Written By: Kenneth O. Simon*

Christian & Small LLP

Birmingham, AL

It is a wonderful thing when your life is driven by powerful things: powerful ideas, powerful goals, powerful faith. Having power at your disposal can rocket you into places you thought you’d never go. Places of higher learning, places of wisdom and depth, places of power, places of service.

On one level, this article is about how the powerless are empowered. This article is also about how the law changes us in a way that allows us to serve others. I begin this article by talking about a topic I don’t talk that much about: me. My purpose in doing so is to show you how I was surrounded by powerful things in my early life as a child, young adult, and young lawyer in Mobile, Alabama. The same is no doubt true of the surroundings where you practice. I want to demonstrate to you how powerful things in your lives draw you into a life of service, and hopefully impress upon you that this life of service is the life for which you are ideally suited.

Life for me began in Mobile in the Roger Williams projects of the 1950s and early 1960s. Our community was separated then by artificial barriers of race and class that were supported by forces beyond our control. There were seven children in my family. My mother had graduated from Central High School as valedictorian of the Class of 1948. My father was several years older, and he spent much of his time as a young adult following his father to small Mississippi towns where they both were Pentecostal preachers. The housing projects of the 1950s and 60s were different from the projects of today. They were filled with households headed by two-parent families simply aspiring to a better life. Rather than being crime and drug-infested prisons of despair and dysfunction, those projects were places of psychological imprisonment. Even in those days, there was a stigma associated with living in the projects, that produced shame and embarrassment. A bad seed was planted that folks from the projects were not good enough.

The world changed in the 1960s: The 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, tossing Jim Crow onto the ash heap of history; the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was being implemented,

changing, disrupting, upsetting, and liberating the education system all at the same time; and, in the 1970s, Mobile’s change-of-government litigation set the stage for the sea change in the structure of politics and attitudes which led to the emergence of Sam Jones as the mayor of this city. The psychological prison occupied by those who had been powerless was changed as well. The world changed because lawyers got involved in what was happening in our community. Many local lawyers in Mobile helped shape those changes: Vernon Crawford, Jim Blacksher, Michael Figures, Larry Menefee, Frankie Fields Smith, Greg Stein, and A.J. Cooper. These lawyers, and others like them, served the community by fighting for change. These changes touched my family profoundly.

Indeed, they touched me personally in many ways. One of the most important was in how these lawyers inspired me to aspire to become a lawyer and to serve the community. Thus, a powerful idea was born for me through the community activism of lawyers: the idea that I, too, could be one of them. This idea changed my world.

My family had no tradition of lawyering. I came from a background of preachers, teachers, and ordinary people. I have mentioned my father’s early experiences as a preacher. But let me tell you about my mother. As I said before, she graduated high school in 1948 at the top of her class. She then married my father and went on to junior college with a dream of being a teacher. Her dream was put on hold when those seven children took turns being born. As the world was changing in the early 1960s, she was changing too. Fifteen years after leaving junior college, she decided it was time to take that dream off hold and to go back to school. The dream of being a teacher didn’t die in the Roger Williams projects during those child-birthing years of the 1950s and 1960s. She and my father made two decisions: one, that she was going to go back to school. And two, that we were going to get out of the projects.

So in 1963, as the world was about to change from the Kennedy assassination, like many other families in our neighborhood, we moved out of the projects and began the process of moving into the mainstream. At about the same time, my mother started classes at what is now Bishop State Junior College in Mobile. She finished her two years of study at Bishop State with honors, again graduating at the top of her class. She then went to the University of South Alabama and obtained her education degree, again with excellent grades, becoming the first black USA graduate. The truly amazing thing is that she accomplished this while working at night as a short-order cook at Mobile Infirmary, and as a domestic during the day between and after classes. She was constantly told that she was crazy to attempt what she had undertaken. Many people in her life ridiculed her desire and ambition. She proved that she could not be psychologically imprisoned by the words and actions of others.

Fast-forward several years for a moment. My mother taught reading for many years at Dunbar Elementary School. She even went on to get her Master’s Degree. The apex of her teaching career was in being recognized in the early 1980s as Mobile County’s Outstanding Reading Teacher.

My mother’s example taught me to believe in the power of dreams, ideas, and sheer determination. Although I didn’t think it was crazy for a kid from the projects to aspire to be a lawyer, I didn’t know how to make it happen. Psychological prisons are not so easy to escape. They result in self-doubt, a lack of confidence, and a gnawing anxiety as to whether you’re good enough. As a teenager and young adult, watching my mother’s example, I would learn that escape from this prison was a process.

It started to happen slowly after I was accepted at South Alabama. There I met the debate coach who invited me to join the team at the urging of one of my brothers who was taking a speech class from the coach. I was terrible! No, not terrible, awful!! But I hung in there and my two years of struggling through debate brought me many gifts. First, it taught me some of the fundamental tools of lawyering: research, analysis, argumentation, persuasion, discipline. Moreover, it introduced me to a group of dynamic people, both on my debate team and others in the debate community at other colleges, who also were determined to become lawyers. It also led to my involvement in student government at South Alabama, which was led, coincidentally, by members of the debate team. The important thing about student government was that it established firmly in my mind the manner in which the tools of analysis, reason, and persuasion could be used to serve the greater good. And it created the expectation that people who possessed these skills would in fact use them in service to the community. Thus my world inevitably changed in a way that set the stage for me to be able to serve others.

I must tell you that despite my mother’s example, and the support of friends and debate teammates, it was still difficult to develop the confidence one needs to succeed in the practice of law. The question I faced in those early days at South Alabama was, “Was I good enough?” My English 101 professor, Professor Walt Darring, encouraged me by writing on a composition paper: “Educate thyself brother, and you will go far.” Professor Darring’s words of encouragement caused my world to be changed yet again. Now I too had taken an important psychological step. I had now escaped from prison and made a clean break with the past of Roger Williams. I realized that a future awaited in which I could now fully believe in myself. I was ready to become a lawyer.

Because I didn’t come from a tradition of lawyering, I sought employment at a local law firm to find out what it was like to be a lawyer. I was hired through a friend at what was then Nettles, Cox & Barker, where I traipsed up and down Royal Street to run errands first as a runner and then as a law clerk. I got to meet local lawyers like Donald and Arthur Briskman, David Barnett (whose wife taught me in high school and encouraged me to pursue law school). I met judges who were new to the bench like Judge Kittrell, Judge Matranga, as well as some who even then weren’t new such as Judge Hand, Judge Pittman, and Judge McRae. I had a chance to be around lawyers, and I admired their skills, smarts, and commitment. But I also saw that these were not one-dimensional people who devoted themselves exclusively to their law practices. I saw lawyers serving their community in so many ways: in the state legislature; in local government; on corporate and civic boards; as leaders in their churches and synagogues; and as leading spokesmen in the community. Although this kind of activism in the community was a different variety from that I had seen a decade or so earlier by Vernon Crawford and others, they nevertheless had much in common: all of it was focused on making Mobile a better place to live.

When the time came for me to obtain actual employment as a lawyer in 1979, the issue to be faced was this: Would the firm that I had clerked for during two summers offer a job to me, a young black man? With the exception of Vernon Crawford’s firm, law firms in Mobile at that time were not integrated. If one paid attention to stereotypes, Nettles Cox & Barker—full of conservative Republicans—were not likely change agents. But playing against type, they were change agents indeed, and brought me aboard as a young lawyer. I will always be grateful to them not only for giving me an opportunity but also for demonstrating to all that one should not fear change. They quietly served our community and our profession in a powerful way.

My time as a young lawyer gave me the opportunity to serve my community almost immediately. I discovered that there is tremendous thirst in our communities for the leadership skills lawyers bring to the table. One of the first projects I was asked to participate in was an effort by a small group of people to start a food bank. There were about 4 or 5 of us that attended organizational meetings but none of us really knew what we were doing. Somehow they made me President of the organization, which meant I had to go around to churches on Sunday mornings to ask for seed money, develop an action plan, get the organization incorporated. Lo and behold! Churches responded as did the community at large. The lawyers at those churches urged fellow parishioners to support the project. Gradually, more people and better-trained leaders got involved and the Bay Area Food Bank got off the ground.

Basically, however, I learned that the skills and contacts I developed as a lawyer were the missing piece that allowed the project to get off the ground. I was involved—maybe even over involved—in many other organizations in those days: United Cerebral Palsy, the United Way, Volunteer Mobile, and Cornerstone. Lawyers in my community and in my firm had already paved the way. Several friends and I even joined the Navy JAG Corp and volunteered our weekends and vacations. All of this activity was fueled by the idea that as lawyers, we were required to work for the common good.

Lawyers bring a tremendous variety of talents to their roles as public and community servants:

• we are catalysts for change
• we are problem-solvers
• we are natural leaders as many natural leaders are drawn to the law
• we are creative
• we are committed to excellence, fairness, and integrity
• we exercise good judgment
• we display social skills
• we utilize mental and emotional intelligence
• we have the capacity to work hard and to be productive

The community thirsts for our services because we are prepared to serve. As those to whom much has been given, much is required.

I said at the outset that life is a wonderful thing when it is driven by powerful ideas and powerful goals. When we enter into the practice of law, we enter into places where perhaps we thought we would never go: places of depth and wisdom, places of power, places of service. Our lifelong pursuit of excellence as lawyers inevitably changes us for the better. We can choose to be changed in ways that draw us into a life of service. Let me encourage you to seek such a life.

And for those of you who have already done so, let me affirm the choice you have made. We are part of a profession which expects us to serve. We live in communities which, as my own history shows, need our leadership. You can make a difference in so many ways. You can help break down unjust legal barriers; you can speak a word of encouragement to a young person; you can give a young person an opportunity to prove themselves; you can teach a community not to fear change; you can be that missing piece which makes a team complete.

As I have shared with you, the best lessons of my life were learned during my formative years. Those lessons have served me well over the years. I am thankful that my background taught me about life and leadership and gave me the opportunity to serve. I encourage you to find ways to use your unique skills to better serve your community.

* Ken is a partner with Christian & Small LLP in Birmingham, Alabama, where he practices in the areas of governmental affairs, corporate governance and regulatory compliance, white collar defense and corporate investigations, and alternative dispute resolution. This article was adapted from a speech given at the 2005 Mobile and Baldwin County Bar Associations Bench and Bar Retreat in Mobile, Alabama. You can reach Ken at kosimon@csattorneys.com.

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