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George Chapman to
Receive DBA's Annual
Professionalism Award

Jenna P. Wright September 26, 2008

The DBA’s Morris Harrell Professionalism Award will be presented to George C. Chapman at the Annual Meeting on Friday, November 7, at the Belo Mansion.

The award, co-sponsored by the Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism and the DBA, is given annually to the attorney who “best exemplifies, by conduct and character, truly professional traits who others seek to emulate and who all in the bar admire ... a lawyer who is well respected by his or her peers and makes them proud of the profession.”

Morris Harrell, the award’s namesake, was a former president of the DBA, the ABA, the State Bar of Texas, the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the National Conference of Bar Presidents.

“George Chapman is an outstanding example of professionalism, and the legal community – not just in Dallas, but statewide and nationwide – has benefited from his commitment to civility,” said DBA President Frank E. Stevenson II. “George leads by example. As a seasoned litigator with a distinguished career, George demonstrates that a lawyer can be both thoroughly successful and unwaveringly honorable at the same time. He is a very deserving recipient of the award named for the man who personified professionalism.”

Mr. Chapman obtained his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, with honors, and has been practicing with Thompson & Knight LLP ever since. His primary area of emphasis is general and commercial litigation.

“Receiving this award has a special significance for me, since Morris Harrell was one of my early mentors. I had the privilege of practicing with Mr. Harrell for about four years before he left to start Rain Harrell Emery Young & Doke, a predecessor firm to Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell,” says Mr. Chapman.

As the DBA’s 78th president, George Chapman sought to enhance the working relationships of lawyers at a time in history mired by attorney acrimony. The late 1980s marked the proliferation of litigation tactics characterized as “hardball” or “Rambo-like.” Practitioners often talked of “scorched earth” or “taking no prisoners” in advocating a client’s cause.

Mr. Chapman points out that “within the bounds of zealous advocacy, an attorney may nevertheless extend courtesies to opposing counsel and accede to reasonable requests. Zealous advocacy, on the one hand, and courtesy and civility, on the other hand, are not mutually exclusive.”

Upon assuming the DBA presidency, Mr. Chapman discussed a 1987 report by the ABA’s Commission on Professionalism, which showed that only six percent of corporate users of legal services rated all or most lawyers as deserving to be called professionals. Further, only seven percent saw professionalism increasing, and 68 percent said it had decreased over time.

As DBA president, Mr. Chapman established a Professionalism Task Force, which included prominent plaintiff’s lawyers, defense lawyers, criminal lawyers and state judges.

The task force’s mission was to address the problem of lawyers’ unwillingness to extend professional courtesies to one another. At the time, Mr. Chapman noted that “in the last 25 years, a gradual increase in the attitude of ‘advocacy without accommodation’ has reached a level of tension between attorneys of alarming proportions.”

The Task Force promulgated a “Lawyer’s Creed” and a set of “Guidelines of Professional Courtesy.” Both were adopted by the DBA in 1987, making the DBA the first local bar association in Texas (and the second local bar nationwide) to adopt such a mandate for professionalism.

Less than a year later, on July 14, 1988, sitting en banc, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, in Dondi Properties Corp. v. Commerce Savings & Loan Association, 121 F.R.D. 284 (N.D. Tex. 1988) (en banc), adopted standards intended to restore civility to civil litigation.

The Dondi court said, “We address today a problem that, though of relatively recent origin, is so pernicious that it threatens to delay the administration of justice and to place litigation beyond the financial reach of litigants. With alarming frequency, we find that valuable judicial and attorney time is consumed in resolving unnecessary contention and sharp practices between lawyers. Judges and magistrates of this court are required to devote substantial attention to refereeing abusive litigation tactics that range from benign incivility to outright obstruction.”

Additionally, the court attached excerpts of the DBA’s Guidelines of Professional Courtesy and the DBA’s Lawyer’s Creed to the Dondi decision and adopted both as standards of litigation conduct.

Then in 1989, the Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals promulgated and adopted a Lawyer’s Creed, and Texas became the first state to implement an official, albeit aspirational, policy of professional conduct.

Mr. Chapman continued his efforts to promote professionalism and courtesy among trial lawyers and was the primary author of the American College of Trial Lawyers “Code of Pretrial Conduct,” released in 2003. Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist authored the code’s introduction and noted that “As Chief Justice, a former trial lawyer, and an Honorary Fellow of the College, it is a pleasure to commend the Code to the trial bar, law schools, and judiciary of our nation.”

“George is a stellar example of how a lawyer should conduct himself in his life and in his practice,” according to Hon. Douglas S. Lang, a justice on the Fifth District Court of Appeals, who has known Mr. Chapman more than 25 years. “I have always thought of George as a gentleman, who is bright, thoughtful, and ready to help out -- and he is a man you know lives by the Lawyer’s Creed, especially where it says, ‘My word is my bond.’”

Mr. Chapman has been consistently honored as a “Best Lawyer in America” and a “Texas Super Lawyer.” He is a life member of the Salesmanship Club of Dallas, an elder at Park Cities Presbyterian Church, and for 20 years he served as a trustee of the University of Texas Law School Foundation.

George Chapman married his wife of 49 years just prior to enrolling in law school. Gayla Chapman typed his case notes and comment for the Texas Law Review. Ms. Chapman has also served as president of the Dallas Lawyers Auxiliary. The Chapmans have a son, Craig who serves as associate pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York, a daughter Cathy, who works as an interior designer, and two grandchildren.

CBS News Reporter to Address
DFW Journalists & Lawyers

Darlene Hutchinson Biehl September 26, 2008

For 25 years, the Dallas Bar Association has honored local journalists for their excellence in legal reporting by presenting members of the news media with the Stephen Philbin Award.

In 1982, Stephen Philbin lost his battle with leukemia. He was a long-time member of the Dallas Bar Association and a partner with the firm of Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely. At the time of his death, Mr. Philbin was a leading authority on media law in Texas. He advised major publications and broadcast companies on libel law, licensing of broadcast properties, and fair comment rulings.

In honor of his contributions to media law in the Dallas area, an anonymous donor has funded the annual Philbin Awards over the years, with the DBA Media Relations Committee coordinating the program.

Dozens of entries have been received for the 2008 competition, including TV news reports from major network affiliates, as well as news and feature articles from the area’s large metro newspapers, magazines and suburban publications.

The winners will be announced at the Stephen Philbin Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at the Pavilion at the Belo Mansion. Last year, approximately 50 journalists attended the luncheon, along with nearly 200 lawyers and judges.

The keynote speaker for the awards luncheon this year will be Kimberly Dozier, a CBS foreign correspondent, who has covered the Middle East extensively for the CBS Evening News, The Early Show and CBS Radio News.

Ms. Dozier was in Baghdad with a military patrol on Memorial Day in 2006. She suffered life-threatening injuries when a bomb blast claimed the lives of two members of the news crew, an Army officer and an interpreter. She has recently authored Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report — and Survive — the War in Iraq.

She explains that the “weapon” used that day was a “battered Iraqi taxi, carefully packed with some 500 pounds of explosives with a trigger hardwired to a cell phone inside the car.”

“Someone was watching and waiting for the right moment to dial the phone’s number, complete the bomb’s circuit, and trigger the explosion,” Ms. Dozier writes in her book. “We walked straight into what’s called the kill zone of the ambush. The killers probably couldn’t believe their luck.”

While reporting on the removal of Saddam Hussein and the war’s effects on Iraqis and American soldiers, Ms. Dozier explains her approach: “I tried to become a clear lens that would distill their reaction and reflect it back. But in Iraq the situation is so complicated and the country so vast that my lens frequently became a kaleidoscope.”

“No one wants to be the bearer of bad tidings, but that’s what I was for the three years I reported from Iraq,” she noted recently in a speech. “Liberals have criticized me for ‘selling the war.’ My own journalist colleagues criticized me for being too comfortable with the military and too willing to embed....”

“From all that, I’ve learned a couple things,” Ms. Dozier says. “First of all, you don’t do this job for the ‘thank you.’ You do it because you think you’re doing the right thing. You will always get criticized, but you can comfort yourself by saying if you’re offending everyone equally you must be doing something right.”

“If I let the critics be my internal compass and keep quiet, I am failing the American people and that voice in my head and heart, which tells me to do what’s right,” she concludes.

Ms. Dozier is the recipient of a 2008 Peabody Award, a 2008 Edward R. Murrow Award, and four American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards. Additionally, she was honored in 2007 by the Overseas Press Club.

The daughter of a Marine who served in World War II and who spent much of her childhood abroad, she has served as the chief correspondent for WCBS-TV New York’s Middle East bureau in Jerusalem, and was the London bureau chief and chief European correspondent for CBS Radio News. Ms. Dozier has a home in Jerusalem and is currently on assignment in the CBS News bureau in Washington, D.C.

DBA members can reserve their seats now for the Stephen Philbin Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, Oct. 29. Tickets are $40; or tables of 10 can be purchased for $400. No walk-ins will be allowed. Contact Judi Smalling at 214-220-7452 (or at Judi Smalling) to purchase tickets.

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George Chapman to Receive DBA's AnnualProfessionalism Award

CBS News Reporter to AddressDFW Journalists & Lawyers

George Chapman to
Receive DBA's Annual
Professionalism Award

CBS News Reporter to Address
DFW Journalists & Lawyers