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Even when he was on vacation, Brant Bishop was finding it hard to disengage from his work as a high-stakes litigator at Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz.

The torrent of emails was nonstop. Whether he was traveling with his wife and five children, or simply trying to enjoy a weekend, Bishop said he couldn't truly get away from the demands of his caseload and helping to manage a nearly 40-lawyer firm.

"Someone once said the law is a jealous mistress, and I think there's some truth to that when you're practicing at a very high level," Bishop said.

He considered taking a sabbatical from the firm. But Bishop realized he wouldn't be able to relax and decompress if he knew the respite was only temporary. Over the holidays, he contemplated taking an indefinite break from the law.

Brant Bishop.

On Jan. 2, Bishop told his colleagues that he would be resigning from the firm he helped found four years ago. His last day at Wilkinson Walsh's Washington, D.C., office was Jan. 17.

"I didn't leave to go anywhere else except to go home," Bishop said.

Bishop wasn't the only high-profile departure from Wilkinson Walsh. Name partner Sean Eskovitz also left Jan. 17; his exit led the firm to shorten its name to Wilkinson Walsh.

Bishop declined to discuss Eskovitz's reasons for leaving, but he said the two men reached their decisions to leave independently of each other. (Eskovitz has not commented on his motivations to leave.) Bishop said Eskovitz announced his decision to leave Jan. 3, the day after Bishop made his announcement.

Eskovitz and Bishop were each working on several cases at the time of their departure, including a joint case defending the National Collegiate Athletic Association from an antitrust lawsuit. In each case the lawyers filed individual notices of withdrawal; Wilkinson Walsh is still representing those parties.

Bishop said he debated the best time to leave, but quickly realized that there would never be a perfect moment. He said his colleagues supported his decision to leave; the firm in a statement said it wished both Bishop and Eskovitz "the very best as they move forward."

"We appreciate all of Sean and Brant's important contributions to starting and moving our firm forward. Thanks to them and many others, we are in a strong position to remain an industry leading trial boutique developing the next generation of trial lawyers," the firm said.

Name partner Beth Wilkinson declined to comment further.

Bishop said there wasn't a particular case or client or management responsibility—or a point in his personal life—that prompted his departure. Instead, he chalked up his decision to the inability to stop his work from encroaching on his personal time with his family, as well as the "nature of what we do."

"It was very difficult to truly be away from the demands of running the firm, doing the management of the firm and doing cases," Bishop said.

Bishop noted that he's been practicing law for "25 years without any breaks to speak of." Prior to Wilkinson Walsh, he was a partner at Kirkland & Eliis for more than 18 years.

Bishop's plans for the next few months are all personal: spend more time with his family; catch up with his kids, three of whom are now in college, as well as friends; pursue personal interests like reading. He doesn't have a set plan of when he would return to practice—or where—and that's the point.

"I may be too young to be permanently retired, so I don't know if I'm retired in the sense that I'm not going to find something else to do at some point," said the 50-year-old Bishop. "But for now the plan is to not really have much of a plan other than to spend time with family and keep my eyes open."

Bishop added that he wasn't sure of whether he would go back to practicing law. He noted he was fortunate to have saved enough money to avoid any immediate financial pressure to return to work.

"It's felt good to spend time with the family and feel unburdened by the stresses and pressures that I've been dealing with for 25 years," Bishop said.

Occasionally, Bishop likes to look at the mail app on his iPhone, which was once flooded with work messages. Now there's nothing there; it's not connected to any account.

"It's kind of nice to look at something that says no email," he said.

If and when he does decide to go back to law, Bishop said it would be critical for him to have a job that allowed him to spend more time with his family.

He's already planned family trips to Europe and Africa in the coming months. He acknowledged that he could have taken those trips while working at Wilkinson Walsh, but, he said, "I probably would have been looking at my email the whole time."

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