More than three decades ago, the Houston Bar Association’s Historical Committee began interviewing seasoned members of the Houston legal community to capture their stories and perspectives on life and the practice of law. The HBA is pleased to share some of the videos with members and the public.
Justice Eva Guzman
Justice Eva Guzman grew up in Houston’s East End, the middle of seven children born to hard-working immigrants. Her father worked as a welder, and her mother earned what she could through cleaning jobs. Although neither parent had education beyond the sixth grade, they understood the promise and opportunities that education could bring for their children.
Eva’s parents instilled in her the importance of faith, family, and the value of freedom. Patriotic to the core, they cherished their American citizenship and the opportunity to prosper here, pushing their children to excel in school. Through their example, Justice Guzman learned to work hard and dream big.
Growing up in a family of nine with limited financial resources meant making sacrifices and finding ways to overcome barriers. As a young teenager, Justice Guzman worked an evening shift at a drapery factory and held various other jobs throughout her teenage years to help her family make ends meet and save for college. All the hard work paid off.
Justice Guzman self-funded her education at The University of Houston, earned a law degree from South Texas College of Law, partnered with her husband to build a marriage and family, and managed a successful law practice before becoming a judge in 1999. Over the next 22 years, Justice Guzman served at three levels of the Texas judiciary, spending more than half of that time as a justice on the Supreme Court of Texas.
Her journey from the factory to the courthouse was not an easy one, but it prepared her well for a life in public service. She has firsthand experience with the challenges many Texans face every day.
Biography from EvaGuzman.com. Click here to read more.
Click here for the full interview.Thank you to Vinson & Elkins for recording this interview.
Hon. Patricia Lykos was sworn in as the Harris County District Attorney on January 1, 2009; she is the first woman chief of the Office since it was created more than 100 years ago. Lykos, a graduate of the University of Houston and South Texas College of Law has dedicated her professional career to the pursuit of justice, starting as a Houston police officer, working her way through college and law school, and then in private practice. In 1980, Lykos was appointed as Judge of the newly-created bench of County Criminal Court at Law No. 10, and she won election that year. One year later, Judge Lykos was appointed to serve as Judge of the 180th District Court, a position that she held for 14 years, presiding over more than 20,000 felony criminal cases. For the last ten years, Judge Lykos has served this community as a senior district judge and special assignments judge, and, as Director of Special Projects for the County Judge of Harris County. Pat was the former chief judge of the Harris County criminal district courts, served as President of the Retired, Senior and Former Judges of Texas, and taught in programs for the Texas Center for the Judiciary, the American Bar Association, and the State Bar of Texas.
Biography from Texas State Directory.
Click here for the full interview.Thank you to Vinson & Elkins for recording this interview.
Hon. Hannah Chow was born in Canton, China, in 1948. She did not stay there long, however, because her father had Canadian citizenship and operated a café in Wainwright, Alberta Canada. She moved there with her mother and sister (eleven years older) in 1951, where she received Canadian citizenship as well. Upon her father's death, she and her mother moved down to Houston to be with her brother as per Chinese family custom. Here she attended Milby High School and later the University of Houston-Central Campus where she completed her Cultural Anthropology degree. During her time in college, she worked as a gopher and secretary in a law office owned by a fellow Asian American. It was with her boss's encouragement that she entered South Texas Law School. Since obtaining her law degree, she has practiced general law for nine years, served as the first Asian American County Judge for twelve years, and worked as a special assistant to Commissioner Lee for 10 years. During her time as Judge, she actively participated in several community service organizations and even took the role of a founding member of the Asian American Bar Association. She currently serves as the Public Services & Infrastructure Bureau Chief for the Harris County District Attorney's Office.
Biography from Rice Humanities Chao Center for Asian Studies.
Click here for the full interview.
Thank you to Vinson & Elkins for recording this interview.
Hon. Gabrielle McDonald attended Boston University and Hunter College, and in 1966 she graduated first in her class from Howard University School of Law. She then joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a staff attorney and worked extensively throughout the South, where she helped win the organization's first major job discrimination case. In 1968, she married a Houston lawyer, Mark T. McDonald, and as McDonald & McDonald handled employment discrimination cases involving major corporations and labor unions throughout Texas. In 1979, Senator Lloyd Bentsen submitted her name to President Jimmy Carter who appointed her to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, making her the first African American in Texas, and only the third African American woman to serve in the federal judiciary. She resigned from the court in 1988 to return to practice law and teach, including as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Thereafter, in 1993, Judge McDonald was among the first eleven judges elected to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the first international court following the multinational Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. She presided over its first trial in the Tadić case. In November 1997, she was elected President of the ICTY by her fellow judges and presided over its Appeals Chamber, continuing in that position until her departure in 1999. During her tenure, she fought hard to improve the visibility of the ICTY, including in the former Yugoslavia by setting up the Tribunal's Outreach Programme. In 2001, the U.S. Department of State appointed Judge McDonald as a judge/arbitrator on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague until her retirement in 2013. Judge McDonald has received numerous awards, including the ASIL Goler Teal Butcher Award for Human Rights; the ASIL Prominent Women in International Law Award; the American Bar Association Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award; the National Bar Association Ronald Brown International Law Award; the National Bar Association Equal Justice Award; the Open Society Institute Women Groundbreakers in International Justice Award; and induction into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. She has also received numerous honorary degrees. She and Mark, who died in 2021, have two children, Michael, a lawyer, and Stacy, a screenwriter.
Click here for the full interview.
Thank you to Vinson & Elkins for recording this interview.
Dr. Benjamin L. Hall, III is a Harvard-trained lawyer who founded The Hall Law Firm in 2000. The Hall Law Firm concentrates on litigation matters, including complex construction litigation, complex commercial and contract cases, as well as consumer/personal injury claims. Over the years, Hall and his Firm have generated more than $300,000,000 in recoveries for clients. A member of ABOTA and a life-time member of the NAACP, Ben’s firm motto reflects his commitment to the law: “The Firm Where Right Wins Over Might.” Of all things, Hall prides himself in being a Christian minister. He has been an ordained minister since 1975 and has served the congregation of the Progressive Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ since 1974.
Hall was the City Attorney for the City of Houston during the administration of Mayor Bob Lanier. For approximately three years, he managed and supervised a 200+ member legal department, as well as an annual budget of $12+ million dollars. Hall has received many scholastic honors, including but not limited to: Rockefellar Scholar to Africa; Duke Merit Scholar; Duke Black Graduate Fellow; DAAD Scholar to Germany and German Research Fellow.
Hall is a recognized legal expert in construction law and personal injury litigation. He has received numerous honors and accolades for his services in the legal field, including but not limited to the following: The highest rating for professional competence and ethical standards awarded by Martindale-Hubbell, the leading legal reference manual in the United States (AV Rating); dual board certified which is achieved by less than 1% of all Texas lawyers; four times recognized as a “Texas Super Lawyer” by Texas Monthly Magazine; recognized as a Houston Top Lawyer for the People by “H Magazine;” obtained the highest reported verdicts/awards ever obtained as recognized by the legal website “Verdict Search.” Hall is also a popular lecturer on a wide variety of topics ranging from insurance and legal issues to minority rights and ethics. Hall is a lifetime member of the NAACP and is a recipient of the NAACP’s highest local “ALEX” Award.
Click here for the full interview.
Thank you to Vinson & Elkins for recording this interview.
Harry M. Reasoner joined Vinson & Elkins in 1964 and was Managing Partner from 1992 through 2001. Mr. Reasoner is widely seen as one of the most talented trial lawyers of his generation. The American Lawyer presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, and he was named one of the 25 Greatest Lawyers of the Past Quarter-Century in 2010 by Texas Lawyer. He puts his formidable advocacy skills to play in both civil litigation and arbitrations, and has extensive experience handling proceedings related to antitrust, securities, insurance and tort. He has served as lead trial counsel in litigation and arbitration involving antitrust, securities, insurance, contract, and tort claims in the billions of dollars.
In addition to a career of excellence in the courtroom, Mr. Reasoner has dedicated countless hours to the principles of professionalism and access to justice. In 2009, the Texas Supreme Court appointed Mr. Reasoner as chair of the Texas Access to Justice Commission to succeed James B. Sales. The Commission was created by the Texas Supreme Court to develop a strategic plan for the statewide delivery of legal services to low-income Texans; to identify and assess current and future needs for access to justice in civil matters by low-income Texans; to increase resources and funding for access to justice; to reduce barriers to the justice system through addressing proposed court rules and procedures that negatively affect low-income people; and to monitor the effectiveness of the statewide system and services provided. A decade later, Mr. Reasoner still leads the Commission, which has provided access to legal services for tens of thousands of low-income Texans.
Click here for the full interview.
Hon. Charles “Chuck” Rosenthal served as a Harris County prosecutor from 1977, capping his career with his election as Harris County District Attorney in 2000 and his reelection to that position in 2004.
Rosenthal’s tenure as District Attorney coincided with some of the most controversial cases and issues to emerge in Harris County in the early 2000s. In his first years as DA, his office handled the prosecution of Andrea Yates, a case that generated intense media coverage and reignited a debate on women’s and mental health issues in criminal justice. Rosenthal’s office also pursued a futile effort to preserve conviction in the last sodomy case targeting consensual private intimate relations of gay men, which resulted in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. Rosenthal’s years as DA were also tarnished by repeated scandals over the forensic practices of the Houston police crime lab and Rosenthal’s resistance to calls for a complete investigation and reconstitution of forensic practices in Harris County.
Rosenthal resigned from office in 2008 amid controversy arising from the disclosure of emails from his official computers during federal litigation concerning accusations of police misconduct. The emails were reported to disclose Rosenthal’s extramarital affair, his possibly illegal use of government computers for campaign activities, and his exchange of racially inflammatory and sexually explicit emails with other county officials.
Hon. John Virgil Singleton was a United States federal judge. Born in 1918 in Kaufman, Texas, Singleton received a B.A. from the University of Texas in 1942. He then served in the U.S. Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander from 1942 to 1946. He attended law school at the University of Texas, and practiced privately in Houston from 1946 to 1966. A political confidant of Lyndon Johnson since the 1940s, Singleton was a regional coordinator for the 1964 Johnson-Humphrey presidential campaign.
On June 28, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Singleton to a new seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 22, 1966. He served as chief judge from 1979 to 1988, and assumed senior status on April 1, 1988. He retired June 1, 1992 and passed away on March 20, 2015.
Click here to watch the full interview.
Michael S. Wilk joined Hirsch & Westheimer, PC immediately after graduating with honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 1966, where he was an Associate Editor of the Texas Law Review. Throughout his career Mr. Wilk has worked in commercial law and began practicing at a time that allowed him to work on commercial transactions and commercial litigation. Noted for his business acumen and creative problem solving, Mr. Wilk has broad experience in real estate, corporate and mergers and acquisition transaction matters for clients ranging from sophisticated multi-national corporations to local family owned companies. He has represented buyers and sellers of businesses and commercial real estate, and is particularly adept in advising clients about the overall structure and supervision of business transactions.
In 1991, Mr. Wilk incorporated Alternative Dispute Resolution as part of his law practice and began acting as a mediator and arbitrator, drawing from his years of experience as a transactional lawyer and civil litigator. He is recognized as a leader in ADR. Mr. Wilk is a former chairman of the ADR Section for the State Bar of Texas for 2005-2006, and served on the ADR council. He also served on the inaugural board of directors of the Association of Attorney Mediators, and later as National Director and as National President. In 2011, he was inducted as a Charter Member of the Texas Chapter, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, awarded in recognition of a level of excellence in the practice of Alternative Dispute Resolution. In 2010, he became a member of the International Mediation Institute. He is a Certified Mediator by the Texas Mediator Credentialing Association (Credentialed Distinguished Mediator). For over 20 years, Mr. Wilk oversaw Hirsch & Westheimer’s representation in high-stakes complex litigation in state, federal, probate and bankruptcy courts throughout the State of Texas. He advised clients in contested civil litigation addressing issues of contract, oil and gas, alternative and renewable energy, labor and employment, real estate, partnership and corporation disputes, banking, common-law fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. Mr. Wilk served as Director of the Harris County Dispute Resolution Center, Chairman of Peer Mediations and Schools Task Force for the Houston Bar Association and the Houston Bar Association ADR Section and on the State Bar of Texas Grievance Committee, as a member and Past Chairman 4B. He was also an adjunct professor at South Texas College of Law, teaching negotiable instruments, bank deposits and collections and secured transactions.
To watch the full interview, click here.
James B. Sales grew up in Weimar, Texas in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. Despite a humble but loving upbringing, Jim attended the University of Texas by cobbling together academic and ROTC scholarships and by working throughout school. Jim has also been a passionate leader of the Bar, pro bono service, and professionalism. While serving in nearly every leadership capacity possible – President of the Houston Bar Association, President of the State Bar of Texas, Chair of the Texas Access to Justice Commission, Delegate of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, and many others, he also initiated and founded the Houston Volunteer Lawyer Program, the Houston Bar Foundation (and served as its first Chair), the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program, and other programs designed to aid citizens and lawyers in need of help.
In recognition for his selfless dedication to the profession and to those in need, Jim received the Appleseed J. Chrys Dougherty Good Apple Award, the Texas Bar Foundation Outstanding Fifty Year Lawyer Award, the ACTL Samuel E. Gates Litigation Award, the ADL Karen Susman Jurisprudence Award for Legal Public Service, the University of Texas Law School Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, and countless other honors. The Houston Bar Association Pro Bono Leadership Award is named in his honor. And in accord with the old adage that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Jim and Beuna have three children who all are lawyers.
To watch the full interview, click here.