Be Well, 0821 WYBJ, Vol. 44 No. 4. 40

• Author: Maryt L. Fredrickson, J.
• Position: Vol. 44 4 Pg. 40

Be Well

No. Vol. 44 No. 4 Pg. 40

Wyoming Bar Journal

August, 2021

Financial Well-Being: Literacy from Graduation to Retirement and In-Between

Maryt L. Fredrickson, J.

Ninth Judicial District Court & 307 Yoga LLC Jackson, Wyoming

This month’s Wyoming Lawyer is about education and school finance. What better occasion to write about attorney well-being and finance? As you know if you’ve been reading this column for a while, attorney well-being is like an umbrella. Each rib of the umbrella is a different type of well-being: emotional, vocational, physical, environmental, intellectual, social, and financial. The stronger each rib of that umbrella is, the better it works as a resilience tool—when the stressors of practice and life hit you, they can roll off the umbrella with less adverse impact on you.

Financial well-being can be defined as being able to meet current and ongoing financial needs and feeling comfortable and secure in short-term and long-term financial goals. Financial well-being in law can be looked at in two categories: personal and professional. Personal finances may be things like paying for rent and daycare and saving for retirement. Professional finances may be things like managing office payroll and expenses.

Both types of financial well-being have ethical implications. An attorney with financial well-being is less likely to be tempted to mess with client funds. While disciplinary cases involving client funds and trust accounts are fairly infrequent, the disciplinary consequences can be some of the more severe.

Financial well-being challenges evolve during an attorney’s career. The challenges for young lawyers are different than those faced by mid-career attorneys which are different than those faced by retiring lawyers. This month’s column sheds some light on some of those differences and highlights the role of financial literacy as a solution.

Young Lawyers

One challenge young lawyers face centers around student debt. That picture is different now than it was for a new lawyer 30 years ago. The American Bar Association’s 2020 Law School Student Loan Debt Survey Report noted that in-state tuition for law school at a public institution was about $2,006 in 1985.^[1] Accounting for inflation, the cost would be $4,763 in 2019. Instead, the average in-state tuition in 2019 was $28,000, not including living expenses. The University of Wyoming College of Law, one...