How I Transitioned My $6M Practice to Younger Partners
June 3, 2025 – It took a devastating personal tragedy – the death of one of my children – to get me thinking about the mechanics of retirement. Before that horrific event, I never thought about retirement. I saved for it, but I didn’t think about when it might happen. I was at the pinnacle of my field and the height of my earning years. I wasn’t considering when to stop.
Upping Your Business Development Game is a Powerful Succession Strategy
March 19, 2025 – Those of us who came up the ranks a generation or more ago were taught that all problems, large and small, are solved by developing new business. A court just ruled against you? A new matter eases the pain. A big client just went under? Bringing in a new one takes the sting right off. How to make more money? Get new clients and matters in the door.
Senior Partners are the Golden Ticket for Law Firms
March 5, 2025 – With the aging of the Baby Boom generation, industry estimates indicate that roughly a third of the partners in a typical law firm are over the age of 55. These estimates reflect averages: Some firms are younger, others older. But firms at the top of the bell curve face the retirements of a large swath of senior partners over the coming 5-10 years.
Frustrated With Your Firm’s Succession Planning?
August 2024 – The leaders of administrative teams managing the business of law firms play a unique role in strategic planning. A firm’s management committee sets its strategic objectives, relying on the administrative leadership to evaluate the advantages and obstacles to achieving them. In a perfect world, this work is not complicated by firm politics, unreasonable demands or petty grievances.
Building a Prosperous Future for Law Firms with Succession Consultant David Wood
August 5, 2024 – In this episode of On Record PR, Gina Rubel goes on record with succession consultant David Wood to discuss implementing programs that secure the prosperity of law firms for future leadership.
A Founders' Mindset Can Hamstring a Law Firm's Succession Planning
August 20, 2024 – Being included with these visionary authors in the just-published edition of Legal Business World, LLC was an honor. My article discusses the critical importance of the founders' role in creating a thriving retirement culture and plan to maintain clients as partners retire.
Getting Retirement Right, and Thinking Differently About the Future
June 26, 2024 – Succession is inevitable. All lawyers eventually leave practice, and when they do, their younger partners will inherit their law firms. But not all firms are sustainable. A firm that has no plan for replacing the revenue once brought in by retiring partners cannot guarantee their clients uninterrupted service. This makes succession planning essential to a firm’s sustainability. Those who attended this CLE program learned how to create and execute succession plans for transitioning retiring partners’ clients and firm ownership to the next generation of leaders.
Clients Have All the Leverage in Law Firm Succession Planning
5/17/24 - Across the industry, clients are demanding that firms plan for succession and give them a window into this planning. This is a boon for managing partners who have tried to plan for succession but hit internal roadblocks at their firms.
Legal Management Talk, Crafting an Effective Succession Plan
4/19/24 - In-house lawyers are increasingly sensitive about the risk of a relationship partner leaving a law firm without any succession plan in place.
Retirement Succession Can Hedge Against Lateral Partner Acquisition Risks
4/15/24 - While growing by acquiring lateral partners and practice groups can be lucrative, it carries many risks. Lateral candidates' projections of the revenue will bring to a new firm can prove inaccurate, or a particular candidate may simply be a bad fit culturally.
Succession Planning: Clients demand transparency on law firm succession plans
4/9/24 - In-house lawyers are increasingly sensitive about the risk of a relationship partner leaving a law firm without any succession plan in place. Clients are particularly apprehensive about the retirement of partners – a foreseeable event for which, in their view, succession planning should be easy.
Succession Planning: Getting Retirement Right
2/6/24 - Baby Boom generation law partners are not doing a particularly good job of retiring from practice. They know they will have to leave the profession someday, but cannot imagine what their lives will look like in retirement, so they avoid discussing the topic with their law firms.