Jim and Karen Simpson
Photo by ThinkDero, Inc.
By Anna Hubbard
L
awyers be warned, “If you’re not a part of the Arkansas Bar Association, you’re going to be missing something.” So says Jim Simpson, who recently took the helm as president of the Association. Jim spoke to a room full of over 1,000 attorneys, judges, law students and guests during his swearing-in ceremony on June 14, 2013, at the Hot Springs Convention Center. Chief Justice Jim Hannah performed the ceremony during the Association’s annual meeting. He proudly joins the long list of 115 presidents who have served before him, including two from his firm of Friday, Eldredge & Clark in Little Rock. Herschel Friday was president in 19761977 and Fred Ursery was president in 2004-2005. “The Bar Association is a way to build your practice and build your reputation,” Jim said. “This organization and this profession fit every type of personality. The Association is made up of jurists, rising legal stars, legislators and experts in their field. As a member, you have the opportunity to interact with all of those people.” Jim quoted Will Rogers who once said, “Man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.” “That can happen here and has happened to many of us, including me,” Jim said. Jim began attending the Association’s annual meeting as a new,
young lawyer and has marveled at how the meeting has grown each year. His firm has sponsored the traditional Friday Firm reception held on the Thursday afternoon of the meeting as long as anyone can recall. What started out in a crowded hotel suite has evolved into the most popular social event of the meeting with elbow-toelbow crowds overflowing outside the hotel lobby and onto the veranda. Jim commented on how seeing people on a personal level can make working with them on a professional level easier. “When you come to a bar meeting and are outside the tangles of representation everything seems to relax. Then the next time you face off as adversaries in court, you are more gentle, more kind.” Jim noted how other states are envious of the attendance of the Association’s annual meeting, especially for a voluntary bar association. He said that other states are also impressed at how approachable everyone is at these meetings. “You can sit down and talk to a Supreme Court justice, Court of Appeals justice, state and federal judges. We have a great interaction between the bar and the bench and you should not take that for granted.” Jim is head of the Friday Firm’s General Litigation Practice Group. Jim started as a trial lawyer when he joined the firm out of law school and has tried more than 135 jury trials to verdict. His practice focuses on business litigation, pharmaceutical litigation
Vol. 48 No. 3/Summer 2013 The Arkansas Lawyer
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