The decision is made and the offer holds up. What is left is a day, and for most lawyers it is the part of the whole move they fear most: what to say, in what order, what you are allowed to have done beforehand, and what the firm you are leaving can do to you once you have said it.
Almost all of it is knowable. Four principles govern a lawyer’s departure, and they reconcile into one sequence. You may change firms. You may prepare to compete while you are still there, and you may not compete. Your clients must be told promptly, and what they do about it is their choice alone. Get the order right and nearly everything else follows.
Written for partners who have accepted an offer. States adopt the Model Rules with variations, and your partnership agreement will add terms of its own. This is the line we hold on every departure we are part of, and it is not legal advice on yours.
A lawyer may prepare to compete while still at her old firm but may not actually compete.
Richard Brock, Win the Talent Game
Before the day: prepare, do not compete
The distinction that governs everything. A partner owes duties of loyalty and care to the partnership until the day she leaves it, and may not compete with it from inside. Preparing to leave is not competing.
You may
- Accept the offer, agree a start date, and plan the dates around it.
- Prepare the Notice of Withdrawal, a proposed joint letter to clients, and a client election form, ready to hand over.
- Work out which clients are yours for this purpose: those with active matters for which you have direct professional responsibility.
- Know your own numbers. Your billings, collections and rates on your own clients are yours to know and yours to tell.
- Talk partner to partner. Conversations between partners about moving are generally treated differently from conversations with people who report to you.
You must not
- Seek any client’s commitment to move before the firm has been told.
- Take anything from the firm’s systems. A client list or a billing printout is the firm’s document, and arriving with one is the fact that gets pleaded.
- Solicit associates or staff before you have left. The rule varies by state, and a move that takes people with it is planned with counsel.
- Conceal a new matter, or slow a settlement so the benefit lands at the new firm.
- Disparage the firm, to anyone, before you leave.
The day
One sequence, and the order is the whole point.
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01The firm hears it first, in person
Before any client hears anything. Bring the Notice of Withdrawal, the proposed joint letter, the client election document, and a plan for every upcoming date on your active matters. A departure that arrives organized is treated as a departure. One that arrives as a rumor is treated as a dispute.
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02The joint letter goes out
To the clients for whose active matters you have direct professional responsibility at the time of notice. Working a matter alongside others with little direct contact does not make that client yours for this purpose. Email is fine, and often better. What matters is that it is prompt.
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03Three options, and the client chooses
Stay with the firm, move with you, or engage a third firm. The letter states plainly that the choice is the client’s alone, and it disparages nobody in either direction. Nobody owns the client. Not the firm, and not you.
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04If the firm will not agree the letter
If a week passes and the firm still will not agree the letter, ABA Formal Opinion 489 says you may write to your clients yourself, as long as you tell the firm the same day. A joint letter is the civilized route, not a veto the firm holds over you.
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05Your duty runs to the last day
Active matters, deadlines, handovers. The fiduciary duty does not end at notice. It ends at departure, and the way you carry the final weeks is the reference the market will hear about you for years.
What the firm may not do to you
Departures go wrong in both directions, and the firm being left has duties too.
The firm must not
- Block you from honoring your obligations to clients.
- Forbid you from announcing that you are leaving.
- Instruct staff not to say where you have gone.
- Withhold a client’s file as leverage. The file belongs to the client.
- Disparage you to clients or to anyone else.
If it does
- Write it down, with dates.
- Do not retaliate, and do not disparage back. The high ground is worth more than the point.
- Keep the client’s interests first in everything you write. Clients notice the difference between a firm acting for them and a firm acting for itself.
- A firm that behaves badly on the way out is telling the next lateral what to expect.
May you?
Eight situations from the weeks around a resignation, asked from your chair. Commit to an answer before you read the reasoning. The ones you get wrong here are the ones you will remember on the day.
We are in the room for this
Every departure we arrange runs on this sequence, with the paperwork ready before the day and the new firm held to the same line. If yours is this month, send us the dates. Nobody hears your name without your say.
Keep reading
Your clients will decide what they do, and the ones who follow you are the ones who were yours. The minimum book myth is about what that is worth. The firm you are joining has a line of its own to hold: what a hiring firm may and may not ask.
The same book, from both chairs
Six pieces drawn from Win the Talent Game. Three for the firm doing the hiring, three for the lawyer deciding whether to move.
For firms
For lawyers
- The Minimum Book MythFor lawyers weighing a move
- Don’t Move AloneFor partners with a team
- The Day You ResignYou are here