I have been very contemplative of the life span of the American attorney this week. This is for two reasons: 1) I turned 44 and 2) A friend of mine passed away at the age of 55 years old. I have written about loss before, but this week, I wanted to write about us attorneys making the choice to retire at a comfortable age and NOT die at our desks.

            I know we love our jobs and our careers. I know we spent a lot of time procuring our degrees and building our practices. Hey, we ENJOY being attorneys, right? So, I can understand why some attorneys (well….a lot of us) can’t see the prospect of really stopping what we do just because we get to the age where we can legally draw social security benefits. Why not keep the party going, huh? Is that what some of us are thinking who find ourselves working into our eighties? Or is it a financial decision? For those of us for whom it is not a financial decision and the desire to keep on working well passed Medicare eligibility is a conscious one, what drives that decision? I thought the whole point of us working as hard as we do while in the heyday of our practices was for the sole reason at NOT having to do it when we want to transition to retirement. I mean, isn’t that the new cool thing to do now: Financial Independence Retire Early? So why hasn’t the “FIRE” movement hit us attorneys? Or has it??

            I am sorry, but I have not heard of any lawyer purposely retiring prior to the age of 65 years old. I actually haven’t even heard of an attorney even contemplating retiring until they realize they aren’t fit to work anymore. So, the idea of dying at your desk is a very real one for us in this profession. Why is that? And what more, what if you do not want to be resigned to dying at your desk, and want to be more in control as to when you decide to stop practicing? So of course, I started to surf the web for answers and found that the American Bar Association had an article about attorneys and retirement titled “Time to Go. Helping Lawyers Retire with Dignity” located at url: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/bar_services/publications/bar_leader/2007_08/3206/dignity/) last accessed 2/6/2023) While the article doesn’t really talk about why we all too often choose to work past our primes; it does talk about those actions various State Bars take to help those attorneys realize that it may be time to retire for one reason or another. The New York State Bar is lauded for tackling the problem of convincing older attorneys to think about retirement transitions earlier than later. But why do we need to be convinced to leave the practice when we start to experience advanced aging? I thought one of the main purposes of us hustling to be attorneys with (hopefully) a higher earning potential was to have the ability to retire earlier than our parents who had no choice but to work until (and passed) the social security drawing age? Don’t we need our own legal “FIRE” movement? Or at least a retire earlier movement?  Or is the whole portrayal of the greying storied litigator what we are all supposed to aspire to be? But that poor lawyer works all the time! I want to choose differently for myself. Or is there a fear that once we stop utilizing our legal minds at serving clients, then those minds will dull and wither? I don’t view it that way (or at least I hope to high hell not). Just because we choose to retire from the law doesn’t mean that we cannot sharpen our skills within another field where we can ply our attributes. Can anyone say custom made note cards with calligraphy? Or how about a coffee shop?

            Ultimately, the point I am trying to make is that we really need to guard against loving our legal practices to death. Shouldn’t we make our hard work actually work for us and make the choice to retire from the law when we still have the strut in our step and our wits about us? I say yes!