Patricia King

I have spent the past few weeks fielding the same question: “Is he really going to retire?” I know Mark Dubois wrote that farewell article about how he was going to fix bikes and make soup, but truth be told, I have heard this all before.

When Mark worked with me in the Chief Disciplinary Counsel's Office, not a week went by that he wasn't threatening to leave. “Someday this will all be yours,” he would tell me. “Yeah, right,” I would think and go back to my office to delve into yet another sad tale told in a grievance file. At one point he was interested in an advertisement he had seen for a lawyer to set up a legal system in Afghanistan. It was the type of challenge that appealed to him, and he thought they played a lot of polo in Afghanistan, so that would be a bonus. Well, we all know he didn't go to Afghanistan. But when he came home from his summer vacation in Provincetown in 2010 and told me he and his wife had bought a condo there, I knew the time had come for him to leave the stifling regularity of state employment behind.

I wondered how we would go on without him. Mark had the ideal combination of skills to get the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel up and running, to make something from nothing. He is an incredibly bright guy with a great liberal arts education, capable of abstract thinking, analyzing the history of the law that would lead to the rationale for deciding whether what we wanted to do was appropriate, and able to see the big picture. At the same time, he is compassionate; with his experience in private practice he could empathize with all the struggles that go with the challenge of making a living as a “ham and egg” lawyer, as were so many of our constituents in the disciplinary system.

Underlying the compassion was a strong personal moral code, no doubt fostered by the Jesuits. What was wrong was wrong, and had to be dealt with accordingly. The unpleasant parts of the job of meting out discipline had to be done, and with the least possible drama.

Then he left the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel and went on to private practice and lead the Connecticut Bar Association. We went on without him, in the “house” that he built.

It is clear from the interest in Mark's alleged retirement that he is esteemed by many in the Connecticut bar, for many different reasons by many different people. He represents the lawyer we can all identify with: he is not such a fancy dresser that we feel outclassed; he has his own style of sartorial splendor in the vein of a tweedy absentminded professor (if you don't see the tattoos). A genius disguised as an old hippie. He even has the ability to, on occasion, make comments with the filter “off” when it should be “on.” We can all identify with that.

He is soft-spoken and kind. When he would counsel the many troubled lawyers who called the disciplinary counsel's number in either panic or desperation, Mark would take the time to calmly talk them off the ledge, and lead them to a path forward before hanging up the phone. Pastoral counseling, we called it. He continues to do the same for his clients and his colleagues.

The bar needs lawyers like Mark, who are not full of themselves, who do not have to believe they are better than the rest of us because they are so smart. We need the combination of intellectual skills, practical advocacy, recognition that solving problems can be the equivalent of winning, and kindness to set the example for our younger brothers and sisters at the bar. This keeps us going as lawyers, to know that there is someone we can trust to call when we are in a pickle. We look forward to other attorneys who will rise to fill the void.

Mark will fully retire one day, maybe. He has a remarkable gift of survival, given any number run-ins between his bicycle and motor vehicles of one sort or another, other assorted illnesses, and, of course, the broken neck that he suffered because he was more interested in watching a turkey vulture than the road. We will hope by then that some other equally inspirational lawyer rises to the top of our profession to lead us forward. We need inspiration.

So, as for this so-called retirement, you read the article—the phone will continue to ring in his pocket. His intellectual curiosity will compel him to answer. Maybe he won't be traveling back for as many grievance hearings, but he'll be around for whatever piques his interest, which will not be put out to pasture any time soon. When he pitches his phone into the Atlantic, then I will believe that he is retired.

Patricia King is a former chief disciplinary counsel for Connecticut, now with Geraghty & Bonnano in New London. She can be reached at [email protected].