January 2003

Two Cents' Worth

by Mark A. Panitch, Bar News Editor

Saying goodbye is among the most difficult things to do for civil human beings. Life is changing, events are coming to an end, friends — and even familiar adversaries — will be missed. Yet life is full of transitions, some voluntary and some forced by conditions beyond our control.

Last summer I went through a time that left me humbled and shaken by my physical, economic and professional fragility. Last May I was struck with an illness that threatened my eyesight. This condition came on suddenly, was completely unpredictable, and was unrelated to any other health problem I have ever had. I am glad to report that my eyesight seems to have survived unscathed. I can't yet say the same about the rest of me.

There is an old joke about the cure being worse than the disease. Like most humor and clichιs, there is more than a grain of truth there. In my case the "gold standard" treatment was high doses of powerful steroids for several months. The side effects of this treatment were nearly incapacitating. As a wrestler and weightlifter in college and a sometime sail-racing crew member, I valued my strength, coordination and agility. As an attorney and writer I valued my ability to think on my feet. Suddenly these abilities — and much of what constituted my self-image — were gone.

At first it appeared that a leave of absence from the magazine would provide sufficient healing time. But as the weeks went on it became clear that much of my caseload, along with editing Bar News, volunteering at the Spanish-language legal clinic, and supervising a Rule 9 intern, would have to go. In effect, an illness whose name I had never heard before took over my body and my life as surely as if it were some science-fiction creature from outer space using me as an intergalactic incubator. For four months, fighting — and coping — with illness was nearly a full-time occupation. I am told now to plan for at least a year of physical therapy and other rehab activities to recover lost strength and mobility.

I am told that I may carry my newly acquired sense of vulnerability for the rest of my life. This may not be entirely a bad thing. I notice that I am less reckless and more thoughtful, more considerate and more patient. I find myself less enthusiastic about entering the litigation combat arena.

On the other hand, I have less patience with those whose solution for every problem is to tear larger and larger holes in the social fabric while claiming to see waste, fraud and abuse at every turn. This, of course, is nuts, but somehow these claims have acquired a patina of legitimacy. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. My spouse is a primary-care physician in solo practice. I am an attorney in solo practice. Together our gross income looks fabulous, actually verging on wealth. Our net is something else entirely. Last year, I paid my paralegal more than I paid myself. The medical practice was supporting an annual overhead in the six-figure range. When I became ill and my practice tanked, we quickly found out how the "other half" lived — from paycheck to paycheck. Except that with no regular income we couldn't even qualify for an extortionate "payday" loan.

The reality is that the vast majority of us — even established professionals with modest but apparently successful practices and no remaining student loans — are only one paycheck away from financial disaster. Alright, by raiding savings and retirement funds maybe a year away. But the point is the same. We are all far more dependent on good health, and far more vulnerable to the economic as well as the physical impacts of illness than we care to admit. The great Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." That used to be humorous. Now it's a little too close to the truth.

We all rely on some combination of faith, fate, statistical probabilities and chaos theory to make it through each day. Some of us spend more time than others thinking about how these concepts affect our daily lives. I hope I can learn to be one of those people.

So where is this going? First, it's an explanation of why you will be seeing a new face on the Bar News masthead in the coming months. I had a good run. Two years is a reasonable tenure for what amounts to a highly intense volunteer job. I have no regrets.

These past two years have opened the world of WSBA participation for me. Watching the Board of Governors slowly become a more democratic and more diverse body has been fascinating. Watching the intensity that BOG members applied to their support for legal services has been an eye opener. After all, this is the Bar "establishment," yet the two topics that seem to occupy disproportionate time are lawyer discipline and making legal services available to our least powerful communities. These used to be topics that were of more concern to people who wore work boots than loafers. Some things do change.

I look back and hope that I've helped make Bar News a more lively and interesting publication. I am confident that the next editor will continue to put out a magazine that Washington lawyers look forward to seeing in their mailboxes.

As for me, I look forward to a year of rehab while I rebuild and restructure my law practice. And I look forward to seeing what's in the Bar News that shows up in my mailbox around the first of every month.