1961 to 2021: Reflections on Sixty Years as a T & E Lawyer

On May 1, 2021, I will celebrate sixty years as a practicing T & E (Trusts & Estates) lawyer. Here are some thoughts at this milestone.

First: my good luck, so much of it. I grew up on a small sheep and beef farm in Virginia’s mountains. My father died when I was fifteen, leaving my mother and me to carry on with the farm. (His federal estate tax return revealed an adjusted gross estate (net worth) of $29, 946.28).

He had been a self-educated lawyer as well as a farmer, reading law under a judge with only high school as a foundation. He’d passed the bar in 1934 while serving as clerk of the circuit court by appointment to fill a dead clerk’s term, pay $700 a year. He was defeated in 1936 when he ran for the office (his ticket-mate President Franklin Roosevelt secured a second term by a landslide, but neither he nor my father carried Montgomery County, thanks to its bootleggers, baptists and Republicans, all angered by Franklin’s repeal of Prohibition).

He’d opened a solo practice and at his death eighteen years later in a car crash was farming and practicing real estate, probate and small business law. I adored him and attribute to his influence and my farming experiences much of the contentment and joy life has brought me.

I operated with day-labor help from school mates and guidance from a neighboring retired dairy farm manager the sixty-ewe-twenty-brood-cow-130-acre bluegrass pasture-alfalfa hay farm while attending high school then Virginia Tech as a day student. In 1958 I entered University of Richmond’s Law School after three years college.

Tech had cost $63 a quarter, law school cost $1000 a year, but a $1400 Williams Scholarship covered that and $30 a month for a shared bedroom in a private home. In May 1961, I graduated first in my class and winner of the Charles Norman Medal and landed a job at McGuire, Eggleston, Bocock & Woods (as its ninth lawyer) at $400 a month. I was twenty two, and married with a five-month-old son and a six-year-old stepson.

My luck continued when Thomas C. Gordon Jr. became my mentor. A bachelor Major up from private in the Signal Corps who had won a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster in the Italian Campaign, he was devoted to excellence in legal writing and made me a participant in every drafting project, the best way to learn. In 1964 he was appointed to Virginia’s Court of Appeals (now Supreme Court) leaving me to find my way. Carle Davis, a tax partner, was a major producer of estate planning and other tax work, and soon I was part of his team, plus handling fiduciary guidance for the trust department of First & Merchants National Bank (now Bank of America N. A.).

In 1965 I drafted 395 family sets of estate plan documents (typically a set consisted of two wills, two revocable trusts, one or two irrevocable life insurance trusts, 2503(c) trusts for children, powers of attorney and living wills (precursor to AMDs). This with no computers or word processing beyond an IBM Selectric typewriter, much work with carbon paper for my secretary. I also edited a wills and trusts forms book for the Bank and a similar forms book for Virginia CLE. The style and conventions and fractional formulas used in these forms have found their way into the forms used today by many Virginia practitioners.

When I reached conventional retirement age for law firm partners in 2005, I did not want to retire. With the aid of my protege and dear friend, Dennis Belcher, I reached an unconventional arrangement with McGuireWoods. I would with my son Scott form a partnership to practice T & E law, while remaining Of Counsel at McGuireWoods. We would serve clients not needing big-firm services on an economical basis, while at the same time work with McGuire for clients who might want both its depth of talent as well as my institutional knowledge. It worked remarkably well for more than a decade. Then with the advent of 2020, changed circumstances made Word & Word’s consolidation with Virginia Estate & Trust Law PLC seem advisable. That too has been fortuitous, more good luck.

So, what observations of six decades might be worth taking your time to read?

First, what has changed, and what remains constant?

Biggest change: the growth of wealth. In 1961, $200,000 was a large estate. Anyone with more than $120,000 paid estate tax, thanks to a $60,000 estate tax exemption and a marital deduction limited to 50% of adjusted gross estate.

Wealth did not begin to grow until the 1980s, when the stock market and real estate began a mostly steady climb, with hiccups to catch the unwary and periods of illiquidity for real estate about every ten years. The three big dangers for clients then and now: overspending, over leverage, over concentration.

1974 brought index investing for the masses with John Bogle’s Vanguard’s S&P 500 Index Fund. By far the best invention of the money management industry over the span of my career, I witnessed this proved over twenty years as a non-employee director of a bank-sponsored mutual fund family. The reduced costs (now near zero) of index investing and the inability of stock pickers to beat the indexes has proved year after year the wisdom of indexing for publicly traded securities. Look at the numbers. And read A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel of Princeton.

Next, the divorce rate has steadily climbed over my six decades. Growth of wealth has enabled it. Multiple marriages and mixed families have complicated the tasks of T & E lawyers.

Another trend: the rise in substance abuse and mental illness, feeding one another.

Another threat, intensifying with the growth of wealth: the lack of struggle in the lives of youth. For youth to build character, they must have struggle and parental example to find values. Children reared amid affluence without struggle and character example nearly always turn out badly. Children need chores and summer jobs, limits on spending and parents who live by good values. Affluence can destroy all.

Why have I continued to practice to near age 83 with no plans to quit? Because T&E practice is deeply satisfying. It is helping people deal with their most challenging personal issues: caring for themselves, their spouses, parents, children and grands, and if they are financially fortunate, for charitable causes. I am grateful for my good luck. And T&E practice provides a perfect window on human nature, good and bad.

Advice to young lawyers? Have at least one passionate hobby. It will keep you sane. And it will help you build your practice. People who share your passions will want to hire you. I have two passionate hobbies: bird dogs and non-legal writing. I have combined the two by reporting pointing dog field trials and writing fictional and non-fiction pieces about the canine athletes and people inhabiting that obscure world. It is fun, an essential ingredient in a satisfying life.