I recently spoke at a Pennsylvania Bar Institute program titled “Retirement Planning for Attorneys,” for which Bill Adler of Harrisburg and I were the course planners. We have done this program a number of times, and I have done similar programs for the Pennsylvania Bar Association and various estate planning councils with Lancaster lawyer Dick Greiner. I have spent a lot of time talking with, as well as to, lawyers thinking about retirement, and lawyers who have retired and lived to tell about it. Based on a large number of such discussions, there is a chasm between those approaching or already at retirement ages, but who are still working, and those who have retired.
Although many lawyers plan for and welcome the opportunity to start new activities and “graduate” from full-time law practice, there are a substantial number who respond to my inquiry about their plans with some variation of “I’ll never retire—they’ll carry me out of here”; “If I retire, my spouse will divorce me”; “I love what I’m doing—why would I stop?”; etc. By contrast, lawyers who have retired almost uniformly say: “I’m glad I retired, I would not want to go back to work”; “My days are filled with interesting activities. I don’t know how I had time to practice law.”
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