Attention Houston-area criminal defense lawyers:
Back in The Day, before blogs (when I was a much younger lawyer) six or seven of us would gather at Jim Skelton's office on Richmond Avenue every Wednesday evening to discuss our cases with each other and with Jim.
My recollections of those sessions are fuzzy; there may have been beverages and/or food involved; sometimes other experienced lawyers would join us. It was a good informal way for us young lawyers to learn how little we had actually learned in law school.
I don't know why it stopped, or when (maybe when we moved out to the suburbs; maybe when Jim got disbarred the first . . . or was it the second? . . . time). The HCCLA listserv, which started on Topica.com back before Google was a verb (in fact, before Google was Google), probably had a lot to do with the end of the Wednesday evening sessions at Jim's.
I know Jim Skelton; Jim Skelton is a friend of mine; and, senator, I'm no Jim Skelton. But young lawyers nowadays lament the dearth of mentoring. So I aim to do my small part by reinstating the Wednesday evening brainstorming sessions.
Defense lawyers young and old are welcome next Wednesday evening, March 5, 2008 beginning at 4:30ish and going till 6:30ish chez Bennett. Bring your worries, your questions and your cases.
Please respond so that we know how many to expect.
5 comments:
WOW!
Helluva good idea. Good luck.
I don't do criminal law, but I'll often go to Skelton's Wednesday lunch session just for the entertainment value.
The bar does need more mentoring program.
I'm friends with Jim Skelton, too--since my early days living in Galveston. I told the guy I was clerking for in Houston at the time I knew Skelton and you would have thought I told him I knew F. Lee Bailey--Skelton is still highly regarded and revered among a lot of Houston attorneys. I have since made the unfortunate choice to move back to east Texas to practice or I would gladly make th Wednesday Evening Staff Meeting. If I am in town at some fortuitous time, I will still try to attend.
GL,
Jim's an interesting character. Probably worthy of more than one blog post. Only guy I know to get himself disbarred twice. Resignation-by-bar-committee, I always call it. Like suicide-by-cop, but less bloody.
I think Skelton was more insulted than anything to have a committee of lawyers who were not "believers in the cause" questioning his ethics and abilities--hence his refusal to even participate in a process he deemed fixed from the beginning, anyway. Recall, at least one of the disbarments was by default. Skelton has done a lot of good, uncredited (and uncompensated) work for folks who otherwise would have dropped through the cracks. He has also fought the good fight for Constitutional justice for a good long time. He ranks high in my pantheon of lawyer heroes.
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