Cognitive Enhancement, Aging Baby Boomers, and the Legal Profession

A quick note to alert you of two very inter­est­ing, grow­ing, and some­how linked debates:

1) Very insight­ful arti­cle on The Aging of the Baby Boomers: What Does It Mean for the Legal Pro­fes­sion (thank you, Stephanie!). Some quotes:

- “As I pen this arti­cle, it seems as though I’m writ­ing about some­one else the old­er work­er. Age and aging, it seems, are in the eye of the one look­ing back at you in the mir­ror. I have this the­o­ry, espe­cial­ly as it per­tains to men, that when we look in the mir­ror, we still see that 20 year-old stud who can leap tall build­ings. But I know that my ver­ti­cal leap is not what it used to be. The real­i­ty of aging in the legal pro­fes­sion is upon me and those of our generation.”

- “Also, the per­cep­tion of how old is old varies depend­ing on the job or pro­fes­sion. For exam­ple, accord­ing to one com­men­ta­tor, IT work­ers are con­sid­ered old if they have chil­dren. Bal­let dancers and pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes may be con­sid­ered old in their 20s or 30s; air­line pilots in their 50s, and Supreme Court jus­tices in their 80s.”

- “So what does this mean for the legal pro­fes­sion? Are we going to see lawyers and legal staff work­ing into their 70s? Much of what is said about the boomers and retire­ment applies to our pro­fes­sion as well. How­ev­er, lawyers also hold a unique and priv­i­leged posi­tion in soci­ety that per­mits us to retire from active pri­vate prac­tice and yet con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit soci­ety through pub­lic inter­est or pro bono activities.”

- “Over the next 20 years, the num­ber of lawyers in Amer­i­ca over 50 will triple. Many law firms have manda­to­ry retire­ment ages for part­ners rang­ing from 62 to 70. But many lawyers in this age brack­et are not ready to retire.”

Com­ment: the arti­cle is excel­lent, and we are aware of this grow­ing debate in the legal com­mu­ni­ty, hav­ing been asked recent­ly to write Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging for a legal pub­li­ca­tion. A relat­ed post, Cog­ni­tive Health and Baby Boomers: 6 Points to Keep in Mind, adds more food for thought.

2) Great post ask­ing, Is it “cheat­ing” to take brain-enhanc­ing drugs?, based on a a recent com­men­tary in Nature mag­a­zine. There is a grow­ing debate on the ethics, and long-term effec­tive­ness, of cog­ni­tive enhance­ment drugs. In gen­er­al, we believe it is wise to avoid play­ing with the bio­chem­istry of our brain unless there are very clear med­ical pur­pos­es and sol­id evi­dence, so we will keep focus­ing our atten­tion on nat­ur­al cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions.

For more con­text on “smart pills” and relat­ed top­ics, you may enjoy read­ing our review of the book Best of the Brain from Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can.