If Paul McCartney can still sing Helter Skelter at 70, why should lawyers be retiring at 65?
Going into my 27th year of call, and with two kids out of the house and in university, I have more than a passing interest in the concept of “retirement” these days.
Some of those I went to elementary and high school with in the ’60s and ’70s who remained in the tweedier parts of Victoria to teach, or to work in the ranks of the B.C. provincial government, have now retired, and joyfully brag every few weeks on Facebook about doing nothing.
Others seem to be eerily counting down the days, hours, and minutes to their retirement, at which time they’ll start to collect a nice public service pension and golf, travel, and go on cruises 365 days a year (not that there’s anything wrong with nice government pensions, as Jerry Seinfeld might say).
But in a way, it reminds me of Sean Connery looking at the digital clock ticking down on the nuclear bomb in Goldfinger, only less ominous. Golf and cruises till you die? Sounds a little like whitewashed hell to me. Wouldn’t James Bond rather keep disarming nuclear bombs when he retires? And golf? Just like in Goldfinger?
As lawyers, why can’t we do both?
I’m aware that at some Big Firms, the managing partner knocks on your door the day you turn 60, wishes you a happy birthday and requires you develop a succession plan to cheerfully hand over all your clients (you know . . . the ones that took you 30 long years to develop) to the younger partners circling in the hallways like vultures high above an injured zebra on the Serengeti. Another knock comes at 65 when its time to pack your things and go home. Forever. Have a nice life and thanks for your clients!
In such cases, the retiring lawyer agreed to retire at 65 as a condition of partnership with Big Firm, and he (or she) might be nicely compensated for handing over all their clients to the Young Turks and vowing never to practise law again. And the retiring lawyer would also have agreed to a financial penalty if that lawyer had a change of heart and kept practising after 65 across the street with all those clients Big Firm didn’t keep.
The dilemma is the future isn’t quite what it used to be — 65 is only old if you die at 69, like my dad did.
Arguably, 65 is the new 50. This message was reinforced in spades on Nov. 25, when I saw Paul McCartney play in Vancouver. For three straight hours, he belted out “Helter Skelter,” “Live and Let Die,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Hey Jude,” “The End,” and other great songs from the soundtrack of my wayward youth. “Sing the Changes,” a recent song I’d never heard before, could have found a place on Abbey Road or the White Album.
McCartney’s voice was fabulous. His demeanor was youthful. He talked to the audience at B.C. Place as if all 50,000 of us were old friends who had grown up together (which in a way, was true). And if you’ll forgive the boasting, he looked great from our seats, 19 rows from the stage. The seats were so close I could have thrown an apple his way and he would have caught it. And yes, I paid through the nose for them.
But the man is 70. And if he were a lawyer at one of the “forced retirement” firms, he’d have been told to stop working and take up golf five years ago.
He’s an example to all of us that you don’t have to retire just because you’re in your 60s. Or your 70s. And you shouldn’t be forced to retire unless you really want to. In fact, there’s a quote by McCartney: “Retirement is for people who don’t like their jobs”.
Now admittedly, we can’t take this “aging rockers defying retirement” metaphor too far. At the 12-12-12 concert in support of the victims of Hurricane Sandy, the New York Times reported a prospective donor would pledge $1,000 to the cause, but only if 68 year old Roger Daltrey would do up the buttons on his shirt.
But it’s my view that lawyers in their 60s and 70s have more to offer the profession than being gently pushed out of the way to make room for the next generation. Many older lawyers still want to practise. They just want to practise differently and on their own terms, and maybe that means golf, cruises, and law. If they have their own client base and are in a position to spin work around to other lawyers, I suppose they have more bargaining chips to set their own terms for retirement.
So retirement is changing because people in their 60s and 70s are still active and want to contribute. And their contemporaries are still singing.
If we live as long as the newly departed Sitar master Ravi Shankar, who died in December at 92, pushing lawyers out the door at 65 strikes me as a great waste of talent, experience, and wisdom. Ravi was still doing concerts with his daughter Anoushka at 91.
And finally, there’s Vancouver’s own Dal Richards, a crooner from the ’40s, now 95 and still the Big Band King of Swing in this city, lighting up New Year’s Eve in Vancouver for 78 consecutive years and playing regular gigs with the Vancouver Symphony. He still plays every chance he gets, and nobody’s pushing him out the door.
He probably golfs too.
