Winter 2010-#5. In Memory of Joan Loring Wing and on the Occasion of the Vermont Supreme Court Swearing-In Ceremony for New Attorneys Montpelier, Vermont, December 10, 2009.

• Author: By Hon. Paul L. Reiber

Vermont Bar Journal

2010.

Winter 2010-#5.

In Memory of Joan Loring Wing and on the Occasion of the Vermont Supreme Court Swearing-In Ceremony for New Attorneys Montpelier, Vermont, December 10, 2009

THE VERMONT BAR JOURNALVolume 35, No. 4Winter 2010In Memory of Joan Loring Wing and on the Occasion of the Vermont Supreme Court Swearing-In Ceremony for New Attorneys Montpelier, Vermont, December 10, 2009By Hon. Paul L. ReiberOnce or twice in the past at these events I have mentioned the bottom drawer in my desk. It's the place where many of us collect the fragments of daily life. Everyone has a bottom drawer and in it usually there are the leftovers from lunch yesterday (or last week or last month), pencils (tips broken), pens without caps (ink run dry), letterhead left over from a prior professional association, the gift you received at the last office Yankee swap Christmas party that you are saving to re-gift at the next one. My advice to you is that you clean out that bottom drawer and begin to fill it with letters of gratitude and notes of well wishes and the like. Print those emails and save them in the bottom drawer and then on a day when things don't go quite right pull them out and read them.

I had such a day Tuesday. A good friend, a long time colleague, Joan Wing was killed on Route 7 driving to a mediation in Burlington. Joan was a lawyer's lawyer, one for the ages-a virtual rock of the bar. She was a person of pluck and wit and good will. Joan came from a family of lawyers, the third generation to serve as president of the Vermont Bar Association, following her father and her grandfather. But that is not what made her great. She was a person who gave and gave of her time and talents for the betterment of the courts and the people of Vermont. Don't get me wrong, she was not southern-belle sweetness. Although she possessed tremendous compassion, she could be prickly too. She was not without her point of view and she was a tough, smart lawyer. This morning I want to tell you about her.

For a number of years Joan Wing was a member and then served as chair of this Court's Professional Responsibility Board. She was perfect for that role. The chair juries appeals dismissed by Disciplinary Counsel at screening. About a decade ago, our bar and this Court implemented a diversion program-an alternative to discipline, designed to reconcile disgruntled clients and their lawyers through a mediation model.

This program frequently sees attorneys whose problem results from a lack of common sense, or overwork, or forgetfulness. Some of the lawyers who come into this program are those who were practicing without a net-no backup, solo practitioners, or new lawyers, or lawyers having trouble with their practice for all kinds of reasons. Then, too, sadly there are some in our profession, just like any other, who suffer from substance abuse, alcoholism, depression, anxiety, or other...