Lawyers, like everyone else, want to believe they will live forever. Or at the least, they believe that they will work until they make the decision to retire, and then transition smoothly into retirement. They expect that when the time comes, they will either sell their practices, hire a young lawyer who will eagerly take over their firms, or refer their existing clients to colleagues, and then have a steady stream of referral or residual fees to supplement their Social Security and pension benefits.

For solo attorneys, and many others, this dream is often just a dream. Instead of smooth transitions, they may face sudden illnesses, periods of disability, along with uncertainty that can often overtake the hopeful dreams. Just do a Google search for “lawyers who suddenly died from COVID” and read all the stories. For many lawyers during COVID, they were healthy one day and suddenly sick the next, often with no time to handle their personal affairs, let alone their firms’ futures. Of course, this can happen to lawyers who are suddenly taken ill or who, as we colloquially refer to it, “drop dead.”

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