Law Firm Trajectory Has Nine Stages, Followed by a Re-examination of Life Stages
Associates who attain partnership are only one-third of the way through their law firm journey, according to a new white paper by a legal consulting firm.
Successful lawyers go through nine career stages in their law firms, according to the white paper published by Hildebrandt Baker Robbins. There are three associate levels, then six partnership levels that range from early partner to practice leader to managing partner. Next come retirement and an opportunity to re-examine life’s stages, according to the white paper, written by consultant Mark Sirkin, a clinical psychologist.
The paper examines the skills needed to advance from one law-firm stage to the next. “Early partners are generally expected to serve as client contacts, lead broad matters and multipronged tasks, and manage personnel,” Sirkin writes. “But as any seasoned firm partner will tell you, this is merely dipping a toe in the larger responsibility set required of senior firm management.”
The main objective of the “mid-level partner,” for example, is to establish oneself as a force within the firm. The “practice leader,” on the other hand, must look at the practice as a business and be able to sell it to clients.
Even those lawyers who progress to managing partner aren’t done with the journey, Sirkin writes. Lawyers will eventually have to think about retirement or life after the law firm.
“For some it will be life on the golf course, or on a boat, or in Boca, but for many this will not be enough. Everyone has a story of the partner who comes into the office regularly, dressed in full business regalia, well into his 80s or 90s. While these scenarios work for some, they do not work for many,” the paper says.
“Erik Erikson, the famous psychoanalyst, suggested that later-stage psychological development comprised a stage of ‘Generativity vs. Despair’ in which one retrospectively considers the good, the bad and the ugly of one’s life and career. But just as adolescence is a time to re-work the early stages of development, later life may be an opportunity to re-work mid-life stages of intimacy and productivity. It is a chance to usher in a second act that could be as fulfilling, if not more so, than the first.”
