Ask a first-year associate where they see themselves in ten years and they'll give you the answer they think you want: partner, or in-house, or maybe teaching. Ask a tenth-year associate the same question and you'll get something closer to the truth: still here, hopefully, and hopefully not miserable.

The legal career is front-loaded with structure: law school, bar exam, associate years, the partnership track. Then the structure falls away and you're left with a question nobody prepared you for: what kind of practice do you actually want to build?

Designing for resilience

A practice that lasts ten years isn't optimized for any single year. It's diversified across client types, revenue sources, and the people who can do the work. It has margins that survive a slow quarter. It has relationships that survive a lost matter. It has a reputation that survives a bad Glassdoor review.