Monday morning for a firm’s managing partner brings a request from one of his partners for a sit-down. This is followed by an announcement from the partner that she is leaving the firm to open the Boston office of a larger regional firm.

The partner presents the managing partner with a proposed form of joint letter announcing her imminent departure to all of the firm clients with which she has had significant client contact, including two of the firm’s more significant accounts.

The managing partner is furious, as he brought that very partner on as a second on one of those significant accounts, and worked hard to engender the client’s trust in her. Now, in what he perceives to be an act of disloyalty, that younger partner is threatening to take that hard-earned business to a new firm. The managing partner immediately walks the departing partner out of the law firm and tells her that she can make arrangements later to pick up her personal belongings. He then calls an emergency meeting of the firm’s management committee, and the firm’s partnership agreement is reviewed....

Originally published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly - February 3, 2020.