Federal Judges, Job Searches

Judge Posner's Retirement And The Midlife Career Crisis

Are you wanting to make a major career change, but worried about the consequences of failing?

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Judge Richard Posner (screenshot via Public Affairs TV / YouTube)

I met the venerable Richard Posner about ten years ago when I attended an event where he was speaking. At that time, I didn’t know much about him. But over the years, after reading about him on Above the Law, his former blog, and elsewhere, I have come to respect him as a jurist and social critic.

So when he announced his abrupt retirement from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last week, I also wondered why. He explained his decision in post-announcement interviews with David Lat in these pages and with Adam Liptak of the New York Times.

When I read the reasons for his departure (discussed below), they seemed like problems almost everyone has or will have at some point in their careers. But I am thinking about the people who are in the middle stage in their careers, wanting to make a major change but worried about the consequences of failing. Can we make the jump like Posner did?

Judge Posner’s official reason for leaving was because he thought that pro se litigants, those individuals who cannot afford a lawyer and therefore represent themselves, were not being treated fairly, by his court. But I wonder whether there may have been other reasons for his departure — reasons that may have been festering over time.

For starters, he claims to have lost interest in his job years ago:

“About six months ago,” Judge Posner said, “I awoke from a slumber of 35 years.” He had suddenly realized, he said, that people without lawyers are mistreated by the legal system, and he wanted to do something about it.

“I realized, in the course of that, that I had really lost interest in the cases,” he said. “And then I started asking myself, what kind of person wants to have the same identical job for 35 years? And I decided 35 years is plenty. It’s too much. Why didn’t I quit 10 years ago? I’ve written 3,300 plus judicial opinions.”

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Before Posner became a judge, he was a law professor known for his scholarship on law and economics. He was chosen to be the mediator in the federal government’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft with the hopes that his background would help the parties settle. But on a day-to-day level, the court did not find his expertise to be particularly useful. And it took a toll.

“The things I used to be interested in – economic issues in the law, for example [and various other subjects he has written about] – they don’t play a big role in the work of this court,” Judge Posner said. “Gradually, those interests sort of fell by the board.”

“Gradually I lost interest or exhausted my interest,” he said. “So for the last 10 or 15 years, I’ve just been focused on the court.”

And finally, the court was unsupportive of his plan to help indigent litigants:

In the Seventh Circuit, Judge Posner said, staff lawyers rather than judges assessed appeals from [pro se] litigants, and the court generally rubber-stamped the lawyers’ recommendations.

Judge Posner offered to help. “I wanted to review all the staff attorney memos before they went to the panel of judges,” he said. “I’d sit down with the staff attorney, go over his memo. I’d make whatever editorial suggestions – or editorial commands – that I thought necessary. It would be good education for staff attorneys, and it would be very good” for the litigants without lawyers.

“I had the approval of the director of the staff attorney program,” Judge Posner said, “but the judges, my colleagues, all 11 of them, turned it down and refused to give me any significant role. I was very frustrated by that.”

I try to think about what an attorney in the middle stage of their career would do if they had the same issues that Posner did. They lose interest in their work, their colleagues are unsupportive, and it has an effect on them personally. Should they stop what they are doing now and do something different? Or be patient and hang on for a few years?

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Alternatively, they might be doing well financially but they are unhappy, or they anticipate that the future won’t be as bright.

We may be suffering from a career midlife crisis. Studies cited by the Harvard Business Review have shown that job satisfaction tends to be U-shaped. In other words, employees tend to have high job satisfaction during the early and final stages of their careers. But they experience the least amount of job satisfaction during the middle. This is because it is around this time we learn that we will not be millionaires (maybe), movie gods, or rock stars. And for those who made it to the top, the income and prestige are not as satisfying as we thought.

Now that’s not a reason to be very, very upset. But we have to make major career decisions before someone else does it for us. And that entails a degree of risk. The risk that things will be worse if we make the wrong decision. But making the right decision can lead to a better future.

Then the question is, what is the right decision? That depends. Can you fix the problems as soon as possible? Can you find a way to rejuvenate interest in your work? Do you just need a vacation? Or are the problems likely to remain permanent?

Thankfully, for those who are in the bottom of the job satisfaction U-curve, the HBR article concludes that being in the bottom is only temporary and one can only go up from there. However, I don’t think it endorses sitting around and being miserable. You will have to make some educated decisions, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

Posner’s decision to retire from the Seventh Circuit must have been a very emotional decision. But we all know he will be fine.

For those of us who don’t have his credentials but face similar challenges, we may be suffering a midlife career crisis. But instead of buying a fancy car or jewelry, take this opportunity to figure out what you really want to do with your professional life and take steps to accomplish it.

Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at sachimalbe@excite.com and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.

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