Adrian Hill is unusual in the legal profession. For one thing, he retired at the age of 53, only a few weeks ago.
"In my experience, few lawyers voluntarily give up practising at any age," says Mr. Hill, who was a senior litigation lawyer with Page Hill in Toronto, and now is executive director of the Legal Profession Assistance Conference (LPAC), an educational and counselling service of the Canadian Bar Association.
Mr. Hill is concerned that too many lawyers work past the point where they're still effective -- in fact, to the point where they can be a liability.
"With the huge baby boom bulge all reaching retirement age in the same decade or so, it's a ticking time bomb. We're going to see all kinds of issues around this, including competency."
That concern also sets Mr. Hill apart from many others in the profession. There are some initiatives under way to provide more information to ease the retirement transition, and some of the bigger law firms have mandatory retirement policies.
"Having a retirement policy is just part of good management, part of succession planning. It helps people realize early on that they need to establish a financial plan for themselves, and it provides opportunities for younger lawyers," says Terry Burgoyne, managing partner of Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, which requires partners to retire at 65, with some exceptions. In a firm such as Osler, where lawyers tend to work in teams, any performance problems would become quickly apparent, he says.
In fact, lawyers with 40 or more years of practice actually have fewer negligence or competency claims made against them, says Caron Wishart, vice-president of claims for Lawyers Professional Indemnity Co. (LawPro) in Toronto. Lawyers of that vintage represent about 3 per cent of the legal population, and about the same percentage of claims over all.
Those practising for about 25 years are around 14 per cent of the total number of lawyers but give rise to 17 per cent of the claims, Ms. Wishart says, most likely because of bigger caseloads.
Mr. Hill believes that regulatory bodies such as the provincial law societies need to pay a lot more attention to the aging legal population. But there have been very few serious complaints to the Law Society of Upper Canada about a lawyer's capacity to perform at any age, says Malcolm Heins, the law society's chief executive officer. There were only two complaints last year and two in 2001.
Regulatory bodies haven't the mandate to impose mandatory retirement or transition planning, he adds. It's up to individual firms to set their own course.
"The profession's regulatory bodies are hiding their heads in the sand not to recognize that this will be a serious issue, just by the sheer demographics," Mr. Hill says. "The reality is that most lawyers will continue working well into their 70s and, if you know a bit about aging, you know there will be diminishing returns on brain power. This is going to lead to claims and lawsuits."
As a young lawyer, Mr. Hill says he knew the rules of litigation backward and forward.
But in his senior years, "I didn't have a clue what those rules of practice were. In areas where I used to be extremely competent, I was no longer competent at all. Imagine how it would be 10 years down the road."
Mr. Hill doesn't believe that just because a lawyer can no longer remember the fine print or stay up on the constant changes being made to the law he or she is of no use in the legal profession. Senior practitioners can provide invaluable strategic and mentoring advice, as he did, but many have neither the opportunity nor the insight to switch from their old specialty, he says.
In contrast to the popular notion that lawyers earn a lot of money and lead a high life, 95 per cent make a relatively modest income, around $70,000 a year, and many don't have a healthy retirement fund set aside, Mr. Hill says. The vast majority of lawyers work in one- to four-person firms, without pension provisions of any kind, he adds.
The reality is that many lawyers keep working past the point of regular retirement age because they have to, Mr. Hill says. Others keep at it because they haven't developed any outside interests and fear that retiring will mean a loss of identity.
At the very least, far more support and education is needed, Mr. Hill says. He has developed retirement planning material for LPAC, which is available on the Web site ( http://www.lpac.ca). It includes advice for those who want to keep their hand in, such as part-time consulting, teaching and pro bono volunteer work for legal services associations.
LPAC also is planning to develop a Web-based course and workshops that can be taught across the country.
The Law Society of Upper Canada is working with LawPro on a booklet about issues related to ending a practice for those approaching retirement, including financial planning advice, to be ready next fall.
That's an important first step, Mr. Hill says, but a lot more has to be done.
"There are going to be complex issues to deal with, from competency to human rights considerations. We may need a screening process to continue practising after a certain point, just as there is for older people to get their driver's licences renewed," he says.
One of the problems that lawyers have in planning for retirement is the nature of law itself. Lawyers typically work flat out, and many feel they don't have time to develop outside interests that would help in retirement, let alone to develop a financial plan.
A few years ago, large Toronto firm Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP offered financial planning courses, but there was so little interest, it dropped them, managing partner Scott Jolliffe says.
Like Osler, Gowling also has a mandatory retirement policy, at age 70, and is also one of relatively few firms to provide some retirement income, which certainly makes ending a career more palatable. Gowlings has what it calls a "retirement benefit," a "modest payment," Mr. Jolliffe says, for five years after leaving the firm.
But is mandatory retirement, especially for self-employed business people, fair at all? For sure, setting a retirement age wasn't easy, Mr. Jolliffe says.
Gordon Henderson, one of the founding partners of the firm, "died working at 84 and was highly respected right to the end," Mr. Jolliffe says. But those who can keep working well into old age are extreme cases, he adds. It can be more a case of flagging energy than fading judgment.
In his own case, Mr. Hill started developing other interests about 15 years ago, including teaching, writing and counselling lawyers on wellness issues.
He retired partly to pursue those interests and partly because "I had to be honest with myself about my declining interest and energy for the law," he says.
"It's like a performer knowing when to get off the stage. It's always best to leave at a high point."