We all come to a time when it is time to take stock. During my years at three major law firms, I barely remember any attorney there who was late into his or her sixties. The hours are demanding and grueling. If the attorney is not that good, he or she would not still have been there past the early forties anyway. The firms are not shy about handing out walking papers because long lines of applicants await a chance at those same high-paying jobs. Moreover, because those lines of vultures are so long, and those applicants are so hungry, the pressure on those with the jobs is intense because “One wrong move, and out you go.” But unlike the aphorism: “and do not turn the lights off, nor close the door behind you, because your replacement is sitting in the reception area ready to pounce in the moment you leave.”
So, if the weaker attorneys are gone by their forties or fifties, that would leave only the strong ones to be there into the sixties. But the strong ones make boatloads of money, in the many millions, and the cost-benefit analysis weighing the hours and pressure versus the opportunity to retire with millions and while still in reasonably good health leads the rest of them to retire by their early sixties. Among the few elders still hanging around at the mega firms, there are only three types of exceptions:
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