My Third Legal Job and My Mental Health: Murtaugh Law Year 1
After I resigned from the law firm and decided to start my own law firm, I became excited about working again. I was working during the day and at night. I was especially excited about working on business related things like a website, logo, and ideas for how to do things differently.
I had a lot of support right away. My best friend, Jake, volunteered his time to help. He has an M.B.A and has excellent employee management and trainings skills. Jake’s dad, Randy, is a retired accountant. He also volunteered to help me with financial tracking and cash flow forecasting.
My cousin, Zach, was my first employee. He had graduated from college and was considering law school. He was a very solid and dependable employee. He worked part-time for me and kept his other job at first. Later in the first year, he worked for me about 30 hours a week.
I also had the support of family and friends who used me as their lawyer. I did feel the stress of taking on such a big financial risk and the stress of operating a solo law firm and learning to do so many things that I had never done before. But my mental health was so much better. Marlee was born that year and I usually left the office at 5:00 PM. Courtney wanted me to come home to help with Marlee and I wanted to as well. I only remember a couple times that year when I experienced significant depression. I think it was mostly when winter hit. I have always struggled with my depression so much more in the winter months.
I feel that it helped my mental health to have control over my workload and to stop going to court and doing litigation as much.
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