Part of the joy of our appointment is meeting old friends and making new ones. We share a common call to service that makes for safe and comfortable conversation. At times, we don’t see each other for months, but then along comes that IJS seminar, or some meeting where you see a mate again and it’s like the conversation continues. There are some 250 judges now and JANZ encourages you to get to know your brothers and sisters in the law. This first Getting to Know You interview features Jill Moss — a fellow Victoria Law School chum from the ’70s.
Jill Moss and partner Robin Griffiths
JANZ: How long have you been a judge?
Jill Moss: On 2 June 2020 I will celebrate 25 years on the District Court bench. In that time I have borne one child and brought up two. I have taken and given joy, comfort, laughter, worry, sorrow, and overall great satisfaction in what I think of as the best job imaginable.
Why did you take up judicial service?
I was old enough to vote when I was appointed, but anyone could be forgiven for thinking that I wasn’t much over that age. I had studied law and ancient languages at Victoria, served as the first-ever Judges Clerk in the Court of Appeal, and had been employed by a Wellington firm, which went on to merge to become one of the megalith firms of the early 1980s. They asked me at the interview whether I was a feminist — that was OK back then. We parted company cordially in 1985 when I founded my own firm. The glass ceiling was an uncomfortable pressure in those days. I joined the growing group of women sole practitioners. Nicky Mathers was a stalwart. So was Shirley Smith.
I practised in Porirua before there were many firms there, but Simon Maude followed me soon after, at Maude and Millar. I was lucky to be on the steps of Porirua Hospital at the time of community care becoming fashionable, and when the PPPR Act was enacted, and when Kimberley hospital closed. So many fascinating issues for a lawyer, and then district inspector of mental health, with responsibility for patients at Porirua Hospital. Just to make certain that I knew my onions, my brother Tim, who nursed there, kept my thinking straight.
If you were not a judge then what would you be?
I have never lived with a single focus. My off-the bench-life has been as full as my on-the-bench life. Children, cricket coach — for 4- and 5-year-olds — symphonic choral singing, governance roles for my daughter’s national choir, caregiver for dying brother, and mother, gardener, and now, in Manawatu, farmer, house renovator, and aspiring orchardist. Raising pigs has been a wonderful thing. Ask the Palmerston North judges if our pork is good.
How about this COVID-19?
These last few days I have developed a home office. And the discipline that goes with that. It is a strange time. A time to reflect, to enjoy the extra time in the day because I am not travelling to work and back, and to find ways of connecting with everyone when there are no lame jokes from Gerard Lynch and Jonathan Krebs over coffee. It is also a time to feel the chill of being a mother with a child in lockdown in Berlin, and aged relatives in Hawke’s Bay, and in England. My GP sister in England is doing it far harder than we can dream of.
We are deeply lucky to have good in every day, to have healthcare structures that are responsive and decisive, to have an environment that is not so crowded that infrastructure is breaking down, in response to the change foist on us by this bug.
I am using this time to learn something new every day. Yesterday, it was how to make scented oil from the leaves of rose-scented geranium. Today, it was a dip into the featured portraiture collection at the Louvre. And I read Scott Fitzgerald’s letter when quarantined in France in 1920, while Spanish Flu raged around. He wrote, “The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe white wine, sherry, gin, and, lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us.” So much for warnings about panic buying. And too many loo rolls. I like this man’s style.
Any parting comments about a judge’s life?
I was in the right place at the right time when I joined Russell Johnson negotiating the changes to the red book, which saw our leave and long leave expanded. Judicial service is a privilege that very few share. That service is, however, at times difficult and hard. Workloads, risk, and responsibility for complex outcomes, which impact families for long periods. We few that serve share a common bond, at times companionship but always a united determination to support each other. It is so heartening after 25 years of service to have our own association. The JANZ objects will serve us all well into the future.