Yep, but "out" must be "somewhere"... I assume they don't leave the legal profession altogether. Management consultants up-or-outed usually become either independent hyper-specialists (e.g. one very narrow industry vertical they they can "own" as the expert[1]) or get hired into upper-middle management by former clients (and then turn around and hire their old firms).
[1] I know one guy whose speciality is labelling. Dude knows everything you could possibly want to know about "sticking labels on stuff" on an industrial scale, and that's how he makes his living, consulting on that.
Big firm life is not for everyone because the grind never ceases, even for those who are young partners. Therefore, many chose to leave just to preserve their sanity. Whether by choice or not, anyone who leaves after having done a reasonable stint at such firms historically has had an open ticket to all sorts of other premier jobs within the legal profession (prominent in-house positions, partnership at mid-sized firms, senior government positions, etc.). This is another reason why associates scramble so hard to land positions within the largest firms. In essence, once you have proved yourself there even at the earliest stages, you have an open ticket to do well in the field generally from that day forward. Of course, this is not automatic and must be accompanied by lots of hard work, etc. One thing that is almost guaranteed about such lawyers is that they are highly disciplined lawyers who take their careers seriously and who seek to excel at what they do.
I’m glad I’m not the only one bothered by this technicality. It seems everybody talking about how the American employment situation worked neglected to what degree individual employees could adapt to change. Economists always talk about how changes in technology or employment patterns have little long term impact, since a job pool will provide labor that is in demand, but “creative destruction” is not an instantaneous process, and the people hurt by it are the type of people that economists, politicians and business executives ignore, robbing them of the power needed to fix their situation.
Lawyers go work 'in-house'. i.e. large firms have in-house permanent counsel.
Being in house often means becoming the client of the firm you previously worked for, and suddenly you are the one calling the shots and getting invited to all the expensive dinners.
In-house seems (as a law outsider) a well paid alternative with very light workload.
It's a huge win for the employer of the in-house, too.
They can pay an in-house lawyer, say, $200,000 - $350,000/year to mostly not do a whole of anything, but handle all legal issues as needed when they do come up. They are also often allowed to quietly practice a little law on the side.
That's a whole lot cheaper than paying the retainer and billing rates of a firm for the same workload.
Law firms (at least in the UK, I imagine it is probably the same in the US) exist in a pretty well defined hierarchy - the "up or out" principle often works within this hierarchy as well.
Having said that - over the last couple of years a lot of lawyers in areas like commercial property have simply left the profession.
