ICON Honors 2024: Jeffrey W. Bates

Appellate Judge, Court of Appeals, Southern District, Springfield

When Appellate Judge Jeffrey Bates discusses cases with his colleagues on the court, he often amazes them with his attention to detail and seemingly superhuman ability to remember case names and references.

He credits his keen memory to details he absorbed early in his career and to about a dozen black notebooks his former law partner Tom Strong filled with case notes long before digital research platforms existed. Bates was assigned to keep the notebooks updated.

“When we were in trial and didn’t have time to run out and research for an hour to figure out how to do something, we referred to his black books,” Bates says.  “I was interested in this system and was the one maintaining it, so it became second nature for me to recognize important cases that would be useful at trial.”

Bates grew up on a dairy farm in Lewisburg, Missouri. He received his JD from the University of Missouri Columbia and became a trial attorney after graduating. He was appointed to the Court of Appeals, Southern District in 2003.

As a member of the State Judicial Records Committee and the Court Management Technology Committee, he is keenly interested in technology that expands remote access to public court documents.

“One of the biggest things that changed for us was shifting from paper court records to electronic records in 2012,” he says. “It has revolutionized the court system.”

Bates has also devoted time and energy into identifying effective processes for redacting confidential information on public-facing documents using robust software and teaching others how to do it.

“I’ve made about 35 or 40 presentations to lawyers, the clerks, judges, different associations to try and communicate what we need to be doing,” he says.

At the end of the day, Bates can’t get enough of his job, from his day-to-day activities to deciding the outcome of cases on appeal.

“Alvin Moss, one of our former judges from years ago described this work as lawyer heaven,” Bates says. “And he is absolutely right because I love what I do, and it’s just the most fulfilling and interesting job I’ve ever had.”