Trends and Analysis on Significant Issues Related to Law Firm Transitions, Partner Departures and Dissolutions

The best risk management approach for partner departures is to prevent the right partners from wanting to leave the firm in the first place. For the others, well, they should go.

Law firms have a range of options to reduce the likelihood of partner departures and to ethically and thoughtfully protect the firm when they occur.

Succession planning for your law practice is more than just prudent preparation. It is imperative to protect client interests, is good business, and protects the value of one of your most significant assets.

In a year full of law firm transitions, departures, and dissolutions, more change is surely on the horizon. This is still the perfect time to add a critical item to your list: Set the goal of reviewing your law firm’s risk management in a systematic way this year.

Law firms are not entitled to future profits from the firm’s clients as an ongoing property right, but this does not mean that the law firm can’t do anything to protect themselves in the event of a departure.

While it is a good practice for any law firm to periodically assess its exposure to potential partner departures, the pandemic’s impact on law firms has made this task more important than ever.

Does your firm have Non-Equity Partners?  Of Counsel, Consulting, or Contract Attorneys? All of the above? What is the nature of their relationship with the firm, and how are they compensated?

As the legal industry continues to adjust to life during a pandemic, things are still changing every day as law firms make economic and other adjustments to their traditional ways of doing business.  And all this change is likely to lead to even more change.  As a result, we will continue to see law firm […]

As the legal industry continues to adjust to life during a pandemic, some law firm transitions and transformations inevitably will lead to law firm closures and dissolutions. But is dissolution always the best option? And will its partners and clients be protected?

We read the news daily of law firms – big and small – announcing cutbacks, furloughs, layoffs, reductions in salaries, and distribution freezes. Every industry has been feeling the impact of this global pandemic, and the legal industry is no different. As lawyers who inherently crave predictability, it is difficult to conceive of when and […]