Life After the Bench: Judges retire to re-enter law field

You can take the judge out of the courtroom, but it seems you can’t take the courtroom out of the judge.

Greene County Circuit Judge J. Miles Sweeney is the latest to make the move.

He plans to retire Nov. 12 after more than two decades on the bench. Sweeney, who has been 31st Circuit Court judge since 1990, will handle part-time mediation in personal injury cases, and possibly some legal consulting work, once he steps down.

“What I’ve been doing the last few years is primarily personal injury lawsuits,” Sweeney said. “I think people would appreciate my courtroom experience in litigation.”

Several southwest Missouri judges have left the bench in recent years to reprise other roles in the legal system and put to work the expertise they gained on the bench.

Reasons for departure

Sweeney said his retirement goal is to do “interesting, law-related work” without working full time; he said he’s looking forward to the free time.

“I told people I missed out on three good duck hunts because I was in jury trials, so that’s why I adjusted my retirement up a few months,” he said, chuckling.

Former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice John Holstein retired from the bench in 2002 and now works primarily as an arbitrator and mediator – with some occasional commercial litigation work – for the Springfield office of Shughart Thomson & Kilroy PC.

Holstein said he left the bench in part because of a desire to get back to his legal roots.

“At the Supreme Court level, you’re dealing with budgets, the legislature and making sure everyone has everything they need to make the system run smoothly,” Holstein said. “Coming back to practice … I can get back to what I really love, which is the law. You don’t have to deal with the politics of it.”

Phillip Garrison, a former judge with the Missouri Court of Appeals Southern District, joined Shughart Thomson & Kilroy on Sept. 11 as a partner practicing civil litigation. He, too, is glad to get away from the politics – specifically, the seven-year absence of pay raises from the state legislature.

“It had been very disconcerting over the last seven years that we hadn’t even received a cost-of-living adjustment, although we did get a pay increase this year,” Garrison said. “It was discouraging that the legislature didn’t seem to recognize the need to adequately compensate people who they wanted to do a good job on the courts.”

Sweeney said that while money wasn’t a factor in his retirement, he is aware of several judges who have retired for financial reasons.

“The pay for judges has really fallen behind the income levels for attorneys, especially attorneys with the kind of experience that judges usually have,” he said.

“Up until recently, judges’ pay was close enough that it wasn’t a big factor in keeping people on the bench. But recently, it has become an issue,” Sweeney added.

Since 2000, Circuit judges received $108,000 a year before this year’s 4 percent across-the-board pay increase; appellate judges earned $115,000, and state Supreme Court judges earned $123,000. Salaries for Missouri attorneys age 46–55, meanwhile, averaged $185,000 in 2004, according to an April 2006 article published in the Journal of the Missouri Bar.

The biggest reason for Garrison’s departure, however, was a desire to interact more with other attorneys, a sentiment echoed by Holstein.

“Judges are, by the nature of what they do, isolated from the rest of the lawyers’ community,” Holstein said.

“I was lucky – I enjoyed every minute of every day as a judge. But I left at just the right time, and I love every day practicing law.”

Interaction

Despite having formerly been in a position of controlling the courtroom, returning to law practice hasn’t created awkwardness when interacting with other attorneys. That likely depends on how judges behaved in the courtroom, according to Martin Spiegel.

Spiegel joined the law firm of Reynolds, Gold & Grosser on Jan. 1 after retiring from a 25-year career as an immigration judge and Social Security Administration administrative law judge.

“I was never a bully, so there’s never been any awkwardness at all,” Spiegel said of rejoining the ranks of practicing attorneys.

“I was always really informal in my hearings, and I treated everyone with extreme courtesy and was cognizant of not wanting to waste anyone’s time.”

Being a judge for many years, former Missouri Supreme Court Judge John Holstein said many people still called him “judge” well after leaving the bench. He remembers the first time he entered the courtroom to argue a case after retiring as a judge.

“It was before (Circuit Presiding) Judge (James) Eiffert in Ozark,” Holstein said. “Somebody referred to me as ‘judge,’ and Judge Eiffert said, ‘There’s only one judge in this courtroom.’ I immediately stood up and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ People had called me ‘judge’ for so long that it had become second nature.”

A different view

Spiegel said the knowledge he gained in more than 25 years on the bench is invaluable in his current practice.

“I can look at 15 pages of technical documents and analyze it in two seconds, because I know exactly where to look and what I’m looking for,” Spiegel said. “It’s not that you’re smarter; it’s just that after you do something 30 times, even a dumb guy will learn it.”

Garrison – who is no stranger to either side of the courtroom, having practiced law for 26 years before sitting on the appeals court – said his time on the bench allows him to enter the courtroom with an appreciation for all sides of the case.

“It gave me the experience of seeing the other side of legal issues – not as an advocate, but as someone who is required to take into consideration the position of both sides and then, based on your interpretation of the law, produce a decision that is reduced to writing,” Garrison said.

Spiegel said the time spent as a judge also gives him extra insight into how to successfully argue a case, because he knows what he would have wanted to see as a judge.

“I used to talk to lawyers that would write a beautiful two-page summary of why their client should win, and I said, ‘If your client should win, you should be able to say it in two sentences,’” Spiegel said.

“I try to make things as easy as I can for the judge by packaging things in such a way that they don’t have to deal with it much.

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