austinbar.org APRIL 2018 | VOLUME 27, NUMBER 3
Celebrating 125 Years of the Austin Bar The Road to Diversity
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o honor the 125th anniversary of the Austin Bar Association, we are taking a look back at its history in each Austin Lawyer issue this year. The following is an excerpt from “Austin Lawyers—A Legacy of Leadership and Service,” pages 85-86, 116, and 132-133. “Since its formation in 1893, the Austin Bar Association was a loosely organized, primarily social society that met on call at the county courthouse. But in 1926, under the leadership of association president J.H. Hart, the Austin Bar Association formally changed its name to the Travis County Bar Association and developed its first set of bylaws, committees, and a dues structure. The group’s constitution called for regular meetings and dues of $2.50 per year, and
stated that the association’s purpose was to promote social intercourse among its members and to cultivate ‘a just sense of the duty owed by every lawyer not just to his clients alone, but to the courts and to the country.’ Membership was restricted to white persons who lived in Travis County. The constitution and bylaws set up four committees (Grievances and Disciple; Court Calendars and Rules; Law Library; and Entertainment), and 10 members constituted a quorum. The bar voted to adopt the 32 points of the Canon of Professional Ethics set out by the American Bar Association. The ethics code outlines professional conduct in terms of setting fees, treatment of witnesses, client confidentiality, and advertising, which it opposed: ‘all forms of self-laudation defy the traditions
and lower the tone of our high calling, and are intolerable.’ Like many other institutions, the Travis County Bar Association, which was evenPena tually to become a force in extending legal services to all citizens of Texas in the 1960s, was slow to adapt to the changing times. Black attorney Virgil Lott was denied admission to the Travis County Bar in 1953. The organization didn’t modify its bylaws to admit [black members] until 1965. While the organization may have been slow to admit black members, during the 1980s and 1990s, the organization took an active interest in promoting diversity. As the organiza-
Parker, Jr.
tion became larger and more professional, it also continued supporting public services such as the Lawyer Referral Services and the Volunteer Legal Services Family Law Clinic, which it established in 1991 to provide pro bono representation to underprivileged clients. In 1990, the year the Bar moved to the Chase Bank Building, Richard Pena became its first minority president. In 1996, Rev. Joseph C. Parker, Jr. became its first AUSTIN LAWYER AL AL African American president.”
Austin Bar’s Diversity Fellowship Program Leading the Way Towards Diversity and Inclusion
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nitiated in 2009 by Judge Eric Shepperd, Judge Lora Livingston, Leslie Dippel, and Tony Nelson,
the Austin Bar Association’s Diversity Fellowship Program enables first-year law students of diverse backgrounds to
participate in law-firm, governmental-agency, and judicial internships for 10 weeks during the summer. Participants are selected through a competitive application process. The Austin Bar Foundation provides each student with a stipend funded by donations from participating Austin firms. Past participants in the program have continued on to traditional clerkships later in
law school and have reported successful employment after graduation—some with the firms that sponsored them as interns through the Austin Bar program. Tucker Villarreal was a participant in the 2017 Diversity Fellowship Program and had this to say about it: “My time as a fellow was an amazing experience and opportunity for me. It has given me a solid foundation continued on page 13