Maybe It's Time For You To Think About 'Retirement' From Law Practice

After all, 'retirement' doesn't really mean what it used to in the old days.

As more and more of the dinosaur lawyers lumber off the stage, I’ve been thinking about the word “retirement,” and whether that word needs to be replaced with something more au courant in today’s world. I don’t think that “retirement” means the same thing as it did when our dinosaur parents retired.

So, let’s start with the definition of the word.  It is, in essence, the cessation from active working life. But that definition doesn’t describe what retirement is today.

In the generations before the boomers, workers usually worked at a single job for 30 years or so, retiring from work with a pension. Those days are as gone as we boomer dinosaurs and younger generations know all too well. “Retirement” used to mean a withdrawal from the working world, pivoting to a world purportedly of relaxation, leisure activities, travel, and time with family and friends, without the commute headaches, the work tensions, and a time for doing all the things postponed because of the demands of work.

A 2016 Transamerica survey provides some interesting factoids about retirement, depending upon the decade. Eighty-two percent of us 60 and older “expect to or are already working past age 65 or do not plan to retire.” That’s great, if you have choices.

A lot of lawyers reading this, who have been downsized, laid off, “rightsized,” faced age discrimination (or whatever other kind of discrimination), will pause, given that they have had no choice in the matter as to how long to work. That choice has been taken away from them, and the likelihood that they will rejoin the work force is slim to none, even with unemployment at historical lows.  Not every lawyer wants to ride off into the sunset, metaphorically or literally, especially with all the years of knowledge gleaned through trial (pun intended) and error, and any attorney who says she’s never made an error has never made a decision as a lawyer.

The legal profession does not look like it used to, and all kinds of jobs that were available are no more, replaced by all sorts of third-party vendors who can and do provide an array of services at less cost. And that doesn’t even take into account artificial intelligence, which does tasks that we lawyers did. We haven’t been replaced in the courtroom, at least not yet.

The Transamerica study also says that more than half plan to work in retirement, either for income or health benefits. Again, that’s great if you have the option to do so, but many don’t.

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Some lawyers proclaim that they will never retire, but, after a certain point in time, I think most, if not all, lawyers of dinosaurian vintage get tired — tired of the endless demands of clients; tired of the nonstop requirement of billables, receivables, and collectibles; tired of the endless routine of business development; tired of trying to explain to newbie lawyers why their “great case” isn’t so great, and why the case needs to resolve.

There have to be better ways to use the skill, talent, and knowledge of dinosaur lawyers.  What about downshifting? What about phased-in retirement?

One friend of mine who left her federal job after 30 years doesn’t call it “retirement.”  She’s now “self-employed,” able to use her knowledge and skills as she wants. (She’s not working right now, but calls herself “self-employed” because of the pejorative connotations of “retirement”: rocking chairs, golf carts, silver hair, and bingo.)

Maybe we dinosaurs need to discover JOMO. What’s that? I did not know what that acronym meant until recently. Just as FOMO is the fear of missing out, JOMO is … wait for it … the joy of missing out. All of us lawyers, in whatever kind of practice we’ve had, have suffered from FOMO.

Now, perhaps for us dinosaurs, JOMO is the approach to take. One major cause of FOMO? Smartphone addiction. Back in dinosaur days, lawyers couldn’t be addicted to smartphones because they didn’t exist. We just had landlines. Before smartphones, there were portable phones the size of an infant that lawyers carried around to show how important we were, then flip phones (not the easiest to text with), and the late lamented (at least to me) Blackberry. We didn’t know that we were missing out because we didn’t know. Were we more serene and less frazzled? Probably, because the entire world moved at a slower pace and we were all moving at slower speeds. There’s something to be said for that. There was no FOMO because there was no FOMO to fret about.

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For us dinosaurs, some are just plain tuckered out. We may say we’re not, but we are. How can we not be? Our brains don’t go as fast as they used to, but that may be a good thing, as it can make us less impulsive and more thoughtful, taking the time to think and not just reflexively respond while in the throes of purported busyness. We know how to manage expectations, both our own and those of people around us, including, but not limited to clients and colleagues.

A comment in the New York Times article (see link above) says it best: “A lot of the time, we fail to recognize the moments in our lives actually become our lives… The moments that we’re spending on our computer checking email slowly accumulate to hours and days, time we’re not spending living our lives.” So many of us have measured our lives in tenths, quarters, or other time increments. What’s the difference between measuring our lives in billable hours or coffee spoons? (See T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.)

Perhaps that’s why the term “re-direction,” rather than retirement, makes sense. As we exit stage left or stage right, we’re not withdrawing from the world, merely redirecting our knowledge and skills. Coffee spoons or billable hours will not be the measure of the rest of our days. We will be living our lives.


old lady lawyer elderly woman grandmother grandma laptop computerJill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for more than 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.