Let’s face it, we are getting old. By “we” I mean America’s lawyers. And by “old” … well, we’ve all known what that means ever since we stopped adding the words “and a half” when asked our age. When I was a pre-schooler, and someone asked me my age, I would proudly announce “5 and a half!” But now that I’m 62, believe me, I don’t say, “I’m 62 and a half.”
The truth is that the face of the American legal profession is getting wrinkled, not to mention sagging.

According to statistics I?learned at a recent ABA seminar,1 in 1980, 36 percent of America’s lawyers were under the age of 35; 52 percent were ages 35 to 64; and 12 percent were 65 or older.

By 1990, the number of young lawyers had dropped, with only 26 percent of the bar being under the age of 35. A whopping 64 percent were middle age, 35 to 64.

By 2000, the American Bar was getting even older, with only 19 percent of America’s lawyers being under the age of 35, and 70 percent being between 35 and 64.

And now, as law school applications continue to drop like the Atlanta Braves on a West Coast road trip, only 13 percent of America’s lawyers are under the age 35, with 74 percent age 35 to 64.

And what is the significance of age 64, you ask? Well, nearly 50 years ago, the Beatles sang, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”   

Paul and Ringo are long past the age of 64, and George and John didn’t even make it to 64.

If this trend continues, by 2020 every lawyer in America will be Medicare-eligible. And by 2040 every lawyer in America will be … dead. To paraphrase a line from Mark Twain, Atticus Finch is dead. Perry Mason is dead. And I’m not feeling so good myself.

These days, the kids aren’t going to law school, and we old lawyers aren’t retiring.

Soon we lawyers will quit filing briefs and start filing Depends, as courthouses start resembling nursing homes.

No doubt about it, the American legal profession is no longer “legally blonde.” We are now “legally gray.”

Elle Wood and even Bruiser have their hair colored these days.   

Well, as a former brunette who is now a blonde, I am not concerned about being legally gray. As my old mentor, General Al Harvey, told me years ago, every lawyer needs two things to be a success: gray hair and hemorrhoids. … A lawyer needs gray hair to make him look distinguished, and hemorrhoids to make him look concerned.

And so my fellow lawyers, in the words of the great legal philosopher Robert Browning, grow old and blonde along with me! The best is yet to be!

In the words of Justice Tennyson, though much is taken, much abides, and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved judges and juries, that which we are, we are … one equal temper of heroic lawyers, made weak by billable time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield!
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I am headed to court, so I need to reinsert my dentures.

Note

1. Statistics taken from lectures heard during the American Bar Association Annual Meeting in Boston in August 2014.

BILL HALTOM is a shareholder with the firm of Lewis Thomason. He is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association and a past president of the Memphis Bar Association. Read his blog at www.billhaltom.com.