Stratton Horres.

I spent three ABA Journal articles telling lawyers how to plan for retirement. Then cancer filed an objection.

In my first article, “A funny thing happened on the way to my retirement,” I argued that lawyers need not quit the profession cold turkey. We can retire in stages, stepping away from daily pressures while continuing to mentor, write, speak and put decades of experience to work. I ended by saying we might be pleasantly surprised by what came next.

My second article, “Take a self-deposition to steer your retirement strategy,” offered a tool for discovering that next chapter. I encouraged lawyers to place themselves under oath and ask: Are you fulfilled? What is missing? What obstacles stand between you and the life you want? What are you waiting for?

The third, “What attorneys need to consider financially about their retirement,” addressed partnership agreements, capital accounts, insurance, client obligations and the need to “prepare, plan and pamper.” I also offered some words of advice: Write that book.

At the time, I thought I had created a logical sequence. Examine your life. Make a plan. Prepare financially. Retire with purpose. Enjoy what follows. It was a sound outline—until life called a witness I had not anticipated.

When life takes the deposition

As I moved into full retirement after more than four decades as a civil trial lawyer, I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. Retirement and cancer arrived almost together, turning what I had imagined as a graceful transition into something far more uncertain. Suddenly, the lawyer accustomed to managing catastrophic cases became the patient whose own future was at issue.

I did what lawyers do. I gathered evidence, consulted experts, studied alternatives and tried to reduce uncertainty to manageable facts. Surgery followed. Later, my PSA began rising again. Scans, radiation and hormone therapy became part of the record. Preparation can improve our decisions, but it cannot guarantee the verdict.

Cancer also conducted a much tougher self-deposition than the one I had administered in my study. The questions were no longer hypothetical. If time is more fragile than you believed, what matters now? Are you merely filling your calendar, or are you living fully? What have you postponed because you assumed there would always be another year? What, exactly, are you waiting for?

Under that examination, some answers became unmistakable: family, love, service, adventure, writing and presence. Cancer did not give me those values, but it stripped away my ability to evade them.

The mountain becomes the way

One postponed dream was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. After surgery, and with my doctors’ support, I began training. In my late 60s, I climbed through rainforest, alpine desert and bitter cold toward the 19,341-foot summit.

The climb was not a stunt designed to prove that I had defeated cancer. I could make no such claim. It was an act of reclamation—a way of declaring that uncertainty would not be allowed to make every decision for me.

On the mountain, grand plans quickly yielded to a humbler discipline: breathe, place one foot in front of the other, and take the next step that is actually available.

When I reached Uhuru Peak at sunrise, I did not feel invincible. I felt grateful, exhausted and fully alive. The mountain had not removed the crisis. It had changed my relationship to it. I began to understand the phrase that now sits at the heart of my story: Not all mountains are made of rock.

The book I was waiting to write

One of my Journal articles had casually asked, “How about that book you were going to write?” Life eventually demanded an answer. From Crisis to Kilimanjaro: How to Climb After Life Changes Forever grew from the collision of retirement, cancer, legal training and the mountain. It is both a personal story and a practical guide for people facing a crisis they did not choose.

The book uses the architecture of a trial because that is the language through which I learned to understand adversity. A crisis has an opening statement, when we first tell ourselves what has happened. It requires discovery, including facts we would rather avoid. It calls for a motion in limine to exclude fear, noise and speculation that are not competent evidence. It puts our assumptions on trial. Ultimately, it asks us to make a closing argument about how we intend to live.

But the central lesson is not that every crisis can be won. Lawyers know better than most that facts can be unfair, and verdicts can go against us. The lesson is that we retain agency over how we enter the courtroom, how honestly we examine the evidence, whom we allow to sit at counsel table, and what values we refuse to surrender.

An update to the record

Looking back, I still believe the advice in those three earlier articles. Retire to something, not merely from something. Take your own deposition. Prepare carefully for the financial and professional transition. Stay active, give back and write the book.

I would now add a fourth principle: Treat every plan as an opening statement, not a final verdict. Life may amend the pleadings without notice. The identity you spent decades building may change overnight. The future you prepared for may never arrive in the form you expected. That does not render the preparation meaningless. It simply requires another round of honest discovery.

Retirement, I have learned, is not the end of a professional story. It is a chance to decide which parts of our training still serve us and which parts we must release. The law taught me to prepare, question, advocate and persevere.

Cancer taught me that control has limits. Kilimanjaro taught me that progress is often measured in very small steps. Writing the book taught me that a painful chapter can become a guide for someone else.

Years ago, I wrote that lawyers might be pleasantly surprised by what comes next. I remain surprised, though not always pleasantly. Even the unwelcome turns have carried me toward greater purpose, gratitude and empathy.

So take your self-deposition, make your retirement plan and prepare the file carefully. But leave room for evidence you cannot yet imagine. The future may object to your plan. Let it.

Then tell the truth, rise and keep climbing.

Stratton Horres retired after more than four decades as a civil trial lawyer. He is the author of From Crisis to Kilimanjaro: How to Climb After Life Changes Forever. He lives in Dallas.

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