Path to Well-Being in Law - Episode 29: Julian Sarafian

Chris Newbold: 

Hello friends. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being In Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being In Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold. I'm always thrilled and to be with my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing? 

Bree Buchanan: 

Doing great, Chris. How are you? 

Chris Newbold: 

Good, good. As our listeners know, I just want to reset this. Every time we do a podcast, I think we're welcoming new listeners in to the wellbeing movement. And Bree, one of our passions is to continue to introduce thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space within the legal profession and in the process build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift in the profession. And I think we are super excited about our guests today because the ability for us, I've always thought that the secret sauce of creating a culture shift in this profession is the ability to engage in storytelling and the realities of what people's lives have been like in law and to give people platforms to tell their story. 

And we are really thrilled to be welcoming Julian Sarafian to the podcast, a noted social media influencer who is really a champion for mental health based upon his own personal story and what appeared to be just a straight direct success track in law. And so Bree, why don't I hand it off to you to introduce Julian, and we're really excited about where the conversation's going to take us today. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Absolutely. And I think Julian and his ability to do the storytelling and pull people in, and another thing I'm excited about, Julian, having you today is somebody that is of a younger generation than us because that's critical. One of the things I often say is that the legal profession will change. It will, because as the younger generations come up to positions of power, I truly believe they're not going to tolerate basically the working conditions that predominate through the legal profession right now. So it's inevitable. But I would say Julian is somebody who is accelerating that change to his work. So I'm going to give you a quick introduction of him and then we'll get to meeting Julian really quickly here. And I also will say, Julian, that you have such a humble bio. I am really impressed with that. So I try to refrain from pumping it up, but there's a lot of humility here and I see that as a great sign for somebody. 

So Julian Sarafian is a lawyer and content creator, but owe so much more. That was my editorial. His law firm For Creators by Creators PC is the premier law firm focused on representing content creators and social media influencers. As a content creator himself, Julian produces videos and blog posts related to the legal profession, law and mental health on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram where, drum roll here, his cumulative following is nearly 350,000. He's given multiple TEDx talks, the cost of success that he did dove into what originally made him viral, his mental health story as a high achiever who faced mental health challenges along the way, culminating in him quitting his job in Big Law during the COVID pandemic. And there's a story there. He has written and published op-ed pieces in the American Lawyer, Law360, Business Insider, Bloomberg Law, and CNBC. And his advocacy for mental health has been covered by the New York Times and Bloomberg Law. So Julian, welcome. We are so delighted that you're here with us today. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Thank you Bree and Chris for the very warm introduction, and I'm very happy to be here, excited to talk about these really important issues with you guys. 

Bree Buchanan: 

One of the things I really appreciate so much and looking at, thank you for giving me this excuse to spend a lot of time on TikTok, by the way. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Oh man. I don't know if I'll say you're welcome to that one. 

Bree Buchanan: 

But it's been, you really are such clearly a spokesperson for what I find is so important, which is humanizing the practice of law, realizing that we are human beings with basic needs and honoring that. And so tell us a little bit about why you're so passionate for this work, because it really does come through. You've been doing this work for a good number of years and are so consistent, never let up the throttle on this. So tell us your story. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah, yeah, very happy to. And I'll give the shortened rundown version of the mental health story that you alluded to earlier, and this is the thing that brought me into social media. I've always been the stereotype and archetype of "success in academic world." Valedictorian in high school, UC, Berkeley in three years, worked at the White House when I was there, onto law school at Harvard, and now I'm in Big Law at 24 years old, making the $225,000 salary, including bonus at the time. But it wasn't all starry-eyed and fun and games on the inside. When I was studying for the LSAT, I had panic attacks. There were periods of extreme loneliness and isolation in college. I had a nausea and breathing disorder for most of my twenties. That was stress and anxiety induced, but I didn't know that at the time. 

And throughout this entire period, the world is telling me, you're doing fricking awesome. You are getting the best grades, you're going to the best schools. You're getting the best job opportunities. You're a winner, Julian. This is exactly what you should be doing. Everything you're doing is right. Even though on the inside there was a lot of turmoil and my life in many ways could have been a lot more enjoyable and fulfilling. This culminated in the pandemic when I think I'm not alone as a lawyer or even as a professional when I say that it was a very tumultuous and rough period on the mental health front. Personally, I was stuck in the same room week after week after week after week. And Big Law at the time was only getting busier ironically, I think clients wanted a way to feel powerful and in control, and an easy way to do that was to boss around their Big Law associates and their attorneys that they have on staff. 

So work accelerated. My mental health and the habits that I had built to this point in my mid-twenties were not sustainable, to put it mildly. That resulted in burnout. It resulted in anxiety developing and taking over more and more of my life, basically making me feel like I couldn't enjoy or even sit and relax something as simple as a TV show or a movie. And that eventually led to mild depression and feeling like everything was turning gray. I didn't feel like I had purpose anymore, and I felt completely helpless, no matter what I did to try to fix this it wasn't working, working out wasn't going to work, watching TV wasn't going to help, playing video games that didn't cure this. So I took the step of accepting, you know what? I have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm going to go and check myself with the mental health services with my then medical provider, Kaiser, and see what they say. 

I get handed the diagnosis of severe anxiety and mild depression at the time, and it was definitely a wake-up call. Okay, this is a lot more serious than I realized. This is going to take a lot more effort, energy, and time to heal from and learn to manage than I originally thought. And so that led ultimately to me investing time in therapy, in journaling and meditation and all of these fundamentals that I encourage everybody out there to practice regardless of how they feel their mental health is, because I think it's just a good balance, especially in our day and age of being constantly overstimulated, speaking of TikTok, Bree, that's what that app is. And eventually it came to a point where I felt like I was gaining a lot more out of my time spent advocating and working on my mental health than I was doing the Big Law associate corporate job at my old firm, Wilson Sonsini, which was frankly earning me a big paycheck and looking good on a resume, but I didn't find the work intrinsically gratifying or fulfilling. 

And certainly the culture was not one, in my opinion, that was steeped in innovation, pushing the envelope or prioritizing wellbeing. And that's not to say that Wilson specifically was bad, if anything, I think my old firm is excellent in that regard, but it's an industry-wide phenomenon, which I'm sure we're going to talk about in this conversation. So I ended up quitting that job outright, not knowing what I was going to do next, posted my mental health story, which I just described to you on LinkedIn, out of the blue and on a whim, no real impetus or motivation behind it other than if this helps one person, then great. Because I went through this and I think it's important for people to know that, and ended up going viral. I get thousands of messages supporting me, telling me that it made a huge impact on people's lives, and I see that there's clearly value here. 

And I ran with that momentum. I went onto every social media platform that I could think of. I wrote articles about mental health, and I continued telling my story everywhere that I could, which led me ultimately to TikTok of all places, which at the time in 2021 for a millennial like me was, isn't that the dancing app for people in Gen Z? But it's very much more than that. And it's been the engine of growth for thousands of creators. And now being a creator, myself and attorney for creators, we can talk about that angle of its importance and relevance. But to make the answer short, Bree, I think the thing that led me to social media was the importance of advocating for mental health because I thought that it was important for other people out there who may be going through similar things that I went through to know that they're not alone, number one. And to know number two, that there is a path out of it and that there is a sense of community out there for them that welcomes them. 

Now, that said, when it comes to humanizing the legal profession, it's been an unfortunate reality in my own platform building that talking about mental health for 60 seconds versus talking about a Big Law firm for 30 seconds, the first video is going to get 5,000 views, the second one's going to get 50,000 views. And this was something that I realized and faced very early on in my creation career, a constant tension between what people actually want to hear and in my opinion, what is more relevant and pertinent and important and purposeful. And so I don't mind, and I have no issue unpacking the legal profession for folks outside of it who don't have easy access to a lawyer that they know. Our profession is very buttoned up, it's very guarded. And I think because of its extreme importance in how we function as a society, it's really important that people understand the basics of how it works and what it means. So anyway, long-winded answer, but happy to continue. Go from there. 

Chris Newbold: 

Yeah. When we think about going to law school, when we think about what practicing law is going to be like, when we think about success, when we think about all those things, I think I continue to remain convinced, and we've talked about it on this podcast before, that there's this notion of an expectations gap as to what you think it's going to be versus what it is. And then the natural realities that once that sets in, you made a very bold move to depart and to leave. I think a lot of folks in your situation stay cross their fingers, turn to self coping mechanisms and other things that just then start to couch them. 

When we think about wellbeing, when Bree and I do, we try to think about it in a holistic, how do we set people up for professional success? And then just that reality that oftentimes more often than not, there's just a lot of people in our profession that when you ask them whether they're professionally satisfied, the answer is no. Yet they stay and endure. And I don't want to say they suffer, but they suffer and oftentimes they suffer in silence. Is that fair based upon your followers and what you're seeing from your community? 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yes, it's exactly correct. And it's what I saw in the industry in Big Law when I was there. And I think again, at my old firm, I was at one of the better places that was more human. It was a West Coast based law firm. I worked with the most relaxed, relatively speaking, and most humane partners. And yet I could still see in so many of these partners' eyes and the way that they carry themselves, the inherent unhappiness and not being able to spend more time with their family, or in my associate colleagues feeling like they were trapped and not knowing what to do or feeling powerless to make a change. 

And it's no surprise if I say I think that lawyers tend to be risk averse people. And I think that combination of being so risk averse with the system that we're going to discuss but has a lot of things pushing against folks' wellbeing, especially in Big Law, it creates a perpetual cycle of folks feeling trapped, feeling powerless, feeling hopeless, and like you said, turning to self coping mechanisms a lot of the time looking like substance abuse disorder, which is rampant in the profession, certainly binge-drinking and these days, I think increasingly marijuana use and even opioids. 

Chris Newbold: 

Yeah. Julian, your story again, it feels like your first viral video was your three minute, This Is Me, This Is Who I Am, This Is My Story, launched or struck a nerve with a community that has built into a following, and I'm just very interested in how that occurred, and how you embraced that and how your followers have reacted to not just your story, but now your position as the champion for mental health. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah, I think social media to some degree is a formula. So when I first started it was experimenting with having fun while trying to advocate for mental health. Let me do a skit that roasts Harvard kids for avoiding saying Harvard when they're asked, because it's fun. Why not? It's so different than what I was doing in my old job. It was refreshing. But then let me do a trend and talk about three signs that you might have anxiety, see how that goes. But I saw over time that something that really sticks on the app is raw authenticity and being vulnerable and showing up in front of the camera as a human being as you are and just saying your piece, whatever that is. Clearly I knew what that was for me at the time, and I still do. It's not like it's changed a whole lot. 

It's showing people that outside the sheen of everything that they look at and think is the greatest and the perfection and what they aspire to be, that it could be much darker on the other side. And it's something that many people refuse or don't ever talk to because their pride gets in the way or they're afraid that people will judge them or things of that nature. So you're right. When I initially posted my mental health story, that was the first thing that went viral. It got me up to, I think 12,000 followers let's say, but I didn't stop there. I continued that narrative and that discussion of tearing down what you think success is people and what it actually can look like on the other side. And I continued telling my mental health story in different ways, wearing a suit in one video, embellishing certain parts and focusing on other elements of grief, for example, or the pressure of going to law school and the videos continue to go viral time after time after time again. 

Obviously it was a lot to adjust to at first suddenly having hundreds of thousands of followers, none of whom I know. These are people that chose to hit the button on the internet. I couldn't tell you the first thing about them for the most part, other than that they're an incredibly supportive group of folks, and many of them relate to what I was talking about in one way or the other, be it because they're a high achiever or they've struggled with schizophrenia or they have a family member that they've lost to suicide. I think all of them felt connected to what I said in some capacity, and that drew them to me initially. And in the long run, they've been only supportive and kind both to each other and to me as the leader and creator of the community.  

Bree Buchanan: 

That's really so impressive. And I'm not surprised, I guess I'm a believer in the goodness of people. And when you create a community around that, we do see that. And I'm just wondering what kinds of strategies you've used around your mental health and just in life and being your very best that you've shared with them that seemed to resonate. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah. Honestly, this part of the discussion I think is a lot more boring than some people would prefer because a lot of it is the basics. It's 10 minutes of meditating every day. It's going to therapy and accepting that you don't have the answers, and that's okay. It's reading books about mental health to educate yourself and gain perspective. It's journaling when you feel overwhelmed. And probably the most important, especially for high achievers who struggle with chronic overwork is learning how to set adequate boundaries. Because certainly for myself, being a chronic workaholic my whole life, you build habits of consistently and continually multitasking for one. And on top of that, when you're always working, you don't really need to set boundaries because you're always working. That's the default. When you're not working, okay, you're not working for those X number of hours per day. 

But the problem with building those habits and lack of boundaries is that it bleeds into everything else in your life, your personal relationships, the way that you manage things outside of work, even basic things like exercise and dieting and eating well. And if you don't set those boundaries in the long run, that's how things become really dangerous when you don't feel inspired or fulfilled by your work, which a lot of lawyers, as we've discussed don't, and that makes these mental health conditions and the misery exponentially worse. So I think if I had to summarize it in one sentence, what's resonated the most with my community is remembering to take things slower and that that's okay. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Great. Wonderful. 

Chris Newbold: 

Julian, is there anything that you've learned from your audience, from your followers that you've found either interesting or insightful as you continue to see their stories come back to you? 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah. For me, the biggest thing is that there are always more people than you realize out there that are struggling that you'll never know. So many people message and comment about being in similar situations where they feel isolated and alone, that no one understands what they're going through, that everybody thinks that they're one thing, but on the inside they feel a certain way. And for me, that's just a constant reminder of the trope that you hear when you're young, that you should never judge a book by its cover because you have doctors and high power lawyers, partners in law firms that reach out to me, Am Law 50 firms who tell me in a similar vein that everybody thinks one thing of them, but they don't think the same way and they don't feel the same way to a point that it's very concerning for them. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Imposter syndrome at the highest levels. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Some of that certainly yes, definitely. And also a mismatch of I think their internal sense of worth and what they want versus the external validators that they're receiving, which are very easy to define themselves by. What I mean is being a partner of a Am Law 50 firm as an example, it's going to be hard for somebody not to be impressed by that. And they're going to get respect from everybody around them. They're going to get praise, they're going to get a ton of money, they're going to get power and influence. All of those things are external validators telling them, this is good. This is what you want. This is positive. We like this. But on the inside, that's probably not what they really want in some cases. And no number of external validators can change that and will alter that feeling. They have to take action to find something else that better resonates with them. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Yeah, big disconnect. 

Chris Newbold: 

Julian, one of the interesting things, I think, a couple weeks ago I spoke in front of the National Conference of Bar Presidents on the future of wellbeing, and one of my observations was that one of the things that has me optimistic about where things are going is a couple things. One, that society's talking about mental health more, just more engagingly everywhere in all facets of life. That's good that more people are telling their stories, more people are hitting the pause button saying, I have an issue. I need a space to be able to talk and clear that before I reengage. That's healthy. 

And then the other part that I think is, Bree mentioned earlier is there's a generational shift that's clearly in play right now in society and in particular the legal profession. You got the baby boomer generation that's reaching that retirement age, although retirement sometimes doesn't come traditionally for most lawyers. And I'm curious about just some of your perceptions on the incoming generation of lawyers that we're going to entrust the legal system too, and as it relates to wellbeing, some different opinions frankly about what they're hoping to have as an experience as a lawyer or in law or sitting on the bench or whatever they ultimately pursue. I just think that there's some things that are in play that are very different than historically have been the norm. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Our generation and certainly the younger generation realizes that the world moves really fast. And in our day and age, especially with social media, you can become an entrepreneur from your bedroom with a camera in a month making six figures a year just like that if you know what you're doing and if you create valuable content. And that's just one example of the way that innovation in our current day and age leads to economic opportunity and prosperity. All of this means when they work really hard, when we work tremendously hard to get into the best law schools, to get the best grades, to get the best Big Law summer associateships and full-time jobs, when we get there, there is some expectation, some, that the firms are going to be high caliber, are going to be innovative, are going to be pushing the envelope, are going to represent that level of thinking, analytical mindset and hustle that got us to that associate position. 

That's certainly what I expected, and it was something that I was disappointed to find when I got there that as you mentioned earlier in our conversation, our profession is very slow to change and it's very resistant to change. And because of that, there is, I think, a shock factor that hits people in their twenties. We're talking about the younger generation of attorneys when they get there as a first year associate and they realize we're doing things operationally that we could have improved on 20 years ago, the culture seems to be stuck in the mid 2000s. Why are we still using email when we could use project management software like Asana, for example, that's more efficient? And I think the folks that get impatient and try to change it from within, myself as one of them, eventually self-select themselves out of that industry because of this frustration, because we're devoting the vast majority of our living waking hours to this employer. 

And clearly it's a transaction, we get money in return, but when we put in all of our energy and purpose and time into this institution, we want it to match similar values to the ones that we have. And when they're too slow or they're too dismissive of what the younger generation thinks, because that's just not the way we did things last year, that's just not the way we do things, period. It doesn't encourage buy-in or build morale amongst the younger associates and the younger generations of lawyers. And what will probably result in the longterm is an increase in folks flocking to the areas of the legal profession that are more open to innovation and more open to new ways and lines of thinking and more focused on wellbeing. For one example, being a solo practitioner like myself, I never expected to be a solo practitioner when I quit my job in Big Law. And yet here I am in large part because I enjoy legal work, just not on the terms that Big Law was offering. 

And being a solo practitioner, obviously you can run your own schedule, but it's not just being a solo practitioner, it's going in-house at progressive companies. It's starting a smaller firm with multiple associates at the same time. And I think that self-selection is important, but it's also important to note that when we're talking about Big Law specifically, I don't see it changing much in the long-term or even the midterm because I think the people that stay in it, even from my generation and the younger generations, I think are ones that are more or less okay with what the culture offers and what that lifestyle is like. And so though there will be movement on the edges, more benefits for folks to get therapists, maybe a mental health day here and there, maybe a reduction in the billable hour requirements, I think it's going to be really, really slow and too little, too late for a lot of people who value the things that I've been discussing earlier, innovation and open-mindedness, et cetera, et cetera. 

Chris Newbold: 

So the sense there is that they would look to make sure that people knew what they were getting into and find that group of folks that are willing to do that. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yes, that's right. And the people who are not willing to do it will self-select themselves out, like myself and many colleagues at my level, good friends of mine who were like-minded all left the industry too. 

Bree Buchanan: 

And many women, for example, are leaving or self-selecting out too, because it's just not, what they get in return is not worth what they're asked to give up basically.  

Julian Sarafian: 

Yes. A 100%. 

Bree Buchanan: 

It's a huge issue right now. I'll just say we having a high level discussion and about these things and the image that's popping into my mind, Julian, is one of your TikToks where talking about the inefficiencies and old school style of law firms where you're going on about having to go through and insert Oxford commas- 

Chris Newbold: 

Oh, yes.  

Bree Buchanan: 

... a thousand pages or something. That was just such a great little demonstrative piece there. I love that. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Oh yeah. And among many other stories, one of the moments I had before quitting that made me really realize I had other things I wanted to do was spending 45 minutes copy and pasting entries from an Excel document into a Word document and billing a client, whatever it was, 750 an hour for it. And that was the task. That was what I was expected to be doing. That was good job, Julian. And in the same period of time I realized I could write an article about getting into law school and probably help some underprivileged kid out there reframe their expectations. What am I doing? Copy and pasting for a big paycheck. Yeah. 

Chris Newbold: 

Well, Bree, should we take a quick break? And I think this is a good time, obviously so this podcast is being sponsored by ALPS Malpractice Insurance. Obviously that's my employer, so I'll be a little favorable to that. And it's interesting that one of the things that we see at ALPS is, again, a large number of folks coming into the solo space and the small firm space looking for something different, looking for something that has the type of balance that they're seeking. So it reflects, Julian, a little bit of your own personal journey of just that reality of maybe there's a different pathway for me and maybe it is in an area that has a little bit more flexibility and balance. And so I think that's interesting. So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. 

Okay. We're back with Julian Sarafian and who's just got a really compelling personal story and has leveraged that story into becoming a champion for mental health, particularly through social media channels. Julian, I think it's fair to say that one of the things that's resonated in your ability to attract a following has been, one, your authenticity, and two, your willingness to be a truth teller when it comes to the realities of the legal profession. Tell us again, just your perspective on both where the profession is today, what some of your inclinations are about where it's heading. And I know you probably to be more likely an optimist than a pessimist, but just tell us what you see on the horizon as you think about this particular issue and the intersection of our ability as lawyers to deliver in a high functioning legal system. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah. Well, I think you're right, Chris, that I am an optimist and just since I quit my role in Big Law and started speaking out, I can't count the number of stories of similar folks that have come forward on and off social media talking about similar issues, the lack of purpose, feeling like there was other things in life calling them, realizing that being locked into this bubble of working as a mid-size law firm or Big Law attorney or even solo practitioner just wasn't for them, and they wanted to explore other things. On top of that, social media has accelerated the ability for culture to be built and normalized in not just the legal profession, but everywhere. And what that does has, and what it will continue to do is shed a light on, first of all toxicity. And one example I think that's prominent as of late is the Barbara Rainin scandal where folks had sent racist and sexist emails around and the internet went wild over it. And I don't know what these folks are doing now, but certainly I can promise you they're not well-liked in the public sphere. 

Things like that for me speak to the power that every individual has in our system to use their voice to both inspire other people and call out toxic or unreasonable expectations or habits that folks in the profession put on them, which in the long term I think will lead to mental health and wellbeing and being more reasonable with our expectations on ourselves, being cool and being normal and being the default setting. And those are the things that we need to make happen if we want these old ideologies to fall by the wayside. And I think it will happen and it already is happening. It's just going to take time for that culture shift to actually impact institutional policy and the structural incentives, for example, the billable hour that I think are holding the profession back irrespective of the culture, but I am optimistic and I think it's only going to get better from where we are now, and it's already gotten a lot better in my perspective in the last few years since the pandemic and coming out of it. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Yeah, I'm glad you said those two words, billable hour and the third rail of the legal profession here, and since you invoked it, I was going to ask you about it anyway, but what about that and any other barriers you see that are just endemic to life in Big Law, but the billable hours, something that people say, if we could just change that- 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah. Well, I think the problem is in the American culture of work, the goal is to be number one at all times and make infinite money, period. Legitimately that's the goal. There's never a target, okay, for any business or firm, certainly the most competitive amongst us. It's make as much as possible. And when you tie your revenue to the number of hours that you work, which is what the billable hour is, this is the result that we get. When you mix that with the American culture of work, it's chronic overwork, it's continually billing all the time because you want to make more money for your boss, or the partner wants to make more money for themselves, or you want to look really good for your senior associate because you want to go up for partner eventually, and you know that that will help. All of it comes down to money, and the reason that it comes down to money is because it's being tied to the hours that we work. 

On top of that, there are psychological damages that come with the billable hour structure. When I was in Big Law, I remember thinking every day, okay, I could either get lunch with a friend for 30 minutes or bill half an hour. I'm going to probably bill half an hour most of those times because every moment that you weren't working felt like an opportunity cost to be getting more work done and hitting that target for your bonus, or again, looking better for your bosses. You mentioned things that firms or the industry can do to push back or help restructure itself to avoid some of these problems. For the life of me, I can't tell you why firms don't do this, but this is partially why I left the industry. It would be the easiest thing in the world to just create different segments of salary and bonus structure based on how many hours you bill. 

This is basic math. I'm talking fourth grade math. Okay. If you bill 1500 hours, you get paid a 150. If you get 1700, you get paid a 170. You hit 1950, you get paid 200. And magically suddenly, I think firms will find, okay, if we make less money from this person, that's fine because we also pay them less. The try hards are going to continue to try hard because that's what they want to do and they want to make more money, but there won't be an inherent pressure on every single associate to fall in line and work their tail off. There also won't be an intra competitive mindset amongst associates to out bill each other or a stigma, oh, you didn't hit the bonus, you're screwed. That's a big no-no, you're not going to rise up the partner now, and you're probably not even well liked. You'd get rid of all of that. 

Instead, you'd have a more healthy system of people who, okay, they want to work a little bit less hard, they'll make less money for it, and that's okay. Before I quit my job in Big Law, I actually went part-time at Wilson, and part-time in Big Law is literally that, it's a pro rata percentage of hours that you take on is the percentage of the salary full-time that you receive. I don't see any reason why that sort of structure cannot be institutionalized broadly, not just in Big Law, but in Midlaw and small-law too. And I think that that would just give people a lot more autonomy and feel a lot more in control of their own destiny, which can help alleviate a lot of these pressures. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Yeah. And the consulting that I do with Big Law, I see a real issue around the billable hour, and it's not just it in and of itself, it's the lack of transparency around what the law firms really want. And so like you said, the default is that you just keep working. When you're not really clear what's expected of you, then you always, always just work. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Pretty much. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Yeah. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Well, and honestly, I don't know if the firms even know what they want to be blunt. The partners are moving around half the time to other firms because they're getting offered more money, and the partners themselves are overworked. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Absolutely. 

Julian Sarafian: 

If the leadership team is overworked and can't spend inadequate amount of time thinking and processing what the community, broadly speaking, needs, we shouldn't be surprised that things are getting lost in the shuffle. 

Chris Newbold: 

And Julian, is that a business model reality or is it just a lack of an awareness to one, talk about what the employee's objectives are versus what the firm's objectives are and to make sure that those are in part aligned? 

Julian Sarafian: 

Yeah, go on.  

Chris Newbold: 

Well, I was just going to say is it... Because it still seems like we're lacking the conversation as to what the collective ambitions are, and again, there's an employer and an employee, and so there is a power dynamic there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that both objectives can't be met if there's transparency and communication on the front end. 

Julian Sarafian: 

That's exactly right. Big Law and many law firms, not just Big Law, will tout themselves on annual growth rates of 10%. Okay, let's go to the other side of the economic spectrum of technology companies or startups where 10% means that your stock is going to nose dive because that's a joke, 10% for some of the smartest, you're telling me the smartest, most ambitious, hardworking lawyers all in the same bucket and under the same umbrella, you can only grow 10% a year? What are you guys doing? But they tout themselves and they're proud of that because as a collective that is, let's just do what we did last year. That's the norm. It's a short-term model of thinking, in part because I think partners are looking at their own paychecks, they're compensated based on the performance of the firm that year. They're not going to see the value in generating long-term revenue 10 years from now because they're looking one year ahead. 

So to your point, I think the cost of training a new associate is something to the tune of $200,000. By the time an associate is a mid-level in Big Law as an example, that is the most profitable time for the law firm, when nearly 80 to 90% of their worked hours and billed hours is pure profit. When these firms don't curate themselves or open themselves up to what the younger generation, junior associates have been asking for basic things, more strict boundaries on weekends, maybe a more flexible dinner reimbursement policy, all of these collective things that lead them out the door before they reach that mid-level stage, the firm loses hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential revenue. I'm just one example of the type of person that I didn't dislike the practice of law. I do a very similar practice now on my own. 

I would've stayed if certain conditions were being met, if I felt that the culture were more cohesive, that associates were taken care of, that there was a long-term vision that included me in it, rather than what felt like a very short-term model in between distractions meant to, Bree, to your point, shield leadership from being truly transparent with the younger ranks. So I think in the long run, it's something that technology companies figured out a long time ago, that happier employees are more productive employees, more productive employees generate more value for the business, but the legal profession hasn't really cared to adopt that, and so I think it's pretty obvious that it would be financially beneficial to them in the long run. But that requires long-term thinking. And I question if these firms- 

Bree Buchanan: 

That's right. That's right. 

Julian Sarafian: 

... I question if these firms really have that or care about it, because truthfully, the people leading them are folks that are looking at their annual paycheck every year, and some of them, dare I say, have no real loyalty to the institution of the firm because when another firm comes along next year and offers them three million more for their book of business, they jump. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Yeah. Yeah, I was about to just comment on that. Absolutely. 

Chris Newbold: 

Well, good. Julian, I guess the last thing that I just wanted to explore is, again, thinking about creating a culture shift in our profession. It could take decades, it could take, there needs to be education awareness. We know that that's probably at its peak right now relative to historical norms, a lot more folks doing, it's hard to not go to a state bar annual meeting in your jurisdiction and not hear something or see something about wellness. That's good. That doesn't necessarily amount to a culture shift, but it's definitely a precursor to most social movements that there needs to be an education awareness, understanding and appreciation that there's a problem and that we can all be part of the solution. So there's that element of it. 

I have to think that some of the work that you do on social media has the potential to be an accelerator of that culture shift, because again, you're providing platforms for people to come forward, tell stories, share experiences, and the more that we normalize those experiences, the more that we can appreciate that it's okay to come forward and share those experiences because that will serve as a catalyst to change. As you think about the future, how do you think about that and how do we try to do this more quickly than await decades if we're really serious about achieving a mission of putting wellbeing as a core centerpiece of professional success? 

Julian Sarafian: 

Well, first of all, I think what you guys are doing with your work in providing a platform like this podcast and opening up a space for these conversations, that's incredibly important. Working directly in the space, creating content about it, starting the conversations with employers or colleagues or friends, all of that is crucial. But in the longterm, I think the power of the internet and what social media provides is, and this is changing, but right now I still believe this is true. If you post a piece of content, you're entering the 1% of the folks on social media who are creators, whereas 99% of people on the internet are consumers. And so my platform and what I've built with advocating for mental health, breaking down barriers in the legal profession, in some ways, I hate to say it, but it's not that special. When I talk about Big Law firms and what people talk about and what Cravath feels like on the inside, these are things that everybody in my law school talked about openly and knew about, but they just never cared to put that on social media or talk about it openly. 

And I understand that there's a lot of apprehension with putting yourself out there on the internet and with social media. The Internet's written in ink. You can't take back what you say, and it will potentiall chase you around forever, and you have haters who are going to potentially disagree with you and attack your character or how you look, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, you can be part of that process and inspire who knows how many people with a simple post, even reminding your own network about the importance of mental health and wellbeing. It doesn't need to be a tell all mental health, raw vulnerability story like I did. It could just be an insight that somebody learned talking to a colleague about how Big Law wasn't always cracked up to be, or I'm a lawyer and I thought I'd love the work, but it turns out it's really draining. 

The more conversations and the more courage that we can have to bring these things to light, I think the more encouraged and inspired other people will be to do the same and to actually accept where they are at, which in the long run will lead to the important thing, which is action, putting pressure on employers, signing onto petitions, attending wellbeing conferences, supporting creators who talk about these issues, writing and creating content about wellness in the legal profession and its importance, or just crafting and being part of leadership initiatives in state bar associations, for example, to help the process move forward. So I think something that everybody can do at a baseline is talk about the issues. And if they're feeling courageous enough post about it digitally, even if it's something they've never done before. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Lots of tales of courage here. It takes a lot of... Yeah. Especially- 

Julian Sarafian: 

The internet right now is not a fun place. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Julian Sarafian: 

Let's be clear, in 10, 15 years, I think it will be, and I think LinkedIn is the safest platform right now, but when you normalize anonymity and the ability of people to say things behind masks, which is what TikTok and Twitter and Reddit are all pretty much normalized, have normalized, it could be ruthless on top of the harass of effects. If you talk about something controversial and have people harass your home and send police to your door and all that, it's not a great system we have right now, and our 9,000 year old Congress folk have yet to regulate it adequately. So I'm not holding my breath on that one, at least right now. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Absolutely. 

Chris Newbold: 

Well, awesome. Julian, thank you for joining us on the podcast. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Thank you so much. 

Chris Newbold: 

We certainly want to continue to build bridges with you and between I Will and other influencers like you. Again, I think it's a critical component to what we're working to do, to be inclusive of the strategies and the techniques that have really proven to be so successful for you and your aspirations to do your part, and sharing your own personal story and sharing that authentically with your followers. And again, so many of them are coming forward with reciprocally and sharing their stories back. That's the type of, I think, interaction that does lend itself toward culture shift. And we're very thankful for the work that you're doing. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Absolutely. Thank you, Julian, for your work and your courage. 

Julian Sarafian: 

You're very welcome guys, and the feeling is very mutual. 

Chris Newbold: 

All right, so we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Bree and I are exploring some variations in doing some different things with the podcast, introducing some different segments and so forth. Again, storytelling a big part of what we want to be able to aspire to do. Start making some predictions, start focusing on some of the research that's coming out in the wellbeing and law space. There's just a lot of opportunity for us to be able to, as Julian said, get more content out there into the public domain and be initiators of dialogue in this important area. So we hope that you'll tune in for that. So signing off, be well out there, friends. Thank you. 

Bree Buchanan: 

Take care.