August 09 National Newsletter   What Comes After Partnership – Achieving an Extended Career   Written by   Hugh Davies and Norah Breekveldt Macfarlan Lane

Meet Hugh Davies Managing Director     Meet Nora Breekveldt Director

 

What Comes After Partnership – Achieving an Extended Career

 

Introduction

When the time arrives for a partner to contemplate transition from a fully absorbing, highly paid occupation to something else, a number of opportunities and challenges arise – some going to the core of self-definition. This is a very significant time, but often partners are poorly prepared for transition.

In our view, people in their fifties and sixties still have 20 or so years of active living ahead of them, and working on the design and implementation of new “careers’” to follow regular employment is a necessary and valuable investment of time.

Time and guidance should be sought for taking stock and to support building a new portfolio of activities that rest on proven gifts and talents. A new “portfolio career” is often an ideal pathway, and might comprise directorships, consultancy (perhaps back to the firm), opening a boutique practice or joining one, taking on full or part-time general counsel roles, or moving into new and very different ventures.

Achieving these outcomes is not easy. They take time and require experienced advice.

 

The Long Road to Partnership

The path to partnership in a law firm requires a significant professional investment – in gaining a law degree, then post-graduate qualifications, maintaining professional credentials, developing specialist expertise management and revenue generation capability, and investing long hours demonstrating tenacity and commitment.

Partnership is also the culmination of significant personal investment. Getting to this point has required building extensive professional skills and knowledge, coming to grips with hard work and the development of a wide array of effective working relationships.

For many, the role, and the journey behind it, is self-defining – in terms of lifestyle, personality, how most hours in the day are invested and even in how the family has been asked to accommodate the requirements of the role. In fact, the pressure on family lives in the pathway to and through partnership is often itself an issue, with more than a few partners working through relationship tension or break-downs and the creation of new families to support them.

 

Looking Over the Cliff’s Edge

For many partners, reaching the peak in a practice has its own rewards – partnership bestows status, delivers high income, provides a comfortable lifestyle and for some, grants the opportunity to contribute to shaping the firm into the future. It is enervating and intensely rewarding to be one of the top team: a player amongst high performing, albeit competitive peers.

On the other hand, sometimes early in the journey, but more often later, some partners start to question where and how an alternative working life might be brought about: whether the costs and benefits are in balance, and whether it is possible to reinvent themselves. Others don’t even dare contemplate such thoughts – being caught up in the daily and monthly pressures of holding their own at the top of the firm.

But those who do open this doorway in their thinking then face some stretching questions to contemplate based around: “How can I define myself and my vocation in another way, after all that I have put into achieving the current definition of myself?” or “How on earth can I bring these things about whilst I am so busy and stretched in this life?”

Others may have similar questions imposed on them rather more quickly and in an unwelcome manner – perhaps by an unexpected tap on the shoulder, or through a debilitating process of performance discussions over a year or two, culminating in a “retirement” outcome, marked by a farewell dinner – or through demands placed on them by family considerations.

 

Stepping off the Cliff

Transitioning to something else is a very significant and challenging undertaking. In the absence of interesting new areas of activity, it can feel like facing a fairly uncertain world – stepping off a cliff into a void of inactivity and rapid decline.

There are many factors and potential risks that preserve the status quo for partners and keep them away from the cliff’s edge, including:

• Attractions in the role
• Fear about what might lie beyond
• Disinclination to go through the process of change
• Lower income post-partnership
• Loss of status
• Personal re-definition
• Peer reactions

But once this line of thinking is begun, several related issues also surge behind, such as:

• How do I move out?
• Who do I talk with?
• Will I lose face with my peers or will I be sidelined; in particular, will talking about moving on or guiding a fresh career signal weakness or lack of commitment to the firm or the profession?
• How do I keep my mind active and still feel rewarded?
• Can I afford to step off the platform financially?
• What if it doesn’t work out?

 

Reaching for the Parachute

The parachute to a safe landing can have many different canopies, colors and prices including (and sometimes in combinations):

• Starting up or buying into a boutique law practice
• Joining others in another practice
• Consulting back to the firm
• Landing a General Counsel role
• Moving to the bench
• Taking on a senior regulatory role
• Returning to study, perhaps something totally unrelated
• Seeking directorships
• Embarking on community work
• Following a passion for something not remotely associated with work or the law
• Smelling the roses or flying a kite

The big question is – which one is the right choice?

 

How to Make the Right Choice

The most common strategies used to assess options and make successful choices tend to be a blend of the following:

• Assume responsibility

- Ideally redefining or extending careers is an openly discussed element of the firm’s repertoire of benefits, and individuals enroll in such a program as their own choice well ahead of the event. But if this benefit is not on the table, build your own plan.

• Plan

 - Redirecting careers can take time so start early. Ideally the process commences well before the partnership finishes. Directorships, for example, often only arise when someone steps down from a board, and that does not happen all that often. Then, being in contention at the right time, with the right blend of experience needed by the board and the right relationships built, takes more time and usually “experienced advice.”
- Starting up or buying into a boutique law practice usually requires care, due diligence and a thoughtful commercial appraisal of the venture.
 - Many senior appointments follow a period of active networking, research and building relationships – they don’t just arise at a time of an individual’s choice.

• Consider

 -  “What defines me, my personal values, my aspirations, the alternatives and goals which are important for me and my family for the next two decades of living?” “What are any self-limiting beliefs and unrealistic beliefs I may have?” “How do I achieve balance in this next life: time to perhaps rebuild and strengthen important relationships with those near to me?”
 -  Building a picture of professional gifts, talents, capabilities and achievements.
 -  Prepare a checklist of factors that are essential, desirable and those that you must avoid in making any future choices
 -  Gather intelligence by reading voraciously about what is going on in the sector, industry or discipline you may wish to pursue.

 

• Ask

-  Engage the family in the journey
-  Co-opt the people who are important to you (professionally and personally) around their perceptions of your strengths, weaknesses, gaps and vulnerabilities
-  Seek comprehensive financial advice on a range of options
-  Identify individuals you know who are following a direction that interests you, and interview them – ask them about their journey and discoveries along the way, their insights into the pathways towards desired outcomes, and how these are typically won.

• Articulate

-  Prepare and rehearse statements about who you are, what you can offer, your career aspirations, so they flow smoothly when opportunities present themselves
-  Prepare a marketing plan for yourself. Many partners will have done substantial marketing as part of their role, but typically they are marketing a technical expertise with the firm’s brand. Some suggest that now the challenge is to identify a personal brand and create a marketing strategy for it
 -  Prepare tailored resumes and short summaries for different prospective audiences.
 

• Act
 

-   Prepare a business plan
-  Test commercial ideas and business concepts so that the business venture to be started or entered into is carefully assessed, likely to succeed and risks are managed.

• Reflect

 -  Put time aside each day to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, what you should keep doing and what you should stop doing.

 

Travelling solo is tough. The confidential support of an objective and skilled coach to engage you in thoughtful dialogue, present unique insights and provide a reality check for ideas, will greatly improve your chances of landing safely and successfully.

 

3 Tips for Knowing When You’ve Safely Landed

In our view, a fulfilling outcome is one where a new definition of self is built, or realized, and where the individual is balanced, enthusiastic and applying intellect and energy to new areas of activity.

At a minimum the partner will have left the firm with dignity and professionalism. Ideally, there will be an ongoing relationship with the firm. Consultancy and other services are delivered back to the organisation, the ex-partner has remained a part of a valued alumni and the firm is an important part of his or her ongoing network.

Usually, the portfolio of activities has been built steadily and sequentially, most often with one element as a key platform and others as contributory parts. Financial and commercial risks have been contained and future retirement income has not put at risk in the new ventures embarked upon.

Hugh Davies, Managing Director

Norah Breekveldt, Director
Macfarlan Lane

Macfarlan Lane provides career transition and career development services, and offers programs designed specifically for partners in law firms. Contact us on telephone 1300 852 788 or through our website www.macfarlanlane.com.au