austinbar.org NOVEMBER 2022 | VOLUME 31, NUMBER 9
Breaking New Ground Finding Joy (and Keeping It) in the Practice of Law BY LEE SMITH
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ecently, I was asked by a friend: “Why do you still love being a lawyer?” I pointed out that question was presumptuous, but in truth, I do still love being a lawyer. I certainly did not start out in a family of well-educated lawyers like many successful lawyers of my generation did. I grew up in one of the poor historic neighborhoods in South Dallas, at a time when in Dallas there was a very strict racial divide. My parents were wonderful, loving people who tried in every way possible to give me everything they could. I attended public schools in my neighborhood until I was accepted to and graduated from St. Mark’s Preparatory School of Dallas. I was St. Mark’s first Black student graduate. I earned a Baccalaureate degree at Harvard University in 1969 and served as the first Black
managing editor of the Harvard Yearbook. I then was accepted to the University of Washington Law School, where I earned a JD. I spearheaded litigation against the Washington State Bar Association that led to an exponential increase in Black lawyers being eligible to practice in Washington state. Of that I am very proud. I returned to Texas and was appointed chief regional civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enforcing civil laws, important laws that helped many economically disadvantaged people to get what they had an absolute right to receive. Then, I led a litigation team that filed suit against The University of Texas and Texas A&M to strike down the Texas Constitutional provisions that declared education related to many services as separate but equal. This directly led to a portion of
I spearheaded litigation against the Washington State Bar Association that lead to an exponential increase in Black lawyers being eligible to practice in Washington state. Of that I am very proud.
the multi-billion-dollar Permanent University Fund to be perpetually allocated to the historically Black college and university (HBCU) then called Prairie View A&M University. Even though the suit was against The University of Texas as a defendant and I was representing the plaintiffs, I guess things turned out OK because I was then offered a job with The University of Texas, where I spent the next 31 years in the legal department, retiring as associate
TOP LEFT: Lee Smith covering the 1967 Dow Chemical sit-in protest in Harvard’s Mallinckrodt Hall; TOP RIGHT: A young Smith as a student activist and managing editor of Harvard Yearbook in 1969; BOTTOM LEFT: Smith sharing his photo of a young Guatemalan girl, Gabrielle, with her mother, Ruth, and other Mayan women in Antigua, Guatemala; BOTTOM RIGHT: Smith at his induction to the alumni wall of honor at James Madison High School, the segregated Black high school in Dallas he attended before he integrated to St. Mark’s Preparatory School.
vice president for business affairs and associate vice president for legal affairs in 2017. Recently, St. Mark’s declared my name as the ongoing name of its prestigious award: the “St. continued on page 7