Farewell, Clients and Friends
After 10 successful years, Watson Bonander, LLC is closing its doors as of July 1, 2025. After 43 years as a trial attorney, Wade Watson is retiring from practicing law. After 29 years as a litigator, Laura Kennedy Bonander is charting a new course. Here are some parting reflections by Wade Watson.
A Farewell to Arms
His golden locks Time hath to silver turn’d;
O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth ‘gainst time and age hath ever spurn’d,
But spurn’d in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.[i]
One of the great challenges for any warrior is to know when to lay down one’s arms and to leave the battles of the field and the court to others, whose beauty, strength and youth have yet to fade.
Trial lawyers are, by nature, a type of warrior. We take on the cause of our client and use all the practiced skills of our profession to present our client in the best light possible. Marshalling the forces of law, experience and rhetoric, we strive mightily to burnish the client’s strengths and to disguise or distract from their weaknesses. We rise in the morning with the details of our client’s case racing through our minds, with facts and law constantly churning in anxious analysis, and the churning continues through the day and into the night, interrupted only by too short periods of sleep or other distractions, the latter often tainted with guilt that a productive hour may have been lost.
Total victories are rare but when they come, they are long remembered. Total defeats, also rare, may provide instruction for future battles, but are often forgotten and purged from the conscious mind. More common are the compromises, where the case is settled on favorable terms, unfavorable terms, or something in between to achieve certainty of the outcome, and to end the certainty of mounting fees and expenses. In victory, defeat or compromise, we can only hope that our work served some greater purpose. Perhaps we achieved a just result for a client who was wronged, perhaps we helped bring peace to a troubled family or business, or perhaps we did little more than give a client’s case a reasoned voice that allowed the client to be heard. Whatever the outcome, we know that being trusted with the client’s cause and with being the client’s voice is an honor and privilege.
I have now served as the champion of my clients in battles and contests for more than 43 years. Like the knight in the sonnet, my once youthful locks have turned silver, and swift time has brought unwanted age to both mind and body. Signs that might be omens tell me that the time has come for me to leave and to let go of the work that I have loved, and which has provided me with both purpose and modest reward.
I leave with heartfelt gratitude for all the clients I have had the privilege to serve, for all the great lawyers I have known and fought with and against, and for the many faithful assistants who enabled me and supported me over these many years.
And now I can sing with gusto, the words of the old American spiritual,
‘Gonna lay down my burdens,
Down by the riverside…
Ain’t ‘gonna study war no more.
Sincerely,
Wade Watson
[1] George Peele, A Farewell To Arms, 1590, a sonnet written for Queen Elizabeth I