Earlier this month Brant Bishop left his practice at Wilkinson Walsh. The litigator, who also spent 18 years as a partner at Kirkland, is not leaving for another lateral opportunity, but just because he want to spend more time with his family — he has a wife and five kids — saying, “I didn’t leave to go anywhere else except to go home.”
As Bishop told Law.com, even when he was on vacation or otherwise away from the office, the demands of his practice — and the constant stream of emails — continued.
“Someone once said the law is a jealous mistress, and I think there’s some truth to that when you’re practicing at a very high level,” Bishop said.
There wasn’t any particular bad experience that prompted Bishop’s decision. It was just the constant grind of elite legal work that made him hit pause on his career:
Bishop said there wasn’t a particular case or client or management responsibility—or a point in his personal life—that prompted his departure. Instead, he chalked up his decision to the inability to stop his work from encroaching on his personal time with his family, as well as the “nature of what we do.”
“It was very difficult to truly be away from the demands of running the firm, doing the management of the firm and doing cases,” Bishop said.
Bishop, who is 50 years old, says he might consider a reentry into the legal field someday:
“I may be too young to be permanently retired, so I don’t know if I’m retired in the sense that I’m not going to find something else to do at some point,” said the 50-year-old Bishop. “But for now the plan is to not really have much of a plan other than to spend time with family and keep my eyes open.”
But right now his focus is on family trips to Europe and Africa. And unlike family time when he was a big time partner, he won’t be constantly checking his email during the trip.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).