|
Are You in the Red Zone?
Karen Mathis, immediate past chair of the American Bar Association, focused her year on developing a new awareness for the legal profession regarding the implications of the aging population. She said recently that 400,000 lawyers will retire in the next 10 years. That's equivalent to the entire current membership of the ABA!
What will these lawyers do? Will they close their doors and start new careers? Will they sell their practices? Will they become sole or small-firm practitioners because their current firm has a mandatory retirement age, some as young as 62 years old? Will they be "warehoused" and merely wait to die?
Transitioning out of a legal practice is, above all, an issue of planning. Failure to plan for how clients will be taken care of as a lawyer approaches the age of retirement can, according to some authorities, be construed as reckless disregard for client welfare—a true ethical violation. If the practice is not sold or closed, the best alternative is grooming a successor by hiring an associate to learn the practice, or by merging with or hiring a lateral lawyer with the option to sell the practice to him or her.
Ideally, the succession plan can be structured over a period of up to five years, as client responsibilities gradually transition to the new lawyer. These five years can be seen as the "red zone" of your career—the area right before you reach the goal line of retirement. During this period, you can identify a successor, have ongoing conversations with key clients about the upcoming transition, forge new ties between your successor and both current and new contacts at the client, and ensure that the new lawyer is completely up to speed on what the client needs and expects.
If you're in the career "red zone" today, what are you doing to prepare yourself so that you can score a touchdown and spend the final years of your life enjoying the fruits of your labor as you choose?
Best wishes,
Ed Poll
lawbiz.com
800-837-5880
|
|
In this follow-up companion volume to my highly praised first Secrets collection, you'll learn how to be even more efficient, more effective, and more profitable in your practice. You'll get topflight tips for how to:
• Collaborate with clients
• Succeed in collecting your fees
• Open your own law office
• Maximize the return on your technology investment
• Make the most of outsourcing services
• Exceed your clients' expectations
• Fine-tune disaster and recovery planning
• Build a Weblog strategy
• Raise your rates
• And a whole lot more
Click here to purchase this book for only $49.95
What Readers Are Saying...
"You don't see many stories about legal firms making change work! Help is on the way. Ed Poll's book is a must-read for any leader who wants to win at the great game of business!"
-Terry Paulson, PhD, columnist, business speaker, and author of They Shoot Managers Don't They?
|
|
|
