The Transitions Issue.

The February 2024 issue of Wyoming Lawyer was exceptionally good.  Its focus was on "transitions", by which it mostly meant career transitions (but also had some articles on the scary advances of AI).

The magazine usually good, frankly.  Indeed, a magazine that has such a limited circulation can't be expected to be great, but it actually is very, very good as a rule.

This issue was on transitions, as noted, mostly, and it had some truly excellent articles.  One was about retiring Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Keith Kautz, who was a great judge.  I liked the question he was asked about his favorite quotes, with the answer being:

I have two: 

1. Encouragement is the oxygen of the soul. 

2. The greatest day in your life or mine, the day we truly grow up, is the day when we take responsibility for our own attitudes.

Those are both pretty profound.  Nothing will burn a person out quicker than to work with people who only criticize them. And taking responsibility for your own attitudes is existentially a magnus opus.  I don't know that many people fully ever manage to do that, myself included.

Kautz is retiring as he's hit the statutory maximum for a judge of age 70.  He didn't seem bitter about it.  Justice Fox, who does seem bitter about the age limit being 70, mentioned it and Justice Kautz retiring in her State of the Judiciary speech.  She did reference it with her dry wit, referring to the age of 70 as "constitutional senility" and Kautz was in the audience.

An attempt at dry wit, I think, was made by the Bar President in her opening article of the issue, which was about a long time assistant retiring.  She had the line:

I always thought that money, fame, and power brought the greatest happiness, but according to the 80-year-old Harvard Study of Adult Development, close relationships with others is what really keeps us happy.

I'm pretty sure the first part of that was intended as a joke.

Her advice seems pretty standard, however, that being:

First, people have an innate desire to have a sense of purpose and meaning. When retirement comes, sometimes that sense of purpose can be lost. So, after taking some time off, it is good to start thinking about something meaningful that will fill the days. This could be volunteering, substitute teaching, or mentoring. It could also include learning a new skill (such as a new language), picking up a new hobby or seeing new places. 

Second, try to maintain and/or enhance social connections with others. I always thought that money, fame, and power brought the greatest happiness, but according to the 80-year-old Harvard Study of Adult Development, close relationships with others is what really keeps us happy. In fact, these ties help delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.

Third, stay physically active as much as possible. Studies show that when someone retires, sedentary activities, such as watching television, increase dramatically. While watching extra television is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, much has been written about the link between longevity and good physical health. So, please try and enjoy our state as much as possible by spending time outside running, hiking or skiing.

Probably all solid advice. 

Indeed, it causes me to recall that I recently was speaking to a cousin of mine who is retired from Federal service and who is keeping pretty busy.  We were speaking on a grim topic, which caused me to joke that in old age I was going to take up grizzly bear wrestling.  He stated he was going to take up heavy drinking (he doesn't drink) as that's what so many of his retired colleagues seem to be doing, to the point of death.

Grim.

Another article was about retirement planning itself, which didn't mention grizzly bear wrestling or heavy drinking.  It was frankly really good, which is very much the exception to the rule in lawyers magazines. Usually in lawyer magazines and articles, the "planning" is about how you can go on practicing law for an additional ten years after you are dead.  The articles are about how in "retirement" you can go from litigation to some other field of law, or perhaps switch from defense to plaintiff's work, or something equally moronic.  This article wasn't that way at all.  Indeed, it acknowledged:

Arthur C. Brooks, former president of the American Enterprise Institute and now a Harvard Business School professor, concluded in a July 2019 Atlantic article that professional decline is inevitable sooner or later, simply as the result of aging.

About time somebody said that.  I've practiced against one lawyer who was a physical wreck and in clear mental decline, but was "never going to retire".  He did, but I think it was because his (family owned) firm basically gave him a back room and things to pretend to do.  Not very dignified. He probably doesn't actually know that he is retired.  I used to ask his son how he was doing and to say hello, but it was clear it was an embarrassing topic, and he didn't want to have it come up.

I know another lawyer here in town, who is very physically fit I'll note, who is practicing law actively, not part-time, in his early 70s and declares that he'll never retire.  How boring can you be?

I get that with certain occupations that are real vocations. But let's face it, most of the professions aren't.  People may declare that they love being an accountant, or they love being a lawyer, or they love being an actuary, but they are lying.  Shoot, they probably are lying if they say that about engineering.  Farming, teaching, maybe medicine, the ministry, those are intrinsically different.  

Indeed, because, in my arriving old age, my health has taken a beating the last few years one of my newer doctors, whose son was a high-powered lawyer in California and is now a Federal District Court judge in that state, asks me every time about my work.  "You are a lawyer?".  And he always asks, in the form of a statement, "And you love it".  I'm not sure why that question is necessary to my medical treatment, but as its asked every time, maybe it is.  Maybe it's because lawyers are so famously associated with depression, alcoholism and drug abuse that the medical profession regards it as necessary.  Who knows. Anyhow, after doing it for over 30 years it'd be surprising if I broke down and started sobbing about it or something, but there are a lot of other things I'm interested in too.  Having said that, I don't want to chat to somebody I barely know about those topics either.

Going back for a second, on vocations that make sense that people keep on keeping on in them, at least some of those actually have mandatory retirement ages, where the law allows it.  I don't know about physicians, I think not, but there aren't that many that practice into old age, and I've been told that's because there's a general feeling that mental acuity decline in the late 40s and the practice advances so fast that you start to become dangerous to your patients.  That's particularly true of surgeons, not all physicians, so you will see some practice into relatively old age.

In our diocese, Catholic Priests must retire at 70.  We hear a lot about there being a shortage of Priests, although the reasons for that are debatable (Wyoming has never produced sufficient numbers of Priests for its own needs) but the Diocese nonetheless feels that 70, they need to retire, which usually means being quasi part-time.  They can't be the pastors at a parish, for example.  

Under Canon 401 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law all Catholid bishops must submit their resignation to the Pope at the age of 75.

It's a good policy.

Changing gears, even the back page interview, which is always of a practicing lawyer, was good for a change.  It is occasionally, I'll admit, but more often than not it's an interview of somebody who just graduated from law school and is touring Patagonia or something. . . i.e., they haven't practiced law yet.  This one was of a lawyer who has over 30 years under his belt and noted:

I was the only kid in my elementary school (and perhaps the only attorney in Wyoming) whose  dad has been a matador de toros.

I'll bet that's right.