As published in the January 2026 edition of Bench & Bar (Minnesota Bar association magazine)
For 35 years, I practiced law the way I played sports: solo, competitive, and—if I’m being honest—slightly allergic to the concept of “partners.” As a consumer bankruptcy and family law practitioner with my name on the door, I preferred controlling outcomes. I approached tennis the same way. Friends in their 40s transitioned to doubles for sanity and survival, but not me—I stuck with singles, partly because my legs still worked and partly because I didn’t want to lose because someone else had a bad day. (And worse yet, I certainly didn’t want someone else losing because I had a bad day.) That same aversion to shared responsibility quietly guided my thoughts whenever I considered having a law partner. The idea of answering to a colleague when I felt like leaving early on a Friday? Absolutely not.
Then pickleball found me—well, technically, a new hip found me first. After surgery, and with my tennis snobbery still intact, I finally wandered onto a pickleball court, only to be annihilated by retirees who moved with alarming quickness. They didn’t just beat me; they did it kindly, with paddle taps, encouraging words, and the sort of emotional support I didn’t realize a grown adult could offer another while simultaneously hitting a plastic ball past them. And it felt… nice. Eventually, I had to face an uncomfortable truth: I had never been this gracious with my doubles partners in tennis. I was the guy mentally drafting a list titled “Never Partner with These People Again.” Pickleball forced me to change—because in this game, you can’t run away from doubles. It’s practically a team-building workshop in disguise.
That lesson proved invaluable when my longtime assistant of 14 years moved on and a parade of replacements rotated through my office like a poorly cast sitcom. Some didn’t follow directions. Some didn’t stay. Some needed more patience than my former tennis-self would’ve tolerated. But the pickleball version of me—the one who had learned that I should show up to make my partner’s day, not the other way around—handled things differently. I started seeing staff not as people who worked for me, but as teammates working toward the same end: the continued survival of my law firm (under the stern supervision of our true boss, the clients). I communicated more. I encouraged more. I stopped expecting mind-reading and started expecting collaboration. And slowly, miraculously, my office became a place where we enjoyed working, talked about life, supported each other, and occasionally acknowledged that we were all human—even the boss.
Pickleball left me with three mantras:
- My partner didn’t show up to make my day; I showed up to make theirs. Shocking revelation for a lifelong soloist.
- Treat opponents with dignity and respect. Whether across the net or across a negotiation, it turns out good manners are not fatal.
- Win. And conveniently, when I follow the first two rules, number three often takes care of itself.
Today, at 63, I love going to work—something I never expected to say out loud, let alone publish in a professional magazine. My office runs on teamwork, grace, and humor. Just like pickleball partnerships, some work relationships last, some don’t, and some start fantastically and eventually drift apart. But I’ve learned this: When you lift up the people around you, you rise with them.
Pickleball didn’t just save my hip. It saved my practice. And it did so using a paddle, a wiffle ball, and a group of very patient seniors who ran circles around me