How do you hire an attorney to take over your practice?

When an owner is ready to step back, the transaction has two shapes.

An outright sale packages the practice — or one entire practice area, goodwill included — and sells it to a lawyer or firm that may have never worked with you: one deal, one handover, and clients who meet their new lawyer the week you exit.

Hire-to-buy inverts the order.

You hire the successor first, as an employee, and the sale happens later, once they know the clients and the clients know them.

Hire-to-buy is built from two agreements rather than one: the employment agreement that brings the successor in — hiring an associate covers the rest of that process — and the sale agreement that transfers the practice when the transition period ends.

The employment period is the audition.

The successor learns your files, your clients and your standards; you learn whether they can carry the practice.

Because clients watch the same firm continue, the sale reaches them as a change of lawyer rather than a change of everything.

Screening, pay and onboarding are the same discipline as any attorney hire, and the rest of hiring for your law firm covers them.

One constraint shapes the whole structure, and it comes from the conduct rules rather than contract law: during the employment phase you cannot restrain your successor.

ABA Model Rule 5.6(a) bars lawyers from offering or making partnership, shareholder, operating, employment or similar agreements that restrict a lawyer's right to practice after the relationship ends — the only exception in the model text is an agreement concerning benefits upon retirement.

A successor you hire can walk, and the covenant that would stop them is the one clause the model text will not let you write.

The restraint moves into the sale itself instead: Comment [3] to Rule 5.6 says the rule "does not apply to prohibit restrictions that may be included in the terms of the sale of a law practice pursuant to Rule 1.17."

How Rule 5.6 treats lawyer non-competes is its own subject; the succession takeaway is narrower — alignment in the employment phase, restrictions in the sale.

The sale is where the conduct rules do their heaviest lifting.

ABA Model Rule 1.17 allows a lawyer or firm to sell or buy a law practice — or an area of practice, including goodwill — if the rule's conditions are met.

The conditions our research verified are these: the seller stops practicing, in the area or jurisdiction the sale covers; the entire practice or an entire practice area is sold; clients receive written notice; and fees are not raised because of the sale.

Each condition does real work.

The cessation requirement means the seller of an estate-planning practice is out of estate planning after closing — the rule trades the seller's exit for the client's continuity, not a franchise that keeps operating with the old owner still competing nearby.

The entire-practice-or-entire-area requirement rules out selling selected clients while keeping the rest of the book.

And the fee condition is the rule's own words: "The fees charged clients shall not be increased by reason of the sale."

Now the frame those conditions sit in.

The Model Rules are model texts: the ABA writes them, they bind no one until a state adopts them, and each state's version differs in places — our research could not confirm that frame against the ABA's own pages, and we did not verify how each state's adopted Rule 1.17 departs from the model.

The text that governs your sale is your state's version.

Before you sign a sale — or hire a successor on the assumption the sale will follow — put the deal in front of your state bar's ethics counsel and confirm the conditions your state actually imposes.

The path to ownership runs through one gate first: the buyer has to be a lawyer.

Under the model text, Rule 5.4(b) bars forming a partnership with a nonlawyer if any of its activities consist of the practice of law, Rule 5.4(d) bars practicing in a for-profit professional corporation in which a nonlawyer owns an interest, is a director or officer, or can direct a lawyer's professional judgment, and Rule 5.4(a) bars sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, subject to four listed exceptions.

Under those model provisions, a spouse, an adult child or a longtime office manager who is not admitted cannot become your partner in the practice or own an interest in a for-profit professional corporation it practices through — which is why the succession hire in this guide is a lawyer hire.

Your state's adopted version controls, so confirm the ownership rules with your state bar's ethics counsel.

With the buyer identified, the structure is sequenced, not simultaneous.

Phase one is employment: the successor joins as an associate with a real path to ownership, and the employment agreement carries no practice restriction — the Rule 5.6(a) bar in the section above is what keeps it off the table.

Phase two is the sale of the entire practice or the entire practice area, with the seller's cessation required by the rule and any restrictions written into the sale terms under Rule 1.17 rather than into the employment agreement.

Any role the seller keeps after closing has to fit that cessation condition, so of counsel arrangements that keep the seller practicing alongside the buyer are a question for your state bar's ethics counsel before you plan on one, not a default bridge; the arrangement is its own structure with its own rules.

What the model sale rule does not do is price the practice.

The conditions govern what may be sold, who may sell it and what clients must be told; valuation, payment schedule and timing are deal terms between you and the buyer.

This page's research did not collect practice-valuation data, and nothing here is a valuation method — that work belongs to your accountant and, once the structure is set, your ethics counsel's review.

The client side of the sale starts with notice.

The written-notice condition puts clients on record notice of the sale — how your state's adopted rule defines the notice's content, recipients and timing is a detail our research did not verify, so have your state bar's ethics counsel review the notice plan against your state's text before anything goes out.

Client consent appears in one place in the rule text our research verified: Model Rule 1.5(e), which governs fees divided between lawyers who are not in the same firm.

Where the seller and the buyer are in different firms during a phased transition — the seller winding down while the buyer carries matters forward — a division of the fee between them is allowed under Model Rule 1.5(e) only if it is proportional to the services (or each lawyer assumes joint responsibility), the client agrees to the arrangement in a confirmed writing that includes each lawyer's share, and the total fee is reasonable.

That confirmed writing is the consent mechanism the model rule supplies for divided fees during a transition.

Keep the transition payments inside the sale.

Model Rule 7.2(b) bars giving anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services, with narrow exceptions — and buying a practice under Rule 1.17 is one of them.

The sale price is the compensated event; paying someone outside the sale structure to steer clients to the firm is a different lane with its own restrictions.

And when a transition includes a lawyer who is leaving rather than the owner retiring, the notice and file-handling duties run through our guide to what a firm must do when an associate leaves.

Start with who is already in the building.

An associate who knows the clients, the docket and the standards is the shortest candidate search you will ever run, and the hire-to-buy structure gives the strongest of them a reason to stay that salary alone does not.

If nobody inside fits, the search widens: your state and local bar communities, practice-area associations, law-school alumni networks and referrals from lawyers who know your work are all places successor candidates surface — because the person you need is a lawyer ready to own a practice, not only to join one.

Screen for ownership, not just employment.

Bar admission in your state is the first verification — confirm standing through your state bar's admissions records before an offer, and our guide to verifying an attorney's bar status covers the lookups.

Beyond licensure the questions are about intent and fit: whether the candidate wants to own a practice in this area, whether the client base will accept them, whether the timeline for your exit matches theirs.

The employment agreement still cannot restrain them, so the durability of the plan rests on the candidate's genuine intent to buy.

Recruiters and postings reach the candidates your network misses.

If you engage a recruiter, ask them to state their fee, terms and any guarantee in writing before you sign — this page will not quote percentages, because our research found no sourced fee figures to quote.

Our guides to what legal recruiters charge and working with a legal recruiter cover that process.

The opening itself belongs where attorneys look: see the attorney roles open on this board, or post the successor-attorney opening when you are ready.

Employer information, not legal advice. This page describes the ABA's model rules; the version your state has adopted controls. Confirm any sale, employment agreement or client-notice plan with your state bar's ethics counsel and your employment counsel before you sign.