For 42 years, I made a living helping people and businesses navigate some of their worst days. As a civil defense trial lawyer, I represented clients facing significant litigation, complex liability questions, and potentially devastating financial consequences. I learned to assess risk, prepare for uncertainty, develop a strategy, and keep moving when the pressure was greatest. In short, crisis management for my clients was my specialty.
Over the years, I wrote or co-authored eight articles for CLM as an attorney, sharing professional insights drawn from my litigation practice and experience managing complex claims. Those articles reflected the perspective of someone helping clients and claims professionals navigate other people's crises.
This article is different. Far different.
For the first time, I am writing not primarily as a lawyer, but as someone who has experienced a profound personal crisis firsthand. Late in my legal career, aggressive cancer forced me to confront uncertainty, reconsider my priorities, and redefine what it means to keep moving forward. What I learned has changed not only how I see life, but also how I understand the human experience behind the claims and litigation we manage.
I believed I understood crisis.
Then I received a prostate cancer diagnosis, and discovered how different a crisis feels when you are no longer advising someone else about it. This time, I was the client. The uncertainty was mine. The consequences were personal. And no amount of legal experience could guarantee the outcome I wanted.
I retired completely from law to handle this life-threatening illness.
My journey from the courtroom to cancer treatment, and eventually to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, taught me lessons about resilience, leadership, and the human side of adversity that I wish I had understood earlier in my career.
Those lessons are relevant not only to people confronting a serious illness but also to the claims professionals, risk managers, and defense attorneys who spend their careers helping others navigate uncertainty.
When the Case Becomes Personal
I retired after a 42-year legal career, including serving as National Trial Team co-chair, and Dallas office managing partner at Wilson Elser, for 27 years. I had spent decades evaluating difficult circumstances, preparing for unfavorable possibilities, and working toward the best achievable outcome for my clients.
Retirement was supposed to be the beginning of a new chapter. My wife, Debbie, and I looked forward to travel, adventure, and the freedom to pursue interests that a demanding legal career had often pushed aside.
But cancer entered the picture.
A prostate cancer diagnosis changed the trajectory of my retirement. Surgery was followed by recurrence, radiation, and hormone therapy. The experience introduced me to a different kind of uncertainty: one that could not be resolved by winning a motion, negotiating a settlement, or persuading a jury.
In litigation, even an unfavorable development usually presents another decision to make. You can investigate further, adjust your strategy, consult an expert, or negotiate a different resolution.
With cancer, you can research, ask questions, seek medical opinions, and make informed decisions, but you cannot control every variable.
I had to learn the difference between exercising control over my choices and pretending I could control the outcome.
That distinction is important in claims and litigation management. We are trained to identify exposure and reduce uncertainty. We develop budgets, establish reserves, assess liability, evaluate damages, and prepare for possible outcomes. These disciplines are essential. But the people behind the files are dealing with uncertainty that numbers and strategies cannot fully capture.
Recognizing that reality does not weaken our professional judgment. It can make us better at our jobs.
Preparation Is Essential. Adaptability Is Indispensable.
One of the most valuable habits I developed as a trial lawyer was preparation. You cannot eliminate every surprise, but you can improve your ability to respond when something unexpected happens.
Cancer reinforced that lesson while adding an important qualification: preparation must coexist with adaptability.
I learned to ask better questions, listen more carefully, and distinguish what I knew from what I feared. I also learned that a plan is a tool, not a promise. Circumstances change. New information arrives. Sometimes the objective itself must be reconsidered.
Claims professionals understand this instinctively. A case that initially appears straightforward may become complicated by new evidence, an unexpected expert opinion, or a change in the claimant's condition. An early assessment may need to be revised. A strategy that once made sense may no longer serve the client's interests.
The temptation is to defend the original assessment because we have invested time, money, and professional credibility in it. But sound judgment requires the willingness to reconsider our assumptions.
The same principle applies to life. My retirement plans did not anticipate cancer. I could have viewed the diagnosis as the end of the future I had imagined. Instead, I began asking a different question: Given the circumstances I now face, what kind of life can I still build?
That question changed everything.
Finding a Mountain Worth Climbing
I had long wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain. After my diagnosis, the idea took on a new meaning. The climb became a tangible way to reclaim a sense of possibility and remind myself that cancer would not be the only story defining my life.
At 68, I prepared for the challenge through physical training, walking, and disciplined attention to my fitness. The objective was ambitious, but the preparation gave me something concrete to work toward.
The mountain demanded more than physical strength. It required patience, humility, and the willingness to keep going one step at a time.
The summit attempt began in the early hours of the morning. In darkness and at high altitude, the climb became an exercise in managing the next step rather than obsessing over the distance remaining. The summit was still far away, and fatigue made every decision matter.
Eventually, I reached Uhuru Peak.
Standing at the top of Kilimanjaro was exhilarating, but the greatest value of the experience was not simply reaching an elevation of 19,341 feet. It was what the journey represented: I had faced a serious diagnosis, acknowledged the uncertainty, prepared for a difficult challenge, and continued to pursue a meaningful life.
The mountain also taught me something that has become a personal mantra: Not all mountains are made of rock.
Some are illnesses. Others are professional setbacks, family difficulties, financial losses, or the loss of an identity we spent decades building. For claims professionals and attorneys, the mountain might be a career that has become overwhelming, a difficult case that seems impossible to resolve, or the realization that success in one area of life has come at a cost elsewhere.
We cannot always choose the mountains in front of us. We can, however, choose how we approach them.
Redefining What Success Looks Like
The legal profession teaches us to measure results. Did we prevail at trial? Did we resolve the claim within an acceptable range? Did we protect the client from unnecessary exposure? Did we deliver value?
These are legitimate measures of professional performance. But my experience with cancer forced me to examine a broader definition of success.
Success also means maintaining perspective when an outcome is uncertain. It means recognizing when a colleague needs support rather than another demand. It means understanding that a person experiencing a crisis may need clear information and honest guidance as much as they need an effective strategy.
In claims management, the human experience can become obscured by the demands of a file. We discuss injuries in medical terminology, people in categories, and losses in financial terms. That language is necessary to evaluate claims consistently and fairly. Yet behind every file is someone whose life may have changed dramatically.
Empathy does not require abandoning objectivity. Compassion does not mean compromising a client's interests. In fact, the ability to understand another person's perspective can improve communication, help manage conflict, and support better-informed decisions.
My cancer journey also made me more conscious of the people who help us through difficult circumstances. My wife's love and support have been indispensable. Medical professionals have helped me navigate treatment. Friends have reminded me that I remain connected to a world larger than my diagnosis.
No one climbs a mountain entirely alone.
The same is true in professional life. Effective claims resolution depends on relationships among adjusters, defense counsel, experts, insureds, and other stakeholders. Clear communication, mutual respect, and shared expectations are not soft alternatives to technical competence. They are part of what makes technical competence effective.
Retirement, Identity, and the Next Chapter
Cancer was not my only unexpected transition. Retirement itself required me to reconsider who I was.
For more than four decades, my work supplied structure, purpose, relationships, and a way to measure progress. Leaving that environment meant losing more than a job title. I had to determine what would give meaning to the years ahead.
The diagnosis accelerated that process.
Rather than allowing my world to shrink around my medical circumstances, I began to explore new possibilities. Travel, adventure, writing, and advocacy became ways to reconnect with the world. My wife and I have continued to seek experiences that remind us how extraordinary ordinary life can be. Swimming with humpback whales in Tonga was one particularly powerful example.
I also wrote “From Crisis to Kilimanjaro,” a book about navigating upheaval, finding purpose, and continuing to climb when life changes forever.
Writing it helped me understand that the mountain was never only about cancer or a physical summit. It was about learning to live with uncertainty without surrendering the possibility of joy.
I continue to navigate cancer and treatment.
I do not present my story as a simple triumph over adversity or a formula that guarantees a particular outcome. Resilience is not the absence of fear, and optimism is not a substitute for medical care or sound decision-making.
Sometimes resilience means pursuing an ambitious goal. Sometimes it means accepting help, changing plans, or simply getting through a difficult day.
The important thing is to keep making room for life alongside the challenges we face.
What We Can Carry Forward
Looking back, I see several lessons that connect my years in litigation with my experience as a cancer patient.
First, prepare thoroughly, but remain willing to adapt. A sound strategy must respond to changing circumstances rather than defend outdated assumptions.
Second, distinguish what you can control from what you cannot. We can influence our decisions, preparation, communication, and response. We cannot guarantee every outcome.
Third, remember the people behind the problem. Claims files, litigation budgets, and risk assessments are necessary tools, but the human consequences deserve attention, too.
Fourth, measure success more broadly. Results matter, but so do integrity, relationships, purpose, and the ability to remain engaged with life beyond work.
Finally, do not assume the chapter you are in is the final chapter. A diagnosis, a professional disappointment, or retirement may change the future you expected. It does not automatically eliminate the possibility of a meaningful future.
I spent much of my career helping others navigate difficult circumstances. Cancer taught me what it means to stand on the other side of that relationship, facing questions that have no easy answers. Kilimanjaro taught me that forward progress is often measured not in dramatic leaps but in the next deliberate step.
I am a retired trial lawyer, a cancer patient, an author, and an adventurer. These identities coexist. None tells my entire story.
The lesson I carry into this next chapter is simple: We do not have to wait until every uncertainty is resolved before we begin living fully. We can prepare, make thoughtful choices, lean on others, and pursue what matters even when the outcome remains unknown.
Not all mountains are made of rock.
Whatever mountain stands before you, the climb begins by deciding that your circumstances will not be the only thing that defines you.
Keep climbing.
About the author:
Stratton Horres, retired, was most recently senior counsel at Wilson Elser. His new memoir, "From Crisis to Kilimanjaro," is available through Brown Books Publishing Group. strattonhorres0@gmail.com