40
I walked out of the courthouse with a lawyer I know, as that lawyer was in the same law school class as I was. We're not close friends, but his circle of law school friends intersects with mine, mostly due to a common interest in the outdoors. Other than that, I guess because our backgrounds are quite different, we never developed a close friendship. I guess friends of friends are sort of friends, however.
Anyhow, as we were walking out at the same time, having just argued motions against each other, I asked about a partner of his that I had been told was stepping into part-time. He laughed and noted that it was true, but they guy was busier than ever, which I'm sure he is.
At that point, he asked me, "what about you, what are your plans?", meaning not am I about to retire, but as we're law school colleagues, and therefore the same approximate age, do I have retirement on my horizon.
I begged off on the topic. I'm very private by nature and as this recent post indicates, I've had a lot going on recently. In the end, I stated "oh I'll probably die before I retire", which always come across as a joke, and I guess it is, but it's a half-hearted one. Given family history on my father's side, I probably will, and probably well before 65, which basically means, could be any time.
But then actually that's true for a lot of men over 30.
Anyhow, I'm not near retirement. My wife is a decade younger than me, I've had a year of health concerns commencing in October, 2022, and I need the insurance, and I don't want to run out of cash in retirement. And that's not what people really mean when they bring this up. What they mean, is that once you are 60, how far out are you looking?
I dunno. .. .I'll probably die before I retire.
And even if I don't, given my nature, I'll probably keep on keeping on until I'm full retirement age, which according to the IRS is 67 for people born in 1963. Of course, it's important to note that statistically a significant majority of men do not make it to the "full age". Women don't either.
Quite a few lawyers do, however, and beyond that.
Anyhow, he expressed that he intends to work until he's 68. He's presently 61. The reason is that at that point he will have been practicing law "for 40 years".
Shoot, if I make it to 67, that'd be true of me as well.
And I can't imagine a lamer reason to work beyond full retirement age than that. So you'll have been a working member of the bar for 40 years, so what? Is that actually something to be proud of, and if so, why? Or is it an achievement worth aiming for?
And what''s the magic of 40? That its' divisible by ten?
As silly as that question is, I think that is actually it. As we have a Base Ten numerical system, we tend to think of events that way. Military (and much other service) retirements start when a person reaches 20 years of service, which went down at the start of World War Two from 30 years of service. When I was a National Guardsman, the Guard issued Ten, Twenty, and Thirty years of service ribbons.The Wyoming State Bar used to confer honorifics on lawyers who had reached 30, 40 and 50 years of practice, although it doesn't seem to anymore. I can recall being at a County Bar banquet, which we also do not have anymore, when the County Bar acknowledged some lawyers who had just reached 30, 40 and 50 years of service, the first of which I've surpassed but which seemed like a long, long time, at the time.
A good friend of mine in the law just retired at age 67, sort of. Like a lot of retiring lawyers, indeed all the of the retiring lawyers that I've known recently, he's going to work "part-time". This is super common in law.
I don't get it, and I don't get going for the big round number either.
Law, if you really work it, is all consuming and hard on you. I've never seen one of the lawyers aiming for "part-time" succeed at it yet. Litigation certainly isn't a part-time thing and the schedule is set by the Court, not by individuals, so there's no part-time to it.
Beyond that, however, how can a person become so dull that they hang on for an artificial number?
I know, I know, people will say "I love the law" and that's why they're doing it. Well, bullshit.
Maybe they do love the law, but most lawyers in reality are in it because; 1) they're polymaths (and probably autodidacts) and it was the only thing that suited them, or 2) their undergraduate majors were a bust, and it was the only door open for a career, or 3) they were greedy and thought they could make a lot of money, or 4) they were delusional and mistook a career path that more properly involved a seminary for one that involved law school, or #5) they were the children of professionals that didn't want to become physicians, or #6) they were the children of blue collar workers whose parents held a gigantic outsized admiration for the law as they knew nothing about it.
None of that precludes a love of the law, although #1 suits it the best. #3 and #4 are paths to utter misery.
But that's the point.
Going back to the misty dawn of time when I was a law student, and looking at my collection of friends and associated, they were an interesting group. So were my undergraduate major geology fellows, I'd note. The geology students were all major outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen. Every single one without exception. We didn't sit around and talk about geology, we talked about mountains and fields and wolves and hunting and hiking and fishing.*
Law school was sort of like that, but with a group of people with very divergent interests. There were really dedicated outdoorsmen, but also people who had really pronounced intellectual interests. Law students I was aware of hunted, fished, hiked, climbed mountains in the Himalayas, worked on cars, followed sports, and the like.
I don't recall a single one, not one, who had an interest in the law, actually.
Not one.
And that's how practitioners start out. And to some extent remain. I'm down to a handful of genuine close friends who are lawyers, and then a little broader out than that, friends who are lawyers. Of my close friends, one is an avid outdoors man and gearhead, one is an intellectual and a historian, and one is an autodidactic polymath. Casting the net a little wider, I'd find outdoorsmen again.
Even today, in really thinking about it, I can't think of a single lawyer I know who is just a fanatic about legal topics. We'll discuss them, but its our line of country. I've never once been in a group of lawyers who said, "guess what I saw, a motion for an order to show cause on an injunction that . . . " like I've heard people say, "guess what I saw, otters in the river!".
Which brings me to this.
People acquire their identify from their occupations over time. Or maybe that's just true of some occupations. I have heard people, well, no, men, identified as soldiers, policemen, firemen, and the like long after they retired.
I think that's why somebody is interested in being able to say "I was a lawyer for 40 years". It seems like an accomplishment. . . if there's not much else left to be proud of, or anything else left.
Thing is, nobody really care about that.
It's quite literally, completely pointless.
There's also nothing intrinsically wrong with it, assuming that you didn't make half of that last decade leaning heavily on other lawyers, and that you were capable the entire time, but as an achievement, it isn't one.
Indeed, the much more interesting people are those who can start a conversation with "I was a lawyer for ten years, and then. . . "
At any rate, most people don't start off being some sort of AI image for their profession. We shouldn't see, to end up like that. Surely, a well-rounded person, from a profession of many topics, has other interests.
If they don't, they should.
Footnotes:
*The irony of geology is that so many people who are "granolas" end up being employed by industry. Geology students were the most environmentally minded people I've ever been around, but then they end up working for extractive industries. Among practicing geologist, I rarely meet one you'd call an environmentalist, unless they're employed in the environmental field. As the practicing geologists are drawn from the same pool as the students, it has to be their employment that impacts thier later expressed views.
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