At the end of a nearly 14-minute presentation, retiring Supreme Court Clerk Bill Thompson urged lawyers to keep "imagineering" ways to improve the state's courts.
"Perfection is not an element of the human condition," he told several hundred people attending the Missouri Bar's fall meeting. "It is the restless pursuit of improving Missouri's delivery of legal services to the citizens of this state that sustains the promise of the system of which the citizens of this state can be justly proud."
He also thanked the Bar members for their "warmth kindness (and) friendship" during his more than 41 years of state service, with 38 of them at the Supreme Court.
Thompson has been the chief clerk since 2012 and is retiring at the end of the year.
Most of his speech actually was given as a question-and-answer session with Betsy Aubuchon, who will succeed him as chief clerk in January.
Why did he apply to work at the Supreme Court?
"I was working for the General Assembly, and they passed the (new) death penalty law," Thompson explained, "and there was a position at the Supreme Court in that bill" he was urged to apply for.
He quipped he was hired because he had delivered newspapers as a boy to then-Chief Justice J.P. Morgan.
When asked why he stayed at the court almost 40 years, Thompson said he applied at least twice for other jobs - including a clerk's job at the U.S. Supreme Court and for the University of Missouri's legal staff - but decided both times to stay in Jefferson City.
He also was a 1991 finalist for a seat on the appeals court in Kansas City but wasn't chosen, and he told the Bar luncheon "that was a very wise thing" he was able to stay with the high court.
He's served with more than 20 Supreme Court judges, "and they've all been fascinating; I can truly say I've learned from every one of them," Thompson said.
What's the biggest change he has seen in the law in his nearly four decades at the court?
"What the public expects of the law," Thompson explained. "When I came, it was very much oriented toward solving the legal disputes that were brought to the court.
"We are much more involved in what I would call 'being social agents' now."
The Missouri Supreme Court - which can pick and choose the cases it decides to hear, usually based on unresolved legal issues - hears many more complicated divorce and domestic relations cases than in the past, he said.
"And then we're into treatment courts," he said. "And lawyer discipline - we were not so kind to lawyers who got into trouble, and we didn't have the intervention committee at the time to help people who had addiction problems and things like that."
But, Thompson added, many of those changes have been driven by "society as a whole, which has a different expectation of what courts should be about - and meeting those expectations has been fascinating to me."
Aubuchon asked Thompson if he had any advice for her.
He noted every person who works for the court has certain skill sets, "and no one has universal skill sets. So, the successor will always be someone who has a different skill set.
"And what you have to do is exploit your skill set and try to figure out how to fill in the parts you don't have."
Bar President Dana Tippin Cutler - a Kansas City lawyer who also serves on Lincoln University's Curators board - introduced Thompson, telling the luncheon audience: "I would be hard-pressed to find anyone within our legal community who has had a greater influence on the justice system in this state.
"If I were to read Bill's list of accomplishments, we would be here until mid-afternoon."