Estate Planning

Succession Planning for Lawyers

By Hull & Hull LLP

A recent article in the Ontario Lawyers Gazette discusses succession planning for lawyers with respect to their practice. Lawyers often fail to plan for their retirement or death and often do not set up a formal succession plan for their practice to the determent of their families, clients, and colleagues.

The article states that 41% of practicing lawyers are over 50 years old and 34 % of all lawyers in Ontario are sole practitioners with an additional 29% working in firms of two to ten lawyers. However, often lawyers do not prepare well enough in advance for the winding down of their practice or what will happen to their practice in the event of their death or disability.

The article makes a number of helpful suggestions including:

• Advising sole practitioners to assign another licensed lawyer or paralegal with alternative signing authority for their trust account in the case of an emergency;
• Suggesting that practitioners name a licensed lawyer or paralegal as a limited trustee in their Will for the sole purpose of winding up a practice;
• Advising lawyers that a non-lawyer trustee or attorney pursuant to a Power of Attorney may not be able to deal with some of the issues with respect to winding down a practice;
• Advocating that lawyers communicate with their families, partners, and employees their succession plan; and
• Advising lawyers to plan well in advance (i.e. five years) to maximize their financial compensation.

The Law Society offers A Succession Planning Toolkit and a Guide to Closing Your Practice to assist lawyers. On May 20, 2009, the Law Society will be offering a teleseminar Succession Planning for your Practice  discussing these topics and more.

Thanks for Reading,

Diane Vieira

Full post as published by Toronto Estate Law Blog on May 12, 2009 (boomark / email).