Succession — It’s Not How You Start; It’s How You Finish

Succession is a critical component of business strategy that left undone can lead to unfortunate outcomes. Act now, because it’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.

Do you plan to work forever? Or live forever? For your sake, I hope not. After all, as Bugs Bunny—probably the world’s most famous cartoon rabbit—says: “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive.”

Because change happens throughout our lives is exactly why succession and the planning of it is a critical business strategy that, to the detriment of individuals, their families, law firms, colleagues, and clients is often ignored until it’s too late.

It doesn’t have to be this way; however, the planning, process, and execution of successful succession takes forethought, care, and diligence.

Aging Demographics

As I’ve said on other occasions, succession pertaining to aging demographics is cause for concern.

Among the most daunting factors are that in 2021, both the American and Canadian Bar Associations said that most law firms have actively practicing lawyers in their late 60s and 70s. And that partners who are 60 years of age or older control at least half of the revenue in 63 per cent of law firms.

An informal survey of many law firms will confirm that finding; all you have to do is look.

As Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 shift out, the next cohorts, Generation X (1965-1980) and Millennials (1981-1996) expect to step up. And so they should; but they need to do so without impediments created by those who stay too long at the fair.

Shifting Laterals

Remember when lawyers, especially partners, stayed at one firm until they retired or went out the door on a board? Not now. Now, lawyers at all levels are changing firms with such frequency that you need a program to tell the players.

And it’s not necessarily singletons that are switching sides; whole teams are upping sticks and decamping to other firms or setting up their own shops.

If the concept of loyalty exists at all anymore, it’s increasingly fragile due to various factors, including damage wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic that left behind vestiges of various employment concepts, such as working from home that while it embodies many positive attributes, also carries—perhaps among the distrustful—a connotation of noncommitment and stigma of distance resulting in a myriad of negative outcomes.

Aging demographics and shifting laterals are only two major factors of the changing face of law firm life. This is why coming to grips with how to help internal talent at all levels manage the flow and planning of successful succession is an inside job that can often be aided by the neutrality of professional outside support whose sole agenda is successful succession outcomes.

Cause and Effect

I have found that there are four prohibiting factors that impede or stall succession planning:

1. Control: Many of us enjoy control; it makes us feel more secure. The joke’s on us because very little in life is within our control.
2. Possessiveness: Holding onto something or someone doesn’t mean you can take it or them with you. This includes clients who often don’t follow a lawyer who makes a lateral transfer.
3. Fear: Lawyers by nature tend to be risk averse, so fear can be a triggering mechanism. (If you want to get a lawyer’s attention, scare them.)
4. Inertia: Inertia can happen when control, possessiveness and fear gang up on a person’s psyche causing them to lock up and seek safety in numbness.

There will always be lawyers and legal services professionals of all stripes who look forward to closing their careers and jumping the gate with glee.

For those who feel otherwise, there are ways to find safe zones for lawyers as well as their firms and clients to enable healthy conversations about succession along with customized plans and tailored tactics to help a smooth transition happen with dignity and grace.

Intentional Grace

As a foundational element of business strategy, the process for successful succession happens in predicable steps to enable all concerned to be graceful. This is why my recommendation for a successful handoff and exit is to start the planning, process, and steps of succession two to five years out.

This signals that succession strategy and the planning of it, which includes tactics and timelines are intentional.

Planning with intent and executing on a timeline enables succession to become part-and-parcel of a workflow that dovetails with the general business of law firm life that includes client work along with people, business, and financial management.

Dovetailing succession to overall legal service in this manner helps remove stigma and fear that can quickly settle and set like cement if it’s introduced as a factor that exists outside the purview of business as usual.

This is because succession is a factor of business as usual. And it had better be since while a lawyer may not be actively planning for succession, clients most certainly are, and they will act if a lawyer or firm does not.

And that would defeat being both intentional and graceful, which would be a disservice to all concerned.

Smooth Succession

In my experience there are four general rules that help guide a smooth succession.

1. Law firms are businesses; run them that way.
2. Culture enables succession that creates distinction and underscores trust.
3. Succession plans must be transparent.
4. Voice of the client is key to smooth succession and client retention.

1. Law Firms are Businesses

That law firms are businesses and must be run that way is advice I’ve espoused since time immemorial. I stand on my record. This is my hill and I’ve been dead up here for years.  

Ironically, as a business that deals with contracts for a living, it’s amazing how many law firms don’t include exit clauses when constructing legal talent entry agreements. Frankly, any lawyer or legal service professional worth his or her salt and their law firm should know that it’s simply good business to negotiate the ‘out’ at the same time as negotiating the ‘in’.

Therefore, including a crystal-clear clause in an employment contract pertaining to when and how succession will happen is simply good business for all incoming professionals, including associates, laterals, administrative management, and those on a partnership track who aspire to individual and law firm growth.

2. Cultural Distinction

It may be ironic for me as a legal market strategist to say that culture trumps strategy, but it does. Culture is about people’s beliefs and behaviours, which is why there is truth to the notion that managing lawyers is like herding cats.

Still, culture is developed and nurtured, which enables succession to be a market differentiator and hallmark for law firms that value the progression of talent. This does not mean adherence to ‘up or out’ rigidity because strong talent can’t help but show itself, which is why it’s so attractive. However, attractive talent is not a trait that is exclusive to senior individuals, which is why talented individuals at up-and-coming levels must be groomed for elevated success that, yes, will lead to their succession.

3. Planning Transparency

In my experience, and as I have written more fully, there are four essential steps to succession planning.

1. Selection of successors with the right qualifications and temperaments to serve specific clients.
2. Enable a successor to work in tandem with the retiring partner on matter engagements with the client’s approval.
3. Support the retiring partner as they step back from the client-successor relationship
4. Transfer increasing parts of the origination credit from the retiring partner to successors.

Enabling transparency means that succession happens without mystery and in full light rather than half-light or worse yet, no light for all parties involved in the process.

4. Voice of the Client

Successful succession gets traction at the client level. Smart firms and lawyers take a client’s needs, wants, and expectations into the equation when planning for succession.

“I love surprises,” said no client ever. When confronted by surprise, it often happens that a client will retaliate—most often quietly—by sending some of their work elsewhere, which is often followed by sending all of their work elsewhere.

Clients are fully aware of to whom they send work and where that lawyer or law firm stands in terms of talent moving on or out. Unwelcoming of surprise, they want to be part of the succession plan, and will welcome and actively support a succession discussion because it is usually in their best interest to do so.

Seeking a client’s perspectives is probably the most critical factor of a successful succession. That’s because a client that takes part in the process is more likely to remain loyal. Another benefit is that the law firm or lawyer that solicits a client’s perspectives is apt to learn more about that client’s needs and how they can be best served by a successor or client team.

Dearly Departed

Very few of us aspire to die at our desks and yet it happens.

While the television series L.A. Law that ran from 1986 to 1994 was fictional in nature, its over-the-top storylines followed the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. The first episode kicked off with a name partner found dead at his desk. This disaster was immediately followed by the firm’s partners bickering about who would inherit his office and jockeying to claim his roster of lucrative clients.

Granted, this story provided an entertaining premise on which to start a hit TV series, however anyone who has spent half a minute working inside a competitive law firm could easily identify that it illustrated precisely why addressing succession and the planning for it proactively is a critical business strategy.

After all, smart succession enables grace and dignity—a much more elegant ending than either a fumbled hand-off or dying at one’s desk both of which might prompt Bugs Bunny’s pal, Porky Pig, to stutter his signature sign-off: “Th-Th… That’s all, folks!”  

This article appeared on Slaw, July 2025.