"1 want to do as good a jo, "Not long after that myoId friend, [past p"",ident] Jack McNulty, appointed me to a whole bunch ofAssociation committees. I loved that service. Then, one day when I was down here [Little Rock], Judith Gray pulled me aside and said, 'Tom, [ want to show you something.' She took me into Ann Pyle's office wh... all of the Past P"",idents' pietuteS ate hanging, and she showed me my grandfather's photograph. I think she was working on my mind right then, although she would never admit it. "[n 200[, the pcesidential deetion rotated to my [Notthwest] district. [filed for the position and my friends were !\ice enough not to run against me," he laughed. "[ want to do as good a job as can be done," he said. "This job is a major commitment, but a labor oflove. When Don [Hollingsworth] called and told
. . . . . . .....;1 me that no one was going to run against me and
favor,' Daily said. 'We barely won. It was a 4 to 3 Arkansas Supreme Court decision. The majority opinion was written by Justice George Rose Smith (one ofthe. if not th. most, revered jurists who ever served on the Court). Justice FoggIeman wrote a vety lucid dissenting opinion. [n retrospect, I realize that the court could have easily gone the otherway." Tom has been an active Association member throughout his career. Most of his early work was within the Natural Resources Law Section, as opposed to the patent association. That changed about ten yean ago. "David Vandergriffcalled to tell me there was a vacancy, from our district, on the Association's House ofDdegates. [ have always felt that the Arkansas Bar Association was a very special organization, so I agreed to run. After a couple of yean doing that, I was hooked on bar leadership.
24 The Arkansas Lawyer www.artdlar:com
that I would be P"",ident-E1ect Designee, [ told a number ofcolleagues that [ knew that pasr Pcesidents Ron Harrison, Jack McNulty and H.T. Moore had absolutdy worked themselves to a frazzle running hack and fotth to Lirtle Rock on Bar Associarion business. But [ said that [was smart enough not to do that. [ would figure out a way to do the job well in my spare time." "Well. right th...," he said, "you can see that [ proved how smart [ am not, because there is no way to do this job properly without devoting a lot of time to it." Tom has been involved in much of the progtess the Association has made within the past decade. He is proudest ofrhe Association's tenewed emphasis upon member benefits. "[ remember that at one of our Board of Governor's meetings in Heber Springs, two remarkable things happened on the same afternoon. Don Hollingswotth was giving a report on things thar were happening around the countty, and told us that there were actually bar associations in New England conrracting to provide a limited amount of state..pecific legal m;earch material to their members. "That afternoon our speaker was Legal Futurist and pasr Executive Director of the Arizona State Bar Smart Forsyth. One of the things Smart rold us was thar the whole area of legal ......rch databases was headed toward a direction where the raw information would become very much like a commodity, available at a very reasonable cost. Value, if th... were any, would be in the packaging of that information for ease of access and use. "Well, we're a voluntary bar association, and we have to be tealistic,' Daily said. "We have to give our members something more than just the satisfaction of working for the good of the order. We have a certain amounr of mass purchasing power. We should use that to secure member benefits. So we thought perhaps we could wholesale-buy legal m;earch resources and give them to our members as a benefit," he said.