🔒Maine law firms are looking to a new generation of managing partners

It is an often-repeated statistic that Maine is the oldest state in the country when measured by median age of 45 and a major percentage of population over 65. Still, the real-life consequence of that fact is that a relatively large proportion of our workforce is made up of baby boomers.

As more workers move toward retirement age, the general workforce and leadership roles need replenishment. That is becoming true as three Maine law firms, including Brann Issacson, Dentons and Preti Flaherty, bring on a younger generation to take over higher-up roles.

“The crisis we are hearing about with the rural bar, especially in Maine, is that attorneys in small towns are increasingly retiring with no one to take their place,” says attorney Stacy Stitham, who is 44 and took over as managing partner of Lewiston-based Brann & Isaacson in July.

A leader looking to apply and hone her own skills

Stitham says Brann & Isaacson is fortunate enough to have attorneys whose ages range from their 20s to 70s, with a range of energy and institutional knowledge and experience. So the time has been ripe for a leadership transition.

“We have recently added another partner in his 40s to the managerial group and have placed other junior partners in firm leadership roles,” Stitham tells Mainebiz in an email. “Personally, I feel lucky to be a part of a firm with a stratified workforce and leadership structure.”

As a leader, she says her style is to identify and encourage leadership qualities among her colleagues and provide them with opportunities to develop and deepen those qualities in an area of particular practice area.

“By way of example, some of my partners are innate marketers. Some have strong analytical skills,” says Stitham. “The firm benefits from fresh ideas and enthusiasm by identifying talent and interests and providing outlets for those talents and interests.

“As for myself, I hope to apply and hone my skills — which include formidable (some would say annoying) organizational talents. I may have missed my calling as a project manager,” she continues.

While Brann & Isaacson continues to expand its leadership team, Stitham says the crisis she hears about with the rural bar, especially in Maine, is that attorneys in small towns increasingly retire with no one to take their place. As of recently, geography has mattered in terms of the firm’s physical location.

Maine firms with brick-and-mortar locations in Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, or elsewhere competed to hire entry-level and lateral attorneys attracted by Maine’s quality of life. However, Stitham says, Brann & Isaacson also has to compete with larger out-of-state firms interested in setting up a remote satellite presence in Maine to attract or retain talent.

“There is a loss of rural practitioners as baby boomers close their offices, and fewer and fewer young law school graduates are relocating to fill their place,” says Stitham.

Brann & Isaacson, which is based in Lewiston, has a Portland office in the Old Port neighborhood.

“As someone who grew up playing on the floor of my family’s small-town practice in Dover-Foxcroft, I feel this acutely,” Stitham says, adding: “[That] has led to the existential question of how other law firms located 50, 100, or 150 miles away can serve the ongoing needs of rural communities.”

Fresh perspective

At Dentons Bingham Greenebaum, a law firm with offices in nearly 100 countries, Andrew Helman, the managing partner of the Portland office, says that having younger partners is important for law firms.

Helman, 45, told Mainebiz that bringing on talented partners in their 30s and early 40s adds fresh perspectives and allows the partners to serve clients at the firm for many years to come.

“Hannah King, Chad Higgins, Kevan Lee Deckelmann and myself here in Portland,” he says. “We are all partners under the age of 50.”

As law firms begin to see more lawyers move toward retirement, lawyers from younger generations now have more opportunities to lead.

“The transition to retirement by these veteran lawyers is lining up with the time in the careers of Gen X and millennial lawyers when they are ready to step into leadership roles,” says Helman. “Lawyers who have practiced for 10 to 20 years have a lot of great experience to lean on and also have decades left to continue to grow their careers.”

Over the last 10 years, the law firm has been more intentional about providing leadership opportunities for younger lawyers across the office. Dentons has been seeking talent to assist the team and serve its clients wherever needed, whether here in Maine, across the U.S., or across the globe.

Each year, the firm welcomes entry-level associates who have just graduated from law school and are sworn into their respective bars. It also brings on young laterals — those who have been practicing for a handful of years — as well as more seasoned lawyers.

“It is important to have the right mix of lawyers to meet the needs of clients,” says Helman. “At Dentons, we value diversity on our teams, including diversity in age. We know that our clients benefit from working with a team that is made up of people from different backgrounds and who have lived different experiences.”

Hiring for the future

At Preti Flaherty, the firm has been engaging in a measured, orderly intergenerational transition process that has seen many firm management responsibilities, decisions and key client relationships transitioned to a newer generation of partners.

Michael Smith, 42, who took over as managing partner in July, says his transition was possible due to the critical mass of relatively young, ambitious and increasingly successful partners. On the other hand, the firm had senior partners who were proud of the firm they had built and wanted to see it continue to thrive.

“Everyone had the same goal and that allowed us to work together across generations to make a successful transition happen,” says Smith. “Firms that aren’t building for the future and ensuring that younger attorneys know that they belong and that their views about firm management are valued are likely to have real difficulty in meeting the shifting needs and demands of the broader business and legal climate.”

Smith says at Preti, they are hiring for “now” and for the future — it is willing to invest in someone at an earlier stage of their career who shows great promise. That has resulted in several people coming to the firm at a relatively young age and quickly climbing into the partnership ranks.

“We want Preti to have successful and professional content attorneys who span multiple generations because that results in a wide array of skills, experiences, and perspectives that we can offer to our clients,” says Smith. “Many clients want to hire a lawyer with whom they feel a connection. Often a successful, ambitious young business leader wants a successful, ambitious young lawyer sitting next to them at the table.”

Smith says that as a relatively young partner who was working his way up through the ranks not very long ago, his mindset is still that of someone on his way up career-wise and is always thinking about the future.

His top priorities are to ensure that the firm continues to be a firm where up-and-coming partners know that they will be given the support, encouragement and autonomy needed to grow their practices. Every important decision the firm makes is geared not just toward the next year or two but also towards the next 10 or 20 years.

“Law firms have to continually evolve in order to thrive and grow,” says Smith. “To be successful in the long run, a firm needs to have a balance of established partners who are well-known in their field and newer, up-and-coming partners who will help the firm thrive in the future.

“Many firms have plenty of the former but fail to support and retain the latter — I am living proof of the fact that Preti is a firm that understands the importance of fostering the professional growth of younger attorneys who have real potential and making sure the partnership door is open for them as soon as they’re ready.”