Reflections on Identity After Law

Press enter or click to view image in full size
AI Image. Midjourney. Prompt by Author

People used to approach me at social events and ask, “Are you an elder-law lawyer?” Usually they wanted free legal advice and, although I sometimes complained about it, I mostly liked it. I was an expert in something. I had a niche. I had something people wanted.

Now that I’m retired, people still sometimes ask, but it happens less and less. And when they do, I don’t know how to answer. I’m listed in the bar directory as retired and still have a bar number. I get the monthly bar journal in the mail, but these days I toss it into the recycling with the catalogs and grocery store ads.

There is no “being a lawyer.” There is only getting up every morning and going off to practice law. I get up every morning and read The New York Times with a cup of coffee.

I retired three years ago. Or was it four? At the time it was a momentous change, the closing of my office, yet today I’m not sure when it was. I can picture the office. Where I sat. The faces of my legal assistants. I spent decades in those rooms, but today I can’t picture them any better than I can the freshman dorm room at the University of Oregon where I lived for nine months 50 years ago. Or the vacation cabin I owned in the ‘90s. With all I put into it, I feel that the memories of my practice should be more vivid.

For decades, my profession was my identity. I spoke the language and wore the uniform. In law school, they taught me to think like a lawyer, and I did. The courtroom was my stage. Having an audience and a stage on which to perform is a drug hard to quit. Ask Mick Jagger and Bernie Sanders. Ask any drug addict. The sensation is ineffable. It can’t be described nor, with any accuracy, remembered. I know that it all happened. I won cases and lost cases. I struggle to remember more than that.

Deep down in my unrealistic heart, I want to keep the identity without getting up every morning and doing the work. When I first retired, I thought I would continue to contribute to law. I would keep up with the latest court decisions. I’d be a mentor to younger lawyers or at least follow their discussions on the email list.

Get Orrin Onken’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

But none of that happened.

A while back, a case that would decide presidential immunity from criminal laws was being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation was interested in the outcome, and so was I. I thought I would listen on the radio to the oral arguments. I’ve never argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, but I’ve argued in a lot of lesser courts, so why not hear the law on this important issue being made? I lasted ten minutes. What I heard were good lawyers doing their jobs. I respected it, but it was tedious. Just lawyers at work.

I have always built images in my head of how my future would be. Adulthood. Marriage. Parenthood. A career in law. None of them turned out the way I imagined. It is hard now to remember what I expected from being retired, but I know that what I got wasn’t it. Maybe it’s because “being something” is not really a thing. There is no more “being retired” than there was “being a lawyer.” There is only getting up every day to face the reality of aging and doing the best one can.

I thought there might be more to it. Perhaps, wisdom. Maybe peace. There is peace at times. I’m still waiting for wisdom.

This fall I gave away a couple more of the suits I used to wear to court and cleaned out my computer. I divested myself of programs, favorites, and links that were everyday companions when I needed to think about law every day. They had been sitting forlornly unclicked on my favorites bar.

Out went the links to the Oregon Revised Statutes, the Oregon Administrative Rules, and the Oregon Rules of Civil Procedure. I tested the link that I had used for years to file court documents online, and it no longer worked. I once did a presentation at a conference about how to use that system. They must have made some changes. I didn’t notice.

The suits, the unused links on my computer, are the detritus of my career. I dumped the big stuff — the office management software, the dual monitors, the document template collection — in the months after I closed the office. The ones I am discarding today are tiny things, bits and pieces not worth my time until now, like the last bits of debris that are so hard to get off the kitchen floor into the dustpan.

I probably didn’t get them all. Little things will pop up to remind me where I’ve been and who I used to be. I never understood why people bought and kept souvenirs, but as I write this, I am starting to get it.

Sign up here to receive our free weekly newsletter featuring the best of Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age.

Home

Tidying Up the Detritus of a Career