With more than 50 years of legal work behind him, you might expect Judge Kevin Phillips to be relieved at retirement.
You would be wrong.
This was no misty-eyed reminiscence about the 75-year-old’s former glories, no meek valedictory wave as he shuffled off to a life of serenity and sleep-ins.
Judge Phillips is a man whose passion for the law still burns fiercely.
"It becomes a large part of your life," he said, before hastily correcting himself. "Well, it becomes your life."
"I’m going to miss the cut and thrust of it ... It’s not something you can cast aside."
He was forced to finish as a resident Dunedin District Court judge at the mandatory age of 70 and has spent the past five years on an acting warrant, travelling the country, plugging the judicial gaps.
Despite the gruelling schedule, the hunger remained.
"You get home on Friday night at 7 or 8 o’clock, unpack your bag, do your washing. Sunday morning: pack your bag, grab a taxi and you do that six weeks in a row," Judge Phillips said.
"I think it was more of a pressure on my wife than me."
At a cafe in the shadow of the imposing Victorian Gothic courthouse, he arrived characteristically early, dressed smartly in a paisley shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms.
The judge appeared relaxed; inevitable really when the ominous black robe is removed. But the shackles of the role were clearly off and he immediately cut loose.
"I think it’s pretty crazy really when they’re short of judges and they have the statutory retiring age of 70," he said.
"It’s absolutely ludicrous."
So if he had legislative carte blanche, what would he change?
"The first thing I would do would be to make the retiring age of judges 80," the judge said, without hesitation.
He was candid about his career and said his only regret was shunning the opportunity to take the bench eight years before he was sworn in, so he could focus on his work in Queenstown.
Among Dunedin’s legal community, Judge Phillips had a reputation.
He would pounce on an unsubstantiated comment, and verbally eviscerate an under-prepared advocate — he had always read every word of the file and he expected that of lawyers too.
The judge’s mantra over more than half a century was simple: "preparation, preparation, preparation."
But the 18-year-old’s burgeoning law career got off to an inauspicious start.
Despite being three years under the legal drinking age, he and a couple of teenage mates shot down to the Normanby Tavern for a beer after work.
There was a raffle and the trio had a "major win", coming away with several dozen beers.
As their taxi pulled up outside the pub, though, a police car saw them with the prize haul and bailed them up.
Officers marched the teenagers into the bar and demanded they identify who had sold them the alcohol.
While their silence got them respect (and an invite back to the establishment), the police were not impressed.
Judge Phillips’ mates were fined £2 10s, while he was stung for £3, the extra owing to the fact he was a law student.
"[Judge] J.D. Murray was easy. My mother and father weren’t. They were really, really upset. They couldn’t believe I’d done that," he says.
The incident in the bar, though, proved no barrier to his admission to the legal bar in 1972.
Thirty-five years split between Gore and Queenstown followed, before he was elevated to the district court bench.
Since sitting in Dunedin, Judge Phillips had been perfectly placed to see the changing patterns of crime in the city and its surrounds.
"Serious violence seems to happen every day, seems to happen in places you’d never think it would happen ... The streets of Dunedin are no longer safe," he said.
"I think the most alarming thing about it all is domestic violence, which has risen unbelievably. I don’t know whether it’s recognised enough in our society. Domestic violence is huge and it’s happening all the time. Totally under-reported by the victims, who live in fear all their lives."
And it was the cyclical nature of it that was most saddening.
Children witnessed their parents attacking one another and the behaviour was normalised — generations of families traumatised and repeatedly being hauled before the court, as the ripples widened.
Eighteen months ago, Judge Phillips gained an insight into another side of the system when his home was burgled.
His wife’s jewellery was stolen, as well as a bottle of whisky gifted by an old friend.
He said he spent two hours on the phone to police before getting an answer and his son ended up going to the watch house to spark some action.
Fingerprints were taken but it was months before they received photos from Christchurch of some recovered rings with the jewels smashed out.
The judge was astonished by the experience.
"You think you’ve got some whack as a judge, but what about Joe Bloggs? It’s bloody disgusting really. Burglary put on the back burner because they haven’t got the manpower and there’s so much bloody violence," he said.
"And you’ve got all these young green constables who don’t know what they’re bloody doing. There’s a lot of people in the police force that are not the sharpest tools in the toolbox."
The judge’s frankness is nothing new.
He opened up with the ODT about the controversies in which his straight-talking style had landed him.
About six years ago a group of lawyers approached then chief district court judge Jan-Marie Doogue to complain Judge Phillips was bullying them.
He has always rejected the claims.
"I had difficulties in relation to that because they were led by the senior female lawyers. I thought it was bloody unfair," he said.
"I was brought up as a young lawyer by a magistrate judge who took no prisoners at all. If you weren’t doing your job you were told, and as a direct result of that, you did you did your job. I’m not there to have a programme of training barristers, I’m there to say ‘you did that wrong’, and I said that — some accepted it, some took it as a personal attack on their great ability, and that I couldn’t tell them anything."
Retired judge Phil Gittos sat in Judge Phillips’ court for three days and wrote a report which cleared him.
The fiasco was not enough to muzzle him.
Just three months ago, during a stint at the Gisborne District Court, Judge Phillips dismissed community detention (a curfew) as a "nonsense" sentence.
The comments made national headlines and resulted in another call from the chief.
Judge Phillips was unfazed; he was hardly going to get the boot with his retirement just weeks away.
While there must have been many significant moments in such a vast career, it was not thrilling cases, improbable victories or mind-blowing mistakes that lingered in his mind.
When asked to reflect on his triumphs, the judge pointed to those vital cogs behind the scenes: his former PA in Christchurch, the country’s jury trial scheduler in Napier and the efficient court staff who put up with his "bullshit".
The "stars" in his life, though, have been his family, who allowed him to wholly devote himself to his first love — the law.
Judge Phillips has a lot for which to be grateful.
"For a guy that used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and drink a lot of Speight’s I’ve been bloody lucky really."
