July 09, 2008
The latest issue of The Complete Lawyer features the theme “What’s Your Exit Strategy?” and includes articles that discuss exits including retirement, job changes, leaving the law, setting up a plan to ensure that your clients will be protected if you’re suddenly unavailable, and more. Here are a few highlights:
Rob Hockett offers simple advice on retirement issues in Through the Looking Glass: Why Many of Your Retirement Assumptions Are Wrong. Retirement may seem lightyears away, but acting as if that’s the case is (in my financially uneducated opinion) a mistake. I appreciated Rob’s article because it provides some benchmarks that anyone can use to begin getting a handle on what needs to happen to make a reasonably comfortable retirement a real possibility.
Sheryl Sisk Schelin gives terrific advice on Leaving Your Employer to Launch Your Solo Practice, most of which is absolutely applicable (with a few adjustments, of course) for leaving one firm to join another.
Facts presented in Carl Cooper’s Women Attorneys of Color Work Under a Sword of Damocles surprised me greatly. Articles over the last few years have demonstrated that women attorneys of color face special challenges in the profession, but I was astonished to read that, according to NALP, 100% of African-American women have left their firm by the 8th year of practice. This article presents some steps toward a solution, though clearly this is a deeply ingrained and multifacted issue.
Stephanie West Allen, Victoria Pynchon, Gini Nelson, and Diane Levin discuss The Human Factor and how lessons learned in mediation and negotiation can be applied more broadly to your life and work.
For those thinking of leaving the practice: Monica Parker presents seven reasons to leave the law in Before You Choose Your Exit Strategy, Choose to Exit. (The article is an excerpt from
her book (to be published this month!) Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law.) And Anne Whitaker offers an insightful self-assessment to help determine not only whether leaving practice is the thing to do but also what might be a better choice.
And finally (for now, anyway), I wrote an article discussing three common challenges law firm associates face (”I made a mistake and I’m not sure I can recover,” “They must not like me,” and “I’m not advancing professionally”) and how both associates and their firms might work to resolve those challenges. I’ve seen lawyers leave when they needn’t have, and I’ve seen them hang on when they shouldn’t have. Should I Stay. . . or Should I Go? is intended to provide guidance in each of those situations as well as in others.
I would like to highlight most every article in this issue, and I may highlight more in a later post. Do yourself a favor and check out all of the fine articles. There’s such diversity among them that you’re sure to find one that speaks to you.
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