Biglaw

Goodbye To All That

Our profession is not the only one wrestling with the issue of when the younger people can take control.

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goodbye farewell lateral partner moveHere’s a riddle for you: when is old too old? I can answer that question for myself. However, this is not about me. It’s about other people, like Pauline Newman, Dianne Feinstein, and yes, Joe Biden. (I could include Donald Trump in the mix, but I won’t.) When are you too old to be a judge, to be a senator, to be a president? To be a CEO? To be a managing partner of a law firm?

A lot of people are asking those questions, given the current landscape of old folks still in charge of so much. (And let’s put aside potential age-discrimination issues.) Is it a reluctance to relinquish power? Is it that we haven’t mentored and helped younger generations to take on leadership responsibilities? Is it that we old people are unwilling to acknowledge that age can be more than just a number? I am not suggesting that there should be competency tests for those of us who are of a certain age or older. As we all know, you can be brilliant in your 80s and 90s and dumb as a rock in your 40s. But I wonder if we are depriving leadership opportunities to those younger than us who are chomping at the bit to get going.

Pauline Newman, a federal circuit judge on the D.C. Circuit, is suing her colleagues, claiming that they have tried to force her to retire. She is 95 with a lifetime appointment. Her colleagues have formed an “investigative committee” to determine whether she is able both physically and mentally to continue her work as an appellate judge — the oldest active federal judge in the nation. Newman alleges that, among other things, the chief judge has refused to assign any new cases to her as a vehicle to pressure her to retire.

Newman’s case raises a whole slew of issues about lawyers and judges and how and when they should exit the stage. Part of the problem for many lawyers (and judges as well) is the lack of planning for this next stage of life. In other words, “Now what?” Many lawyers have focused on the law to the exclusion of just about everything else, and so, when they do retire, whether voluntarily or with a well-placed foot on the butt, they are often totally adrift. How to use all the skills honed over decades of practice? How to leverage the legal knowledge that these people have in ways small and large that may benefit others? There aren’t any answers that readily come to mind, and no, pro bono work is not necessarily the answer. Many lawyers, whether paid or not, are done representing clients.

Take comfort, however small it may be, that our profession is not the only one wrestling with the issue of when the younger people can take control. In a recent article in Vanity Fair magazine, the talent agency business (remember I live in Lala Land) is seeing defections of younger agents who are tired of waiting for the old guard to leave.

As the article relates, the “old guard,” now in their sixties, has reminded the younger agents that “60 is the new 40.”

One younger agent said, “I was like, fuck no, it’s not,” He thought that the oldsters “are never going to leave.” So, it’s not the old guard leaving, it’s the young ones who see their road to accession blocked, maybe not permanently, but at least for the foreseeable future.

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Who wants to wait to be 73 to be crowned king? We all know one who had to do so but given that the rest of us are not royalty in any sense except perhaps in our own minds, waiting is no longer the only option. As the article points out, if these younger ones do wait, they could be chanting the same mantra in 20 years, that “60 is the new 40.” History does repeat itself.

What the article also points out is the generational shift underway and not just for talent agents. It’s for lawyers as well. General counsel and others who referred business to the oldsters have retired or are no longer able to do that. The younger lawyers have their own sources of business (or they should) and so the need to rely upon the largesse of gray-haired leaders is diminishing. Client demands are also shifting. The younger people aren’t impressed with conference rooms the size of bowling alleys nor are they impressed with the trappings that their fees are funding.

We’ve all seen how the pandemic has changed the provision of legal services. And what we’ve also seen is how lawyers want to be more in control of their own lives, their own careers. While there will always be a “Biglaw,” just like “there will always be an England,” work-life balance is no longer just a mantra, but a life-career choice. As one of the younger talent agents in the Vanity Fair article noted, the oldsters run the shop. “But I just kept coming back to, why work for anybody again? It’s their agency. It’s their vision. It just felt the most appropriate next step for me was to do something that was at least partly mine.”

Sound familiar? It does to anyone who has pondered what next and has decided that the best thing is to take a leap, accompanied by the new technologies that are changing the face of practice today and clients who are tech-savvy and want services provided in more efficient and economical ways. This is not your parents’ profession anymore.

And if we need any proof of that, Staci Zaretsky’s post about a would-be Biglaw partner who said “goodbye to all that” is precisely on point. Res ipsa loquitur.

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old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

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