Arizona Attorney - October 2016

employment. If you break your leg, you would immediately seek medical attention, followed by physical therapy to work toward rehabilitation. We try to plan for these types of unanticipated life events by common measures, such as keeping (ideally) a year’s worth of savings and maintaining health insurance. And for most of us, we spend hours thinking through the “what if” scenarios to ensure we are prepared.

But we don’t always think of everything.

Last year, I received a phone call from the hospital. An emergency room doctor told me that my father had unexpectedly passed away. His heart had stopped at his desk while he was on a conference call—not the way any of us envision going.

The months that followed his death were eye opening.

We learned after my father’s death that he had failed to transfer certain assets into the trust and didn’t finalize his estate. Therefore, my family, with the help of some talented attorneys, had to pull together and unravel a lifetime of financial matters. But while this was wildly inconvenient and costly to our immediate family, the lack of succession planning in his business was much more damaging.

At 73 years old, my father ran the day-to-day operations of a large family company. As we discovered, there wasn’t a backup plan or a prepared successor to take his role—despite the fact that there were many employees who relied on the business operations to feed and provide for their families.

My father was always a plan-ner. He would arrive at the airport three hours in advance of his flight time. And he had a 10-year supply of his daily vitamins.

He had once attended the University of Arizona College of Law—likely drawn toward the logic that required professional skepticism. He considered himself a “ realist,” but his grandchildren called him Grumpy. Grumpy was prudent in his spending (unless it was on classic cars) and judicious in his business dealings, and he always provided us with the baseline for the “most conservative” option.

His closet was filled with “backup” clothing items, duplicates of things he already had, only new with tags still attached. He also had replacements for his favorite navy-blue cashmere sweaters, orthopedic shoes, khaki pants and dress shirts. His garage was filled with 20 gasoline cans, he purchased gold as hard currency, and he maintained a somewhat self-sustaining farmhouse in Kansas.

He looked ahead.

But while he was prepared for the end of the world, he was, ironically, not prepared for the end of his life.

Of course, we all know that life is filled with unforeseen events. Often when unexpected circumstances arise, we are able to correct or modify our plans to accommodate these unanticipated changes. We all do that in our own lives.

For instance, if you unexpectedly lose your job, you could work through the steps of preparing your resume and finding new

DAVID FRENCH is the founder and managing director of D. French Advisors, a legal recruiting firm. He and his team strive to be an extension of law firms and corporations, giving candidates a great opportunity to find the right fit. The firm is committed to strengthening the local legal industry by guiding firms to plan for a stable future through both strategic growth initiatives and comprehensive succession planning.

In addition, many other companies relied on the services provided by our family business.

Even though age 73 is not considered old these days, my father should have had plans in motion to ensure there was continuity for both the business and its clients. Many of us do not like thinking about mortality and death, but I now know from experience how important it is to face those difficult realities and to make the decision to plan ahead before unforeseen life events occur.

When we launched our legal recruiting and advisory firm, a big part of our business plan was servicing the baby boomer generation of lawyers, many of whom we knew would be seeking to retire or change their workload in the coming years. We knew our assistance could include anything from finding a new purpose for them within their existing firms, to helping both small and large firms with senior partners navigate succession planning to ensure continuity for both the firm and clients.

During our first few years of business, we also have encountered a number of firms and solo practitioners struggling to recover after encountering adverse situations, such as the death of a partner or even simply not paying attention to rising overhead costs.

Many of these recovery problems are pre-ventable with a little planning. Just as people are advised to create wills to settle their estates, lawyers are encouraged to create succession plans to ensure that both partners and clients will not be left out in the cold when the unexpected occurs. Particularly in