Five #MOLawyers share how hobbies fuel their well-being, legal success

Well-Being Week in Law is this week, May 5-9, with today's theme focused on social well-being. A lack of social connection can contribute to burnout, difficulty managing stress, and impaired communication skills, all of which are crucial for legal practice. Taking time to focus on what you, as a lawyer, can do both during and outside of work to bring about rejuvenation can help you effectively serve your clients for many years.

The Missouri Bar 2024-2025 Leadership Academy class did a Q&A with lawyers Morry Cole, Steven Kretzer, Amy Rebecca Johnson, Hon. Lisa Page, and Commissioner William Gust about how their passions and hobbies outside the courtroom — from flying and weightlifting to acting, yoga, and cooking — enhance their focus, resilience, and ultimately, their ability to serve clients.

As part of its year-long service project, the Leadership Academy class, in collaboration with the Standing Committee on Well-Being in the Profession, created well-being activities and programs offered during Well-Being Week in Law to enhance Missouri lawyers’ competence and help them even better serve their clients and communities.

Visit MoBar.org/WWIL2025 to view more well-being activities related to physical, spiritual, career and intellectual, social, and emotional well-being. Remember to track your participation during WWIL for the chance to win prizes, including an all-inclusive pass to the 2025 Missouri Bar Annual Meeting.

Editor’s note: Answers have been edited for style, clarity, and brevity.

Morry Cole | Commissioner William Gust | Steven Kretzer | Amy Rebecca Johnson | Hon. Lisa Page

Morry Cole

Morry Cole, a lawyer at Gray Ritter Graham handling complex litigation, discovered how to take his passion for flying to new heights by combining it with his practice of law.

What inspired you to start this hobby or activity?

One of my hobbies is flying airplanes, and I have been a licensed pilot since I was a teenager. Our family has spent time around airports and flown many different types of aircraft — from antiques to ultramodern planes — for three generations. I was inspired to become a pilot by my father who took me on my first flight when I was two weeks old.

Flying has provided me many benefits, both personally and professionally. Personally, flying has facilitated flexibility in travel and efficient use of time. As a result, I have made it home for hundreds of nights that would otherwise have been spent on the road.

Professionally, I have realized many efficiencies. Perhaps more importantly, flying has provided in-depth knowledge of weather, airports, air traffic control, aircraft, engines, metallurgy, avionics, and human factors that are involved in the aviation cases (and other cases) I routinely pursue in court.

How important is this activity to your well-being as a legal professional?

Flying helps me see the world in a different perspective. It provides an escape [and] is demanding of concentration. When you fly, you concentrate upon the tasks before you and take a break from the demands of the job and the cases in which you are embroiled. Flying [also] opens the world and brings people together. Aviation helps keep me close to many of my family members and friends who are also pilots … [and] keeps me up to date on technological advancements in aircraft and their component parts.

How has this activity benefited your legal practice and clients?

Being a pilot [has] … improved my legal practice, my client satisfaction, my results, and my personal satisfaction in practice. Flying has exposed me to many years of detailed scientific discussions. Root cause analysis, material science, metallurgy, and finite element analysis are routine areas of discussion in aviation. Once you become well versed in these topics, you realize that they have application in many types of cases. For example, our firm has conducted sophisticated metallurgical analysis on a wide variety of failed products, including aircraft parts, boilers, guns, outboard boat motors, and tractor parts. The education I have gained through aviation has had cross application in many different types of cases and will continue to do so in the future.

Have you experienced challenges in maintaining social connections or hobbies as a lawyer, and how have you addressed them?

Every lawyer faces the difficulties of time management. Aviation is one of the few ways I know of to “manufacture” time. If you can travel hundreds of miles per hour faster than driving, you will realize efficiencies. Utilizing that saved time to maintain family connections and social connections pays benefits every time.

Commissioner William Gust

Hon. William Gust, a probate commissioner for Probate Court of St. Louis County, lifts weights to strengthen not only his body, but also his mind so he can continue to help lawyers and clients in the courtroom.

What inspired you to start this hobby or activity?

A few years ago, I decided to begin lifting weights because I wanted to get stronger. Since 2022, I have lifted weights multiple times a week, most every week. I have even competed in four Strongman Competitions and won two.

How important is this activity to your well-being as a legal professional?

When I started strength training, I expected to feel physically stronger. What I didn’t realize is that it would make me feel mentally stronger. Picking extremely heavy things up before going into work makes you feel strong mentally. It also makes you more resilient to the stressors you encounter.

It has also given me goals to work toward outside of the office. With strength training, it is very clear when you are making progress as the weight on the bar goes up. Seeing progress as often as I have is reassuring.

How has this activity benefited your legal practice and your clients?

The focus necessary for my strength training has helped me increase my capacity for focus when I sit on the bench or write an opinion. If you are pulling a 400-plus pound deadlift, you cannot be thinking about work or other stressors in your life; all that matters is you and the bar. I find that this intense practice translates to the concentration and focus required to be a commissioner. Sitting on the bench and presiding over complicated trust cases requires an intense amount of focus.

Have you experienced challenges in maintaining social connections or hobbies as a lawyer, and how have you addressed them?

It can be difficult to maintain social connections and hobbies as a lawyer. I’ve found the key is that I plan it out in advance. On Sunday, if I tell myself I am going to the gym three times this week, that may or may not happen. Instead, I will schedule the dates and times that I will go to the gym. By scheduling the dates and times on my calendar, this makes me much more likely to keep the appointment.

I also always strength train before I go into work. It gives me a great feeling of accomplishment before I even get to the courthouse.

Steven Kretzer

Steven Kretzer, an assistant prosecuting attorney for the Camden County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, transfers his skills as an actor to the courtroom.

What inspired you to start this hobby or activity?

Since high school, I've been actively involved in the performance arts in music and theater … After a couple years in practice as a lawyer, I realized I was missing a big part of what got me where I was: acting.

I began auditioning for several local community theater companies and have performed in more than 40 productions. I have also appeared in commercials, public service campaigns, a television pilot, and as an extra in a feature length film. I most recently portrayed Vladimir Popov in the musical, “Anastasia” (shown in photo). In addition to the scripted shows I've been in, I also perform with a local improv group.

How important is this activity to your well-being as a legal professional?

Theater, in particular, provides a welcome respite to some of the vicarious trauma inflicted in some of the cases I work. As a prosecutor, I often see people at their worst and victims that have been through terrible experiences. Theater provides a distinct shelter from some of the storms this career has to offer.

How has this activity benefited your legal practice and your clients?

As a trial lawyer and prosecutor, my stage skills allow me to communicate to the juries I appear in front of in ways I would not, had I not [had] the experiences on stage. As a trial lawyer, you have to be quick on your feet in front of a judge or jury – much like you do in front of an audience, whether that be a scripted show or improvised.

[In the theater community,] we also all come from different levels of talent and experience. Holding a novice's lack of experience against them serves as a great detriment to team building and rapport. In the legal profession, we often encounter folks that have little to no experience with the justice system. The skill of meeting someone where they are is integral to good communication with folks in unfamiliar territory.

How do you prioritize this activity with your work as a lawyer?

It is so easy to turn the passion of the legal profession into an obsession. Figuring out ways to live our lives outside of the practice of law, in my opinion, is vital to not only an enjoyable and rewarding life, but will inevitably work its way into your practice. The stress of being a lawyer with so much riding on what we do day in and day out requires a release of some sort. Ideally, that release comes in the form of a hobby or activity that gives back to your community and gives you the sense of community and involvement along the way.

There are many weeks where being a prosecutor is not an 8 a.m.-5 p.m. proposition. Trial weeks, the weeks leading up to a trial, and … periods of being on call for middle-of-the-night search warrants or 24-hour hold charging decisions … can demand many late night and weekend hours.

Accordingly, it is important to pick projects that have the most potential not to interfere with the work. When it does, it's important to have a great team in your office that you can trust to help cover the things you need to miss.

Amy Rebecca Johnson

Amy Rebecca Johnson, a family law lawyer at Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal, P.C., uses yoga to help strengthen her physical and mental health so she can show up for her clients daily.

What inspired you to start this hobby or activity?

I have been practicing yoga since junior year of high school. It's changed throughout the years but ultimately, yoga has become more than just a physical practice for me. While the movement practice remains incredibly important, other aspects of yoga also play a major part in my well-being.

How important is this activity to your well-being as a legal professional?

Yoga reduces my stress, increases my focus, has given me tools to remain calm, but most importantly, it assists me in regulating my nervous system, which is key for overall health both short and long term.

How has this activity benefited your legal practice and your clients?

If we are not taking care of our own well-being, we are not able to adequately and completely represent our clients. This opens the door to a lot of day-to-day issues but can also lead to concerns with malpractice.

Since yoga gives me the space to allow me to step away from the stress that a family law practice can bring, I am able to approach cases with a different sense of calm. This transfers into how I treat and represent my clients.

How do you prioritize this activity with your work as a lawyer?

I make sure that I schedule it into my day, just like I would a court appearance or a meeting with a client. For me, spending time in the morning, before going to the office, is the best time for me to make sure that I fit my movement practice into my day.

We all know that lawyering is not an 8-to-5 or 40-hours-a-week job. Taking a step back and determining what is important for me in ensuring that my non-work time is filled with things that are important and meaningful is a part of a regular check-in with myself.

Hon. Lisa Page

Hon. Lisa Page, a judge for the Missouri Court of Appeals-Eastern District, uses her passion for cooking to help break down cases, while also creating weekly mealtime memories with her family.

What inspired you to start this hobby or activity?

I enjoy creating new recipes that are healthy but taste like they are not. Each weekend, you will find my husband Eddie and I making Sunday dinner with our family. We are up to 12 people in our family and usually have a couple of extra friends join our fun.

I also meal prep at least one weekday dinner for us and for our kids to take home with them. It is a labor of love, and it makes my day when they call and tell me how much they enjoy those dinners during the week.

How has this activity benefited your legal practice and your clients?

The Page family joke is the “more stress mom is under, the better we eat,” because cooking is such a source of stress relief for me. During the last 20 years, as a trial judge and now at the Court of Appeals, many a decision has ruminated in the back of my mind as I prepared food. This process frequently helps me break a case of writer’s block or figure out that perfect word or phrase that is eluding me.

How do you prioritize this activity with your work as a judge?

I spend a working breakfast or lunch on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday planning the next week. It usually takes 15-30 minutes, but I function better when I know how my work days will fit with a concurrent exercise and meal plan.