BAMSL inducts new president at Law Day

Upon receiving the gavel at the annual Law Day luncheon of The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis on May 2, newly inducted President Sara G. Neill called on her fellow members to inject life into the organization — particularly the less active substantive law sections.

“Log onto the new website,” Neill encouraged her 300 colleagues gathered downtown at the Missouri Athletic Club. “Introduce yourselves. Volunteer to speak. Volunteer to write. Volunteer to chair a section.”

Neill, a shareholder at Capes Sokol, was sworn in by her father-in-law, retired St. Louis Circuit Judge Mark H. Neill. Her husband, Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter & Graham, also attended. The new BAMSL president joked that earlier that morning, when she asked the latter how it felt to become “First Husband,” he joked: “What? There’s going to be another one?”

Neill’s speech urging her colleagues to energize BAMSL echoed the theme of the preceding keynote address given by Jon Meacham, presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Andrew Jackson, George H.W. Bush and Thomas Jefferson.

“Along with newspaper reporters and thinking voters,” Meacham had told the room of attorneys, “you’re on the front lines of the most extraordinary political moment since the founding era” in terms of public dispiritedness and the lack of faith in institutions. “We have it in both our power and our responsibility — if we believe in this 242-year-old constitutional order — to do as much as we can to restore a basic faith that the system will endure.”

Lawyers must help accomplish this, Meacham said, because the legal profession “values reason” and “the legacy of reason is not guaranteed.”

Also at the event, BAMSL inducted its new officers: retired Missouri Court of Appeals Judge Glenn Norton, president-elect; retired U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson, vice president; Jamie Boyer, secretary; and Apollo Carey, treasurer.

In addition, retired Missouri Court of Appeals Judge Booker Shaw received the Distinguished Lawyer Award. Other awardees included: Whittney Dunn, Tamar Hodges, Megan Sterchi Lammert, Lillian Manning and Crystal Settlemoir, Young Lawyers Division Awards of Merit; Seth Albin, Paul Brown, Mary Hodges, Joy Holley and Mark Timmerman, Presidential Awards; Cardina Johnson and Christina Lewis Abate, Community Awareness Awards; and Sheena Hamilton, Professionalism Award.

BAMSL spokeswoman Susan Sagarra said next year’s event is slated for the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis, where the keynote speaker will be conservative commentator George Will.