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 the day I’d leave the practice of law. 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.
But rites of passage, particularly shocking and tragic ones like the death of a child, force us to think about the future. I became acutely aware of my own mortality, and how quickly life can change. Where my vision into the future had been a blur, it was now in sharp focus. Catastrophe jarred me into considering what the rest of my life might look like, and to begin planning for my eventual exit from the profession.
My chief concern was to guarantee my clients service continuity and excellence. To accomplish this, I needed to get the lawyers who worked for me ready to take over my client relationships. I realized that I had to begin grooming my successors years before I prepared a formal succession plan to submit to my firm, and years before I began talking with my clients about my retirement.
So that’s what I did. About five years before I retired, I identified the younger partners at my firm who, with the proper acclimation, would qualify to replace me. I sat down and talked with each one about my plans and their careers. They were enthusiastic. They were working hard to build their own client lists, and understood that inheriting my clients would be a big boost to their careers.
My firm recognized the final two years of a partner’s career as the time for transitioning clients to the next generation. At the start of this period, I drafted a retirement succession plan that identified, as to each client, the team of younger lawyers I proposed as successors. The plan detailed the precise steps I would take over the next two years to transfer each relationship, and provided a timeline for specific tasks to be done during the transition. I then met with my major clients, bringing my designated successor partners with me, and proposed a plan for providing uninterrupted service after I was gone.
By the time these meetings took place, my clients already knew and trusted these partners, because I had integrated them into the service relationships and given them a seat at the table. For a few clients, I did not have a junior partner with the subject matter expertise required to meet their unique needs. My firm hired an excellent lateral partner to step into this role. For the most part however, the lawyers I proposed to my clients as my successors were well-positioned to deliver uninterrupted service because they and the clients were already bonding.
Thereafter, throughout my two-year transition period, I submitted to my firm’s management monthly reports documenting the status and completion of each task set out in my succession plan. Over time, as these tasks were completed, I gradually receded into the background so my partners could take the lead. My goal was for all my clients to forget about me.
It worked. By meticulous attention to detail, my team and I succeeded in transitioning every one of my major client relationships – my entire $6 million book of business – to the next generation of partners.
Now I help law firms accomplish the same outcome by sharing the strategies I used to transition my practice, from the creation of customized succession plans to the concrete steps necessary to complete relationship transfers. My formula is tested, proven and scalable. The “why” of retirement succession is simple. My work, in the wake of successfully executing my own succession plan, is about the “how.”
