The POWER List: James R. Hobbs

Staff Report//September 26, 2022//

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Wyrsch Hobbs Mirakian, Kansas City

J.R. Hobbs’ career has been devoted to Missouri’s legal community.

Hobbs has served on the Missouri Task Force on Criminal Justice, which overhauled the Missouri Supreme Court’s bail practices rules. He also has served on the court’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Fairness. He also helped select appellate judges under the Nonpartisan Court Plan as part of the Appellate Judicial Commission.

Hobbs’ clients include Jim Wirken, a former Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association president who pleaded guilty to a federal money-laundering charge in 2014. He also represented former Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders when he pleaded guilty four years later to misusing campaign committee funds.

Hobbs earned his law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1981. Early on in his career, he won the Lon O. Hocker Memorial Trial Lawyer Award in 1989.

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