New Blood: What Happens When Younger Attorneys Take Over for Senior Lawyers?

• Publication year: 2023
• Citation: Vol. 46 No. 3 Pg. 20
• Pages: 20

New Blood: What Happens When Younger Attorneys Take Over for Senior Lawyers?Vol. 46 No. 3 Pg. 20Wyoming Bar JournalJune, 2023

'Succession' on HBO Max (excuse me, '˜Max'), is the most popular television show in America right now. It's all about a family business (an immense one) and whether and how the kids will take over for the dad, an elderly man running the company.

As you might expect, the adult children have very different ideas about how the company should be run. The funny thing is that, while it's not always a family business—though it sometimes is—the same thing is happening in law firms all across the country. Now, there has always been tension between senior managing partners and the junior lawyers who want to take their jobs. And that has been exacerbated over time because lawyers never seem to want to retire; they want to work forever and ever. The by-product of this is that they block all of the younger lawyers from taking on the top job(s) until they themselves are senior lawyers. But the recent pandemic changed things, in that it caused a lot of senior partners to retire—many because they did not want to deal with two effects of the pandemic: work from home and increased reliance on digital technology. That means that over the last few years, a lot of senior lawyers have moved out of leadership roles in favor of younger lawyers. That has continued to happen post-pandemic, as law practice has been irrevocably changed.

This all begs the question: What happens when young(er) attorneys take over from the old(er) ones? Well, there are some reliable beats you can count on:

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