I appreciate your following my blog and practice. I am retired! I stopped taking cases in April of 2025. After starting most days packing a briefcase and drinking coffee in the car, wrapping up my few straggling cases feels bittersweet. Mornings with two leisurely cups of coffee on the porch feel luxuriously expansive. The contrast is jarring. The absence of rushing and constantly being “on the clock,” has also left me with some survivor’s guilt.
On the porch, I occasionally think fondly of happy mornings finalizing adoptions, sorting out tricky cases with colleagues, or training younger lawyers. But I don’t regret retiring. I found my legal career rewarding, challenging, sometimes fun, too big, and too stressful.
Now I am taking better care of my health and relationships, and I’m trying new things. While I’ve been working about as much as not this past year, on admin matters, recording my seminars and putting them online (wwwgoodlawtn.com), I may now kayak on a Tuesday, have a 3-hour lunch with a friend, mail a card in time for the birthday, or figure out how to properly use the washer I’ve had for years. When I experience that lovely unconstrained relationship with time, I call it “practicing for retirement.”
I am often incredulous at the things, precious and mundane, left undone while I was working. I regret not asking more often, “Is it essential that I work so much today?” The footprint of my work life stayed about the same regardless of necessity.
We know that life experience is rarely directly transferable. Still, in response to your kind wishes for my happy retirement, I have a wish for you. I wish you as many days as you can wrestle back to “practice for retirement” yourself.
Warmly,
Dawn
