How To Successfully Sell and Step Away From Your Firm When You Retire
8.8.2025
Attorneys looking to retire and sell their practices have a lot to consider.
The New York State Bar Association recently hosted a webinar to discuss the many factors that go into the successful sale of a law firm, including the personal and financial aspects. Darren Wurz, a financial strategist, managing partner at Wurz Financial Services, and founder and CEO of the Lawyer Millionaire Founders Network, led the presentation.
According to a survey from the Exit Planning Institute, 75% of business owners regret selling.
“Business owners have a lot of their identity tied to their business,” said Wurz. “And it can be a very difficult transition to go from running a business to doing something completely different… A lot of it boils down to being so deeply involved in our businesses that we haven’t really stopped to think about what are our outside interests. Stepping back or scaling back, you really need to think about what is going to fill that 40-hour workweek for you?”
In addition, attorneys may not like how their businesses are operated once they step away.
Wurz said that even if attorneys do not intend to sell their law firm, planning to do so helps strengthen the business and frees up time from managing day-to-day operations.
“If you think about your business through an exit planning lens, it’s going to help you prepare for unexpected events,” he said. “Illness, disability, death. Or maybe you just want to take a month off and live in Italy. It’s going to help you ensure the firm’s continuity – and provide value for your family if something happens to you.”
Wurz added that in most states, non-lawyers cannot own law firms. So planning ahead helps protect relatives who cannot inherit the law firms of their deceased lawyer family members.
Other questions attorneys should ask before retiring concern how they will support themselves. Can their finances sustain their lifestyle in retirement? Does their budget account for future inflation? Or emergency expenses?
“If you retire at 65, you could be retired for 30 years,” said Wurz. “You could live to 95. You need your income to grow because what things cost today – things are going to cost a lot more 30 years from now.”
To that end, Wurz discussed structuring the sale of a firm so that it pays out over time and not all at once. He also recommended having other sources of income, like real estate or investments.
Solo practitioners face unique challenges if they wish to sell or step away from their businesses.
“In terms of exit and transition, generally it’s not a huge windfall financially to sell a solo practice,” said Wurz. “What a lot of solo practitioners end up doing – and is more lucrative for them – is to refer out business and just take on some of the work. A lot of solo practitioners that I’ve worked with, they’ve built their brand up and they’ve built their connections to the point where they’re getting lots of work. And I find some solo attorneys who are busier than they’ve ever been later in their career when they don’t even want to be that busy. So develop some really good referral partners, and you can refer out some of that work for a fee, and you can still collect income.”
Wurz also said that solo practitioners could sell their practices to bigger firms and continue to work with their clients as an of counsel – which would enable them to still earn money but take on fewer administrative tasks.
The program was sponsored by the association’s General Practice Section and its Committee on Law Practice Management. View the full program here.
