Retiring Senior Partners: How Firms Can Seize This Golden Marketing Opportunity

From the client’s perspective, the imminent retirement of a relationship partner is problematic because it threatens an interruption in service. Clients know, sometimes from painful experience, that many law firms do not have programs in place for ensuring service continuity when lead partners retire. They also know that Baby Boomers are retiring in droves, and dread having to replace them if no successors are in place. Clients want law firms to spare them this work by proposing successors to step seamlessly into the retiring partner’s shoes.

The moment when a client learns that its relationship partner plans to retire is where succession planning and marketing intersect, creating a platform for developing new business. 

A Lead Partner’s Retirement Gets a Client’s Undivided Attention

It is difficult to get the attention of busy clients. Rainmakers know that the hardest part of bringing in a new client is getting one’s foot in the door. Many general counsels and in-house lawyers have live and technological gatekeepers shielding them from lawyers trying to get onto their radar. This gatekeeping extends to the law firms they have already engaged, because clients often are not open to cross-selling unless there is a specific need in another practice area — and the time and manner of the approach are carefully arranged so as not to look like a sales campaign.

The approaching retirement of a key outside lawyer can change these dynamics. Clients make time to discuss topics that worry them, and retirement succession is a good example. This is because a changing of the guard can provoke anxiety for clients. They care deeply about having the right lawyers in place to protect their companies, but would much prefer not having to do all the work required to find new counsel. Soliciting recommendations from peers, putting out a request for proposals, and onboarding the successful firm to the company’s accounts payable system take a lot more in-house counsel time than outside lawyers think. Clients give their undivided attention to succession proposals that save them this work.

Successor Partners Have the Home Field Advantage

The retiring partner should choreograph the initial client meeting to discuss succession as if it were an interview in a competition for an engagement where several firms are competing. The younger partners proposed as successors should be prepared to talk knowledgeably about their field and the client’s business. The retiring team leader should be ready to propose a timeline for the migration of the client’s work to the new team, and to describe in detail what the transition process will look like. The client must be satisfied that the new lawyers can deliver the same caliber of service and leadership as the outgoing lawyer did.

This is a tricky subject, because the retiring partner has practiced longer — and has more experience with the client — than anyone else in the room. Although clients understand younger partners do not have the same level of experience as the retiring partner, they are often willing to suspend disbelief as long as they get subject matter experts. Provided that the successors have this expertise, the work is theirs to lose, because their firm is the incumbent and they have the home field advantage.

The Retirement of a Senior Partner Is An Opportunity to Strengthen the Client Relationship

Having the client’s full attention makes this initial meeting a golden marketing opportunity. This is the perfect time for the retiring partner to ask the client how the current team is doing, and how service can be improved. The firm’s legal operations director might attend the meeting as part of a proposal to improve efficiencies. A strategically selected partner from a complementary practice group might be present to talk about how the service relationship could be deepened. This meeting is about listening to the client, and encouraging feedback. Approached this way, interacting with a client about the retirement of a lead partner can be about far more than perpetuating the relationship — it is the firm’s chance to strengthen and expand it.

The retirement of a lead partner is a rite of passage for lawyer and client alike. When the relationship is close and has been in place for a long time, this can feel to the client like the end of an era. It is the ideal time to introduce a talented new generation, helping the client think about the senior partner’s retirement as the start of a new chapter in the company’s historical ties with the firm. Landmark relationship-building opportunities like this come along once in a blue moon. A law firm that is savvy and creative in its marketing will use them to full advantage.