And part of the reason that they're able to pull that off is because this thing that's the nine to five is not draining all their energy, right?
That's not the case for a lot of people. A lot of people are like at places collecting a paycheck, and it's slowly killing them. And they're trying to do this other thing at the same time. From zero or negative energy stores. And so the whole thing is taking them out. And so what happens? They start their journey into this new thing, into this new pivot, with a gas tank that's on negative.
They arrive burned out and then what happens? It doesn't go well and they're like, Oh, I actually really suck at this. So maybe they go back to the other thing. They give up on this thing. And so it's being able to understand what is happening for you energetically. Are you contracted? Are you expansive? Do you still have space or don't you?
Are you forcing yourself, even though you're running on fumes or what? Like what is really going on? And when you look into that, you're going to really understand. Do I need to say, do I need to pivot? Do I need to go? Because you have to have the energetic capacity to hold both to stay and do both until you are at that lovely, pristine financial place.
But if you don't have the energetic capacity, that whole golden boy plan goes right out the window because it doesn't apply to you. And so you need a different plan that actually applies to you and like what you're experiencing, if that makes sense. It makes total sense. And I think the whole golden boy brand girly, that trope is actually what we're feeding ourselves when we open up our social media apps.
And so I'm thinking about how much more beautiful it could be save this podcast episode, replay it over and over this section, because that's actually the truth of making all of these decisions is what you just talked about with the expansion and the contraction. So I'm so glad to hear that from you.
What are you personally walking towards or hoping for? Yeah. As you continue processing your journey, it's been 5 years since you left your full time role and you're navigating through some different things, launching everyday lawyer. What are you hoping for walking towards, you know, I'm walking towards I'm having a moment right now where I'm really excited about creating digital products.
I'm really excited about I have a list of 7 or 8. Tiny books that I want to write on different things and I have a friend from the social medias Who's a developmental editor who's really been cheering me on which is so nice because it's making me feel like it's possible And just creating courses to like be in a little bit more of a hands off y World.
I just completed my first course which was a really big deal for me Anyone with ADHD will be understand this, but it's just, I have a graveyard of unfinished products and it's probably 15 acres. So just being able to get to a place and being able to see myself have what it takes to actually finish and complete and launch a project was a really big deal.
And now it actually feels. Very possible. And so I'm excited about this list of probably 30 things that I would love to create. I love that. Yeah. Well, it's so interesting because at the beginning of the interview, you were talking about how hard it is to have to be on someone else's schedule and someone else's time.
And so to be able to do all of this on your time is powerful. Yeah. So that's a world that I'm for sure walking towards. And then the other world that I'm walking towards and why I'm wanting, I'm wanting to really be focused on creating these products. I call it, I have a program called Rebirth Your Business on the wellbeing side of my work.
That's all about one of the things I talk about in that program. And it's for entrepreneurs who are thinking about like pivoting their business, maybe because it's like not a good fit or something like off. And so we figure out what it is and how to adjust in that. One of the things that I talk about in that program is memorializing your know how and Taking these things that you've built up expertise in and like packaging them in a way So especially if they happen to be like they're things that are charged emotionally Packaging them in a way that doesn't require a lot of energetic capacity for you But to like have them available and as potential revenue streams.
So that's where I am because what I want to be able to do is be a little bit more hands off in like my day to day so that I have more time to write some of the like longer books that I really, really am excited to write but like not in a place to really give that all of my attention. That is really exciting.
And I just had to write down the memorializing your know how that feels so relevant for so many people that I can think of. Yeah. Powerful. I think that people forget that they're experts, right? Like they're, everybody's an expert in something. And even if you like left it behind and you like burned out from it or whatever, you still have the expertise.
So just give yourself the opportunity to repurpose it in a new way. And that's all memorializing your know how is, is like, how can you repurpose it in a way that's joyful and like easy and potentially also like money making for you? That's awesome. That's awesome. Do you have anything that you'd want to say to those listening that might be a surprise or a shock around change and transition?
I don't know if it's a shock. Maybe it is. I'm not a nice person, so maybe it's shocking to other people. But like, you don't have to be so nice. I was just looking at something the other day where this person was community. I'm in they were like Uh, do I take the contract role that's aligned with what I want to do or do I want to stay with this full time job that's, you know, traumatic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The full time jobs like save because I'm a full time employee. And I was just like, obviously take the contract role. Obviously, if the pay is the same, just buy your health insurance. I was like, these companies don't care about you. And I was like this myth that we're living. That they're so invested in you and like think that you're amazing.
Like you don't always have to, you don't have to be nice. You can be kind, which is different. Kind is significantly more assertive than nice. But get what you need to get and like move on. Part of leaving well can actually involve you just being assertive. You don't have to be nice. You don't have to roll over and like shake hands when they tell you to.
Do what you need to do for you. And that can be leaving well and it can be really empowering to understand what it is to actually like prioritize yourself and your needs in a society that is very gaslighting in the sense that it's like hyper individualistic, but also will tell you Not to be so selfish.
We'll use altruism to kind of be like, aren't you getting enough from that? Like, what else do you need from us? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So don't be nice. You can be kind if you want to. You can also just flat out be an asshole, but do what you... Need to do and like, don't worry about everybody else. I love that. We could have had that be the whole podcast episode.
It drives me crazy. I'm like, who cares? Yeah. Yeah. Life is too short. We have seen that, that none of this, there are no rules. So like what are the arbitrary rules that we're still following? They don't apply anymore. Do what you need to do. Yeah. I'm so with that as we close, you've already answered some of the last kind of questions I had.
So I just like to know if there's anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to share. The 1 thing that I would love to share that I think people forget all the time is. It's part of the reason why I describe myself as a multi dimensional, multi dimensional misfit is that one of the things about capitalism is that it does a lot of work to narrow you and tell you, you are defined by this one thing, then this is the only narrow path that you're allowed to walk in this lifetime.
And I think that one of the things about. People forget and often don't consider about the whole idea of leaving well and transitioning and change is that it's an opportunity to expand that pathway and reclaim. Your inherent multidimensionality, like I think everyone is multidimensional. I just think we're so used to think being in these siloed places, like I do this, I'm that.
Right. We love a box. We love a box and listen. Very helpful. One of the things about leaving well and I, and change that I think is the reason why I'm so, I always feel excited about change is that it's an opportunity to like. add another dimension to the self, right? And to like expand in that way. And so I think when people are thinking about living well, I want that to be part of the calculus.
Thank you, Brionna, so much for being here. We could talk literally for many, many more hours. Thank you for having me. To learn more about Leaving Well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, Visit naomihattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system.
We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a Navigation Guide for Workplace Transitions.