The torch is being passed to a new generation of lawyers — and the older generation knows it. In a candid column for Above the Law, a veteran attorney reflects on how aging lawyers are confronting exhaustion, lost professional networks, and now the added demand of AI competency, as the legal profession’s landscape shifts under their feet.
The torch passes to a new generation of lawyers (Credits: Above the Law)
The author recalls President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address on January 20, 1961, in the bitter Washington cold, and the excitement of a new generation taking charge. Almost a decade ago, he wrote that while some lawyers proclaim they will never retire, most lawyers of “dinosaurian vintage” eventually get tired — tired of the endless demands of clients, the nonstop requirement of billables, receivables, and collectibles, the endless routine of business development, and of explaining to junior lawyers why their “great case” isn’t so great.
Now, nearly ten years later, a new item has been added to the list: the need for competency in AI and its many tendrils.
Lawyers aging out as contacts and clients disappear
For early boomers, the professional contacts cultivated over entire careers are no longer where they once were. General counsel and higher-ups in corporate legal departments have retired, been pushed aside in corporate acquisitions — “riffed,” as the columnist puts it — or passed away. Those contacts are no longer regarded as viable sources of business. “They were here today and are now gone, good while it lasted,” he writes. “Now, who to jawbone for business?”
It is a portrait of an industry transition that is quieter than any headline but no less decisive: the people who once ran the room are watching the room change around them.
The passing the torch moment for the legal profession
“We dinosaurs may think that we are still in charge, but if we are, it’s not for much longer,” the columnist concludes. For those at the end of the boomer period — already in their sixties — the message is plain: the landscape of lawyers has changed, if not already changed.
What makes this generational handoff different from past ones is the AI competency demand layered on top of everything else. Newer lawyers are entering a profession where artificial intelligence is reshaping research, drafting, and client expectations — while the veterans who built their practices in an analog era must either adapt or step aside. The torch isn’t just being passed; the nature of the torch itself has changed.
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Source: Above the Law — read the full story there.
