Helping lawyers trust themselves again with Elena Deutsch

In this episode of This Legal Life, Ben Chiriboga speaks with Elena Deutsch, founder of WILL (Women Interested in Leaving Law), about what it really feels like when your career no longer fits. Drawing from her own journey and years of coaching women lawyers, Elena explores the moment when something isn’t right, and how that internal signal can become the starting point for transformation. From burnout and anxiety to clarity and agency, this conversation is a powerful reminder that change isn’t failure.

About Elena

Elena Deutsch is the founder of WILL, Women Interested in Leaving (Big) Law, a coaching program she created in 2017 after seeing women lawyers give their whole lives over to work and come up depleted. A trained coach with a background in public health from NYU, she has since helped more than 100 lawyers, from associates at firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Paul Weiss, and White & Case to lawyers already out of practice, find clarity about what they want next and the confidence to pursue it. Her work has been featured in The American Lawyer, Bloomberg Big Law Business, Above the Law, and the Wall Street Journal.

Connect with Elena on LinkedIn