On the problem of older lawyers

The "Joint Committee on Aging Lawyers" of the National Organization of Bar Counsel and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers has produced this somewhat pithy but interesting Final Report, which studies "the challenges raised by aging lawyers."

Judge Williams, now 87, sometimes retells a version of a story described here -

"One of the first of many standard stories recounted about the Supreme Court tells how his brethren went to an aging Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes to get him to step down and reminded the justice of similar entreaties he had made to Justice Stephen Field nearly a half century prior. Holmes is said to have responded to his younger colleagues that he had never himself done a dirtier days work."