Gentleman judge: The hard-working Cole County judge is headed to federal appointment 
As it turns out, you can go home, but you can’t take your pigeons with you.
Richard Callahan is the Cole County circuit judge poised to be the next U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.
Once he’s confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he’ll move to his childhood home in south St. Louis to live with [...]
Rebbecca Lake Wood:Tech-challenged attorney spearheads pro bono database
An attorney who’s trying to use cyberspace to secure legal representation for Kansas City’s impoverished admits technology isn’t her strong suit.
The 2009 president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association resorted to phoning a friend twice to help her post her own picture to the group’s Web site.
“I’m not on Facebook,” Rebbecca Lake Wood said. [...]
John F. Mulligan Jr.: Helps win $65M settlement
Municipal attorneys typically don’t do a lot of class-action work. So a $65 million settlement automatically puts University City’s John F. Mulligan Jr. in the award-winning category.
Mulligan did more than help nail down the settlement with AT&T in a lawsuit over underpaid gross receipt taxes, however. He also managed to fend off allegations that he [...]
Judge Jimmie Edwards: Goes beyond the bench to help troubled teens
St. Louis Juvenile Court Judge Jimmie Edwards was tired of seeing 13- and 14-year-olds getting kicked out of school or passing through his courthouse, then returning to their troubled homes only to get mixed up on the streets again.
And when Edwards decided to fix the problem, he went much further than making a rhetorical speech [...]
Steven and Mark Bronson: Score $89 million symbolic win in drunken driving case
A family devastated by a man’s death in a crash with a drunken driver wanted his story told. They took their case to trial thinking they weren’t likely to see a big payout.
But the jury hit the driver with an $89 million verdict. The family’s attorneys say jurors used the case to send a message [...]
Missouri’s public defenders: Get whiplash from legislative and legal ups and downs, but the year ends on a high note
District Defender Michelle Davidson was ecstatic when she heard in May that Missouri legislators had appropriated $2 million in federal stimulus dollars to the state’s beleaguered public defender system.
She dreamed of a newly hired defender who could cover her conflict cases in Buchanan County, freeing Davidson up to actually spend time in the Maryville public [...]
Charles Birmingham, Steve Holtshouser and Steven Muchnick: Conclude 8-year, international investigation with $50M recovery
A hefty $50 million recovery from a giant offshore gambling company? All in a year’s work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.
Well, maybe not a typical year. The money forked over by the now-defunct gambling organization BetonSports is the largest single asset forfeiture in the Eastern District of Missouri.
But the [...]
Chief Justice William Ray Price Jr.:Stirring speech crystallized issues facing the legal system
In the midst of a grim year, Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice William Ray Price Jr. offered a message of hope: The legal system is about something greater than money and power.
At The Missouri Bar’s annual meeting in September, he reminded the legal community that behind profits and salaries, “the practice of law has a [...]
Lynn Ann Vogel: Future bar leader heads group to help lawyers in down economy
Lynn Ann Vogel’s law practice has shifted focus at a fortuitous time, as her role with The Missouri Bar grows.
Vogel in September was tapped as the future leader of the statewide mandatory bar association. For a while it appeared it could be at least a two-way contest, but, in the end, others dropped off for [...]
Ferne Wolf: Making life easier for fired workers through caselaw
Ferne Wolf can take part of the credit for making it easier for fired workers to get their cases in front of a Missouri jury.
If she wins the case she argued before the Missouri Supreme Court in November, it will get even easier.
Wolf was involved in two earlier cases where the court ruled that employees [...]