Time to go?

Generational change is an ever-present issue for most law firms: not just how to manage a new generation of lawyers, but how to deal with succession. You cannot do better than read Luke Johnson in his Entrepreneur column in the FT, Learn to tame the beast, ambition, and in particular his conclusion,

. . . we must each know our limit, and resist the urge to overreach. Ambition is a ravening beast that must be kept in check, because even if we do not all formally retire, one day every one of us has to surrender. Better to go with dignity and grace than have the booty snatched from our enfeebled grip because we clung on too long.

I may not hang this in poker work above my desk, but perhaps I should.

S words

Succession and Strategy: two words that most lawyers do their best to avoid. Succession because it implies mortality and loss of control; and strategy because it asks us to consider a horizon somewhat more distant than the end of the partnership year. We ignore them, however, at our peril. One of my favourite blogs is Jordan Furlong’s Law 21- Despatches from a legal profession on the brink. It may be Canadian but what applies that side of the water does this side as well. See Jordan’s post Surving a succession crisis.