Succession Planning: The Conversation No One Wants to Have

Succession planning is one of those topics everyone agrees matters and almost nobody schedules. There is always something more immediate to deal with, and talking about retirement, ownership changes, or what happens when a key person is suddenly unavailable is rarely anyone’s favorite meeting.

The problem is that waiting creates its own risk. And that risk isn’t just operational. It’s relational.

A partner can spend 20 or 30 years building a practice, but if the client relationships, institutional knowledge, and leadership responsibilities all stay with that one person, the firm hasn’t really built much protection around what they created. When that person eventually leaves, the firm isn’t just replacing an attorney. It may be trying to preserve an entire book of business at the same time.

The Topic That Never Makes It onto the Agenda

Succession planning requires time, intention, and some uncomfortable conversations. Firms have to talk about things like retirement timelines, leadership transitions, compensation, client handoffs, and what happens if somebody’s plans change unexpectedly.

It is easy to keep pushing those conversations to next quarter because nothing is technically wrong today. That is also what makes succession planning different from a lot of other firm initiatives. By the time there is an obvious problem, you have usually lost the luxury of time.

A relationship that took 15 years to build cannot realistically be handed to another attorney in someone's final 90 days at the firm.

That doesn’t mean every partner needs to walk into a meeting tomorrow with a retirement date. It does mean firms should have enough visibility into their key people, clients, and leadership roles to know where they have exposure.

Succession Planning Is More Than Disaster Coverage

Firms sometimes have a plan for what happens if an attorney is unexpectedly unavailable and assume that covers succession. It doesn’t.

Disaster coverage answers an immediate question: Who can pick up the work?

Succession planning asks a harder question: Who can eventually own the relationship?

Those are very different things.

Another attorney may know the matter and be perfectly capable of doing the legal work. That does not mean the client knows them, trusts them, or views them as someone they would call when the next issue comes up. That trust has to be developed before the transition happens. It comes from being in meetings, understanding the client’s business, handling difficult conversations, and becoming part of the relationship over time.

The same applies internally. A managing partner may have another attorney who could technically take the title tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that person understands the firm’s financials, vendor relationships, personnel issues, history, or all of the other things the managing partner has accumulated over the years.

Succession is really about creating depth before you need it.

The Client Relationship Is Usually the Biggest Risk

One of the easiest places to see succession risk is in client relationships. Take a long-standing client where one partner has handled almost everything for years. They know the general counsel, understand the personalities involved, know how the client likes to communicate, and probably have years of context that never made it into a matter file. If nobody else at the firm has been brought into that relationship, there is a problem.

There is also risk on the other side. Maybe the partner isn’t going anywhere, but the general counsel retires. If that GC is the only meaningful relationship the firm has inside the company, the next person who takes that role may have their own lawyers and their own relationships. A client that felt secure for 15 years can suddenly become a very different situation.

That is why good succession planning should create multiple relationships on both sides. The firm should know more than one person at the client, and the client should know more than one person at the firm.

Start Bringing the Next Person Into the Room

This is probably one of the simplest things firms can do, and it is often underused: start bringing younger attorneys into client conversations before there is a reason to transition the relationship. Bring them to meetings. Let them participate in strategy discussions. Include them at client dinners or industry events when it makes sense. Give them ownership over part of the conversation instead of having them sit there taking notes. There is a big difference between a client being told, “This is the attorney who will be taking over my matters,” and a client thinking, “I’ve worked with her for five years. She knows us.”

The second version is where you want to be.

It also creates opportunities for the next generation at the firm to build relationships with the next generation at the client. A younger attorney may naturally develop a relationship with a deputy general counsel, legal operations professional, or another person who could eventually have greater responsibility inside that organization. None of that has to feel like a formal succession process. In fact, it usually works better when it doesn’t. You are simply building a broader relationship around the client instead of leaving everything dependent on two people.

There Is More Than Client Knowledge at Risk

The other piece firms tend to underestimate is how much information lives in people’s heads. An experienced attorney might know why a client wants bills presented a certain way, which executive needs to hear about an issue early, what happened during a difficult matter six years ago, or why the firm stopped handling something a particular way.

A file may tell you what happened. It usually doesn’t capture all of that context. The same thing happens with firm leadership. There are often people who know why certain policies exist, how a vendor relationship evolved, what has been tried before, or how particular internal issues are usually handled.

When those people leave without transferring that knowledge, the firm ends up relearning things the hard way. Part of succession planning should simply be identifying where the firm has too much knowledge concentrated in one person and figuring out how to spread it out.

Make Sure the Firm Isn't Working Against Itself

Compensation can complicate this too. If a partner is heavily rewarded for origination or personally controlled revenue, asking them to start giving pieces of a client relationship to someone else can create a very real conflict. The firm may be saying it wants succession while its compensation model rewards the exact opposite behavior. That doesn’t mean the answer is to overhaul the entire compensation system. It does mean firms need to think through how attorneys are treated when they spend years developing someone else to take over an important relationship.

If you want people to transition clients well, there has to be some incentive to do it well. The same goes for the successor. Simply putting someone's name on a succession plan is not development. They need exposure to the client, the business side of the practice, leadership decisions, and the other responsibilities they will eventually be expected to handle.

Where to Start

Succession planning can become overwhelming when firms try to solve everything at once. A better starting point is to look for concentration.

Start with the firm's largest or longest-standing client relationships. Who really owns each relationship today? Who else knows the client? If that attorney was unavailable tomorrow, who would make the call? More importantly, would the client know who that person was?

Then do the same thing with leadership and important internal responsibilities. You will usually start seeing the gaps pretty quickly. From there, the plan can be practical: identify the people who need more exposure, bring them into the right conversations, document the knowledge that matters, and give the transition enough time to happen naturally. That is succession planning. It does not need to start with a 40-page document.

The Real Goal

Succession planning isn't about pushing senior attorneys out the door. Done well, it is almost the opposite. It gives them time to protect what they spent years building. Firms that handle transitions well usually started long before the transition was necessary. Client relationships were shared. Future leaders were given opportunities to lead. Important knowledge was passed down instead of walking out the door.

The goal is not to make any individual attorney replaceable. It is to make sure the value they created can continue after their role changes.

If your firm hasn't had that conversation yet — or you've started it and aren't sure what comes next — Clear Guidance can help put some structure around the process and turn it into something practical.