June 2, 2019--Resigning My Law License

One afternoon, when we were about seven years out of school and had moved to Delaware, we had to take a walk. Nancy thought she’d made a mistake at work. Nancy never made mistakes. We leashed up Miss Marple (a vile-tempered, stubborn old English sheepdog mixed with something vicious and quick enough to catch and dispatch squirrels) and took her down to the park near where we lived, near the Delaware River. I was at AIG and she was with a pharmaceutical company, now defunct (not her fault) in Delaware.

I tried to cheer her up, and finally just reminded her of all of the mistakes I’d made my first couple of years out. Soon we were both laughing uproariously, mainly because the statute of limitations for legal malpractice had passed on most of it. I am NOT going to list all of my mistakes as it would take too long and as a couple of them are just too embarrassing. Maybe in another post.

But here’s an example of why I should never have been a lawyer to begin with:

I filed articles of incorporation for some folks and also prepared an S corp election—that is, they elected to be taxed like a partnership rather than a corporation (I suppose this is all irrelevant now with the advent of the Limited Liability Company). And then I sent the S corp election to the North Carolina Department of Revenue, which gives precisely zero fucks what you elect to do. What was I thinking? Maybe I just wasn’t.

When I realized what I’d done, I wondered again why I’d decided it was a good idea for me to be a lawyer. I went to law school because, in 1982, there was nothing else for an English major to do. I don’t know that I had any particular aptitude for it, but, hilariously, probably more for that than writing fiction. Once Nancy said, “You’re intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually unsuited to being a lawyer. You’ve been successful out of persistence and sheer intelligence.”

OK, that was extremely kind of her, and I’d object vehemently to the parts of the characterization that spoke to “successful”, “persistence,” and “sheer intelligence.”

Back to my misfiled S corp election: praise for the partner. He called the client and said, “We don’t have any evidence that the IRS has received your S corp election.”

Isn’t that clever? The man could spin like a politician. I waited with that queasy stomach that I grew to know so well.

Eventually he hung up and smiled and said, “They decided they wanted to be a C corp this year anyway.” Why I didn’t fall on the floor in relief is a mystery.

The partner noted my remorse and relief, and he let me off the hook, saying, “Look, it’s the practice of law, it’s not easy. We all make mistakes. You just have to try not to make the same one again.”

There’s advice worth taking; how stupid of me not to remark it.

Recently, it was the time of year to pay my Washington State Bar dues. I took “inactive” status a few years ago, mainly so I wouldn’t have to attend continuing legal education seminars. The seminars take place in airless, windowless hotel ballrooms with pitchers of cold water, hard candies in bowls, and maybe some paper and pencils (like lawyers don’t carry that stuff around).

Either the presenters are deadly boring and know it and make no attempt to do anything more than speak as if they’re grinding gravel together, or they mistakenly think they’re charming, so charming that they don’t have to follow their written materials. Also these folks are at the top of the profession in their fields, so they’re always showing off, saying things like, “So, does Allegheny have any vitality after Monongahela?” So you’re constantly flipping the written materials back and forth, trying to remember: wait, what was the rule in Allegheny? What was Monongahela about? And finally resolving, oh hell, where should I go for dinner?

So no more continuing legal ed, anyway.

And this year I thought, it’s only $200, but that’s $200 that I can use instead of the Washington State Bar Association. Who’s more deserving?

So, so many things I never understood about the practice of law. Why must you check updates? Why didn’t the NC Department of Revenue take pity and give me a call and say, hey, I think you want to send this to the IRS (they didn’t because NC government is full of sullen mean-spirited losers.) Why did the clerk of court in Guilford County, North Carolina, take such glee in asking me after I’d filed something, “Are you a lawyer? Are you a local lawyer?” Why was everyone looking at me like that?

So I don’t really feel anything one way or the other about surrendering my license. At least no one can call me a quitter, not after 33 years of mistakes, humiliation, and psychic pain.

How easy, finally, it was: when I was supposed to renew my license, I logged into the Washington State Bar website, opened my renewal form, and there it was: I could just click a box, and I had resigned. I did it. And then a confirming email came so quickly that I wondered if they were afraid that I’d change my mind.

Retirement, once I settled into it, is anything but boring. I read voraciously—nonfiction, fiction, lots of news, and I never have to stop and think, OK, I’ve got to move on, there’s stuff to do. I can follow wherever my mind and heart take me. When did Nabokov move to the U.S.? How soon after Martin Amis started publishing did his father Kingsley die? Whatever happened to Pam Houston? Oh, her career tanked. Did she know Jim Applewhite?

At the beginning, I would get bored on occasion, but then I’d think: I don’t have to go into an office and listen to white men with egos the size of Trump’s telling you how they invented the rules of evidence, and I don’t have to deal with unreasonably demanding clients who haven’t paid anything on their bills for six months. I’m free. If given the option, if the State Bar had emailed and asked, “Hey, are you sure?” I’d click that button again and again and again. My 30-year nightmare is over.