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After 30 years, Dori Hanswirth knew the relationship was over.

She had been through two mergers in her time at the firm, which was called Squadron, Ellenoff, Plesent & Sheinfeld when she joined fresh off a federal clerkship in 1987. By 2010 it had become Hogan Lovells, and she eventually started thinking there might be better places to grow her practice and develop new relationships.

"There came a point that I thought I wouldn't choose to work at the place my former firm had become," she said.

Her ultimate decision to join Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer in January 2018 as a litigation partner was years in the making, but the turning point came when she was asked to go on a recruiting trip to pitch Hogan Lovells to recent law school graduates and realized she wasn't eager to talk about the firm.

"I thought, if I can't be excited to talk about it, maybe I shouldn't be working there," Hanswirth says.

She says she was spurred by a shrinking New York office, changes in management and direction at Hogan Lovells and the idea that she might find a better home—for herself and for a younger partner she had mentored and hoped to see thrive.

Fueled by slowly separating partnerships, mandatory retirement and the desire to write one last successful chapter in a storied career, more and more partners like Hanswirth are becoming late-career laterals and leaving the only firms they've ever known after decades in the same place.

Dori Hanswirth

"These relationships, they are a lot like marriages," Keith Wetmore, a former managing partner at Morrison & Foerster who is now a recruiter with Major, Lindsey & Africa in San Francisco, says. "Just like couples can grow apart, so can law firm partnerships. It isn't necessarily a sudden thing, and it can also be a perfectly rational thing to do."

For many, like Leonard Bernstein, who left Reed Smith in June 2018 after more than 25 years to become a partner at Holland & Knight and co-chair of its financial services regulatory group in Philadelphia, a lateral move is an opportunity to reinvigorate a practice.

"I've run into many colleagues at my experience level or age that have looked at their careers and thought, 'Do I have room for one more energizing change or adventure?'" Bernstein says.

In conversations with several attorneys who spent 20 or more years at one firm only to lateral to another toward their career's end, the reasons varied, but there were several common themes, including the wish to try something new, the desire to keep practicing and the chance to build something again. But none listed money as a primary driver.

"It's hardly ever an issue about more money," Larry Watanabe, founder of legal recruiting firm Watanabe, Nason & Schwartz, says.

Watanabe has been in the legal recruiting industry since 1998 and seen a trend over the past five years or so that suggests making a late-career move is only going to become more common. He estimates that around one-third of all Big Law firms have some sort of mandatory retirement age, which can spur an attorney in their early- to mid-60s to start looking for opportunities to keep working, even if it means leaving their longtime home.

"Firms are drawing tighter lines around retirement," Watanabe says. "Lawyers can be productive into their 60s and 70s."

Richard Scheff, a partner and leader in the Philadelphia office of Armstrong Teasdale, is one of those attorneys. A trial lawyer, he was in a leadership position at his former firm, Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads, for almost 30 years before moving over to Armstrong in September 2018.

"People are working longer," Scheff says. "Firms need to realize that after having worked for 30-plus years and developing those relationships, they aren't going anywhere."

Scheff's move didn't come without trepidation, though.

"For anyone to say they have been at a firm for 25 years and don't have some level of angst over moving to another firm just isn't being truthful," Scheff says. "I can't speak for others, but I put a lot of time, effort and resources in and had success there. I did think I was going to ride out my career there and enjoy another 10 years."

Leonard Bernstein

Scheff says he is a high-energy person who feeds on constant movement. When he realized that Montgomery McCracken's growth trajectory was going to be slower than he would have liked, he started exploring his options.

"The transition has been phenomenal," he says. "I have been fortunate to find a home that really is tremendous and really supportive of the practice. There are cases where there are not always greener pastures."

A firm's strategic direction is often the impetus for a partner's decision to seek change, Wetmore says. He offers an example from his tenure as managing partner at Morrison & Foerster, when the firm decided to reallocate resources away from one practice area and toward another.

"We chose not to grow our trusts and estates practice, so the attorneys left," Wetmore says. "They had between 25 and 30 years at the firm. So we threw them a party. One of them was my personal trusts and estates lawyer. Most people will be adults about it."

Other times, Wetmore says, it does come down to age.

"Firms that have a really institutionalized client base, they have to ask themselves, 'Are these attorneys in their 60s better lawyers than the ones in their 30s?'" he says.

Wetmore agrees with Watanabe that roughly two-thirds of firms have a flexible retirement program at this point, and finding a firm with one can be an important part of an older attorney's search for a new home after so many years.

As for those attorneys who find themselves considering a late-career move, proper planning is critical.

"I tell them, if you want to do this," Watanabe says, "do it when you are 60 or 62. If you wait longer or your practice starts to decline, you're screwed."

On top of a changing work life brought upon by a lateral move, Bernstein says lawyers considering such a decision also need to be prepared for a psychological adjustment.

"Change, by definition, can be scary and intimidating," he says. "For me, as a people person, having mentored dozens and dozens of people over the decades, change is difficult. Change means not working with them anymore, and for me that was and still is challenging."

The consensus among recruiters and late-career laterals is that the growing prevalence of moves like those made by Scheff, Hanswirth and Bernstein is a sign of things to come. Even for those who ultimately decide not to make a move, staying open to the possibility can be rewarding, they say.

"There is no harm in exploring change and considering something," Scheff says. "If you are reasonably successful and like the people around you, there is no reason to change. But life is all about transition and managing transition and exploring. Don't close your eyes to it."

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