Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | September 7, 2026 | Worcester Business Journal 9 among older workers, whose tenures tend to run longer, the median was 9.6 years for those ages 55 to 64. e firm's overall average employee longevity remains 15.7 years, even aer the retirement of one group of long-tenured employees this year. "at's pretty unheard of at most organizations these days," she said. Capturing knowledge e firm has approached the knowledge-transfer process in phases. "When you're talking about some- body with 47 years of institutional knowledge, you're not going to be able to transfer all of that in a month or two months," Landry said. "It takes time, and one of the things we realized too is most roles have specific responsibilities, but there's also more of those hidden responsibilities that folks just do that may not be included in the job description." Mirick has begun using AI tools to help turn rough notes from retiring employees into standard operating procedures, Landry said. "It's an incredible time saver," she said. "It's been able to help us ... identify gaps in our documentation and give us an outline, because I think it can be very intimidating to say, 'Come up with a document of every single thing you do over the course of a week, a month, a year.'" e firm is building in overlap peri- ods, even though that means tempo- rarily paying two people for one job. "It might be a little expensive to have someone overlap further, but the value you'll gain from that knowledge transfer will make up for the invest- ment," Landry said. Power said that internal buy-in from Mirick's co-managing partners helped make that overlap possible. "It's a credit to the partners realiz- ing, yes, absolutely, there'll be a void for us," she said. "You can't go out and find that exact person." Preserving judgement Rather than hire a carbon copy of each retiring employee, Mirick has used the transitions to rethink what several roles should look like going forward, Landry said. "We looked at each one of the roles, we looked at what we anticipated those roles were going to look like in the future, particularly with utilizing AI," she said. Mirick's leadership moved deliber- ately to control the internal and exter- nal narrative around the departures, rather than let rumors fill the gap. "If we weren't controlling the mes- sage, people were going to fill the void with their own stories," she said. One of the hardest things to trans- fer is not procedural knowledge, but judgment, Landry said. "e judgment is impossible to replace," Landry said. "It takes time to develop that judgment and relation- ships, and those are the intangibles that are really hard to replace." Founded and headquartered in Westborough, MA, since 1973. Founded and headquartered in Westborough, MA, since 1973. In January 2026, AAFCPAs acquired McLaren & Associates CPAs, PC. In January 2026, AAFCPAs acquired McLaren & Associates CPAs, PC. aafcpa.com LAW & ACCOUNTING F O C U S We promote internally Worcester law firm Mirick began preparing for the succession of its retiring professional staff members roughly five years ago, finding people with similar traits and values who could learn from their predecessors. When polled online, the plurality of WBJ readers said their businesses tend to find people internally for senior roles. For senior roles, does your company typically promote from within or hire externally? 41% No preference; it depends on the position. 25% Almost always promote internally 24% Usually promote internally 8% Usually hire externally 2% Almost always hire externally W

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