Nearly A Moose wrote:I have nothing to offer other than my thanks for posting this thread and for the regular updates. I'm a big law senior associate (this far happier with my experience than you seem to have been with yours), am cautiously optimistic about my advancement prospects, and very interested in learning what the financial picture and mechanics will look like. Would love to be in a position to stay in this line of work for exactly as long as I enjoy it and to punch out the moment that changes. So, this thread has been very instructive - both seeing what your financial picture looked like when you retired and what you've done.
If I make a comment from (late-ish) muddle age and having quite a few friends who are partners in law firms.
These things are a lot more fun in the prospect.
When you are 55, have been a partner for 25 years, things will probably seem a bit different:
- there will have been firm mergers, and walkouts, and being a partner means getting to be an (often unwilling) participant in the politics. You'd think it would be about what you bill, and that's it, but alas life is never so simple. It's not just the work you do, it's the politics of the organization (this is hardly unique to law firms). Measuring what counts as success for partners is not simple, and it gets less simple as the organizations grow.
Some measure of this might be what being a partner in a Big 4 accounting firm meant, say 30 years ago, vs. now. You take a lot more orders, now.
Law, like any other field, is in huge flux. It won't in 25 years be what it is now.
- there will be some clients you enjoy working with, and who value your services. But it's likely the majority will let you down on one, or both, of the criteria. It gets old doing stuff either for people who are jerks or behaving like jerks. (My GP is in their late 50s, and has similar views about their clients-- some have a grievous sense of entitlement (remember, this is in the land of socialized medicine)).
- if your practice is litigation oriented that will change you-- I've never met a litigator who wasn't oriented towards debating every point, negotiating everything. Corporate lawyers are similar (on the negotiation point).
- the finiteness of life will seem more present. Your own health will not be as good as it is in your 20s (for 90% of us) and you may have acquired some incurable health issues (that shock, when you have a chronic issue rather than an acute one-- I literally had not been inside of a hospital except for a broken arm and a cut, in over 25 years). More importantly, you will have friends who have incurable illnesses, and may already have died.
None of this is to put you off doing a job you love. Just remember, in the normal season of a man or woman's life, your perspective will change. I have little doubt BigLawSurvivor was top of his game, and felt that way, for many years, even decades. If you read back from the beginning, it was quite hard for him to let go-- for me, it was when he said how great it would be if someone else made the decision for him, that it was clear he had to let go.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.
Ecclesiastes was a wise man
I've known a lot of people who wanted out of law-- people with seemingly successful and prestigious practices, good lifestyles, interesting work.