Who’s going to be my lawyer when you are gone?

 By John Lakes

Recently, about 25 lawyers and notaries practising on the North Shore gathered for lunch to honour one of our colleagues who is retiring after 42 years of practising law on the North Shore. The youngest person present was in his mid-fifties and the average age in the crowd was about 62. The lawyers were primarily solicitors who are sole practitioners or who practice in small (six members and under) law firms.

We lamented the facts that:

A. when we opened our practices we were all in our 30s or 40s, but now very few lawyers on the North Shore who work as practitioners for the middle class are under 50;

B. the lawyers would like to have a succession plan, but have been unable to find successors;

C. all of the lawyers are busy and felt their practices were “recession proof”; and

D. all of the lawyers are worried about what will happen to their clients once they retire, and in turn when the lawyers advise their clients they are thinking of retiring, many clients are upset that they are losing their lawyer, with no replacement lawyer in sight.

It has been a time-honoured tradition for a lawyer to serve the legal needs of the middle class.

With a few exceptions, the true general practitioner, who provides both solicitor and litigation services, seems to have disappeared. However, there is still a need and there shall always be a need for lawyers to provide general legal services to the middle class. 

In this age of specialty, a general practitioner is looked upon by various groups (including other lawyers) as old fashioned, inefficient, lacking skills or uneconomic. 

The general practitioner has had to adapt to the changes in technology, marketing, management and changes in the law, just like any other member of the legal profession. There is nothing “old fashioned” in most general practitioners’ practices. In fact, some general practitioners are leaders in change.

It took many years for the medical profession to recognize that being a “general practitioner” was a specialty in itself. This discovery, by the medical profession, may have come too late for the members of the public who no longer have a family doctor. 

I think it is time for the legal profession to recognize the value of the general legal practitioners – whether solicitors or litigators – before they are all gone.

General practitioners provide:

A. the bulk of the legal services to the middle class and small business communities who generally do not require specialized legal services from large law firms;

B. a skill-set sufficient to determine the problem or problems of the client and then resolve them, or to refer the client to a “specialist”;

C. the ability to handle the bulk of referrals from the Lawyer Referral Program;

D. the face of the legal profession within their communities;

E. a balanced professional life before “Work/Life Balance” was trendy; and

F. a knowledge of hands on business issues, as they operate a law firm, which itself is a small business.

There is an opportunity for younger lawyers to become part of the succession plan for general litigators and general solicitors. Many of the general practitioners will be retired in the next 10 or 15 years, yet the legal issues faced by the middle class will continue to exist.

After all, not everyone wants to do mergers and acquisitions.

John Lakes, Barrister and Solicitor, Lakes, Whyte LLP.

This article was published in the October 2011 issue of BarTalk. © 2011 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.