In-house is a lonely job. You're often the only lawyer in the room, sometimes the only one in the building, carrying decisions you can't fully talk about — not with your team, not with your partner, not at dinner. The people who'd actually get it are at other companies, probably as overloaded as you are. The work is real, the stakes are real, and there's nowhere obvious to put any of it down.
A blog post isn't going to fix that. But maybe it makes the lonely part feel a little less lonely — to hear other people, people who've held big jobs, say the quiet stuff out loud.
This was a compilation we ran last May on The Abstract — our podcast, back when it was still called that — pulled from a year of episodes for Mental Health Awareness Month. We're surfacing it again this May because the stories haven't aged, and because some of them might land differently the second time around. Or the first.
Six people. Six things worth sitting with.
Ryan Nier, General Counsel at Monarch, grew up between a farm in upstate New York and rural Florida. He showed up to his first BigLaw job at Paul Hastings owning exactly one suit. His first project? A hundred banker's boxes of trade secret documents. In Mandarin. He'd never tasted wine. He didn't know what employment law was when he accidentally interviewed for a litigation job. At a partner's house once, someone handed him a mini tamale and he ate the whole thing — husk and all — while two people stared, assuming he was being funny. He wasn't. He just didn't know. That was the moment he thought - “Do I even belong here?”
He cut his own hair. He sold the firm-issued Jack Spade bag immediately for $160 because he needed the money more than the bag.
What got him through wasn't confidence. It was tunnel vision:
"I just put my head down and focused on the problem. I didn't pop my head up for long enough to be like, I don't know what I'm doing."
He's a GC now. He still has those moments. He sometimes still feels like he doesn't know what people are talking about. He just doesn't stop moving.
The takeaway: Imposter syndrome doesn't go away when you get the title. You just learn to keep walking past it.
Joe Sullivan — former CSO at Uber, Facebook, and Cloudflare — found out he was being federally indicted the same way he'd learned he was being fired from Uber years earlier: in the news.
His daughter was moving into college. Her friend heard it on NPR.
"The FBI put out a press release that was a lie. They said they had arrested me when they actually had... I've never been arrested."
Joe builds his entire career on staying calm under pressure. In security, the worst possible thing potentially happens once every two months. You learn to handle it. But this was different:
"When it's about you, it's muchit's a much harder... it felt like my brain couldn't think the way I normally can. Usually I can look at a situation and be like, oh, we need to do this, this, and this. And I was just like — lawyers, please just do what... My brain just couldn't."
He spent his own trial feeling like a zombie version of himself. It took losing the trial to snap him out of it — and into action for the sentencing, which he calls his real win.
The takeaway: Being good in a crisis is a skill. Being good in your own crisis is a different skill entirely. Don't be surprised when the first one doesn't translate.
Rod Ahmed and Ashish Walia, cofounders of LawTrade, have one explicit, written-down rule for running a company together:
"We both can't be depressed at the same time. No matter what — whoever is depressed and calls it out, the other party can't get sucked into that. Even if you have to fake it, you have to be the optimistic one."
The rest of their playbook is unglamorous on purpose. Coffee at the same time every morning. Office every day, even when they could be remote. Showing up even when revenue's down and people are leaving.
Ashish compares it to the gym:
"If you show up even on the days you're hungover and you're tired and you have the worst Oura sleep score — you're still in there lifting that weight. The skill of showing up when you don't want to show up is really underrated."
The takeaway: Resilience isn't a vibe. It's a habit you build with another person who's holding you to it.
Dan Haley, General Counsel at Flock Safety, had cancer in his last year of law school. His treatment schedule, in his own words:
"Get up in the morning, go to Goodwin Procter, work for half the day, go to my bar review class, then go to Brigham and Women's Hospital, get my radiation, go home, usually throw up, and then study for the bar."
He could have deferred. It didn't occur to him.
Ever since, every hard thing he's faced gets compared to that six-week stretch — and almost nothing measures up. Dan doesn't recommend the path. But he's honest about what it gave him: a permanent reference point for "this isn't actually that bad."
He still trains for Ironman triathlons. He'll tell you that he's at his best when he's training for one:
"Having a goal — having an ostentatious goal — is a tremendously motivating thing beyond just the goal itself."
The takeaway: Hard things make ordinary things feel small. And a big external goal can do more for your work life than any productivity hack.
Zoe McMahon, ex-Head of Legal Ops at HP, has been at the company for thirty years. She's a VP. She's an executive. She also cares deeply about mindfulness — and was, for a long time, a little embarrassed to bring it up at work.
So she started small. Dropping it into conversations. Naming it. Bracing for the are-you-okay look.
What she got instead, mostly, was: yeah, me too.
"When people are brave and bring perhaps an aspect that they care about into the workplace, it liberates other people to do the same thing."
Her case for it isn't fluffy. Legal departments are under more pressure than ever — demand is up, budgets are down, headcount is flat. Tech and efficiency only solve part of that:
"Along with the technology to drive improvements, we have to have some corresponding empathy for each other as well."
The takeaway: Being the first person to say the thing is its own form of leadership. Someone in your team is waiting.
Laura Frederick, CEO of How to Contract, got her first therapist at forty-two.
"I didn't realize that I could change some of the ways I approached, processed, and dealt with life. I didn't realize what a positive impact going through therapy would have on every aspect of my life."
Before therapy: she felt like a victim in her personal life and a master in her professional one. She'd built the legal-overachiever's classic operating system — I can control everything if I just prepare hard enough and tell everyone what to do.
Her therapist said something she still quotes:
"Who are you, God? How do you know what's best for these people in your life? Maybe you're exactly the thing that's causing all the problems."
And:
"You never had control. You only had anxiety."
That second one is the line that should be cross-stitched in every in-house legal department in the country.
The takeaway: Get a therapist before you need one. Laura's number one career advice — not life advice, career advice — is to start now.
This piece is adapted from a special Mental Health Awareness Month episode of The Abstract Podcast featuring Ryan Nier (Monarch), Joe Sullivan (formerly Uber, Facebook, Cloudflare), Rod Ahmed and Ashish Walia (LawTrade), Dan Haley (Flock Saefty), Zoe McMahon (ex-HP), and Laura Frederick (How to Contract).
If you're struggling, please reach out to a mental health professional or a trusted person in your life.
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