Celebrating 150 Years of The Chicago Bar Association: An Interview with Former CBA Executive Director Terry Murphy

Episode Notes

Transcript

Trisha Rich:

Hello, hello, hello everyone, and welcome to CBAs @theBar, a podcast where we have unscripted conversations with our guests about local news, legal news, events, topics, and other stories we think you’re going to find interesting. I’m one of your hosts today, Trisha Rich of Holland Knight and Co-hosting the pod. With me today is Maggie Mendenhall-Casey, deputy Corporation Counsel with City of Chicago’s Law Department. Maggie, as always, love seeing you and grateful to be here together.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

Thanks ladies. This is my first time in person in the studio and with you, so I am interested to see what this dynamic looks like.

Trisha Rich:

Yeah, this is back to the gds, the pre covid being in person recording days. So we haven’t done this in a while.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

I’m old school, so I like it. Yeah.

Trisha Rich:

In joining me and Maggie, today is the man, the myth, the legend Terry Murphy, if you are a member of the Chicago Bar Association. And by the way, if you’re not, you should be, I could stop here because you already know Terry and all he has done for our local bar and the visibility of bar associations around the country. But because we have listeners from all over the world, I’m forced to give an introduction to a man who doesn’t need one. As we celebrate the hundred and 50th year anniversary of the Chicago Bar Association here in 2024, we could think of no better way to talk about the history of this organization than to start with the man who led it for over 35 years. At the time he took over the helm of the CBA in 1985. He had already worked for the organization for over 14 years, during which time he played key roles in developing some of the bar’s, still marquee programs, including the Lawyer referral service and the Chicago Bar Association Insurance Agency, both of which continued to be a key revenue source for the CBA for almost half a century, nearly a third of its lifespan.

Terry dedicated his life and career to the Chicago Bar Association. And as we sit here recording this episode, we are immediately adjacent to the Terrance and Murphy Lobby, which was named to honor him upon his retirement in 2020, in the 50 years Terry spent at the Chicago Bar Association, the Chicago and national legal communities went through innumerable legal, political and cultural events, including Watergate, operation Gaylord, the appointment of a CBA member to the United States Supreme Court, the arrest of John Wayne Gacy, the Tylenol panic, the flooding of the loop, the election of a local lawyer as the first black president of the United States, the 1986 bears, the nineties bulls, the oh five white socks and the 2016 Cubs, the death of Richard j Dailey and the election of Richard m Dailey nine 11, the John Burge torture scandal, the murder of Laquan McDonald, a constitutional convention, the building of the Sears Tower, the demolition of Cabrini Greene.

And because its Chicago, more political corruption trials than anyone could possibly count. And through it all, the CBA had the steady and measured leadership of Terry Murphy. And as a point of personal privilege, I have to say that one I’m particularly appreciative for was a morning back in 2009 when Terry Murphy and David Mann took a young lawyer out to breakfast at the Corner Bakery at Dearborn and Adams and told her to get involved in the young lawyer section and the Judicial Evaluation Committee because Terry, as you told me, then I’d find my people here at 3 21 South Plymouth. And of course you were right, Terry, you’ve recently come back to the CBA to Co-chair with Judge Nicole Patton, the hundred and 50th year anniversary committee. Although it’s not fair to say that you’ve come back because in all honesty, you never left both physically and metaphorically. Your fingerprints are on every inch of this building and this organization, thank you for joining us today to talk about this remarkable milestone. Thank you for everything you’ve done for the CBA and the Chicago legal community and welcome to AT theBar.

Terry Murphy:

Thank you. What an introduction. I’m speechless.

Trisha Rich:

We know that’s not true. It’s so great to have you back.

Terry Murphy:

Thank you. Great to be back. And I feel, and you’re correct. I feel as if I’ve never left quite honestly.

Trisha Rich:

So on this monumentous occasion, the hundred 50th year anniversary of the Chicago Bar Association you had before you left, agreed to co-chair the committee for the hundred and 50th year anniversary. I did. You couldn’t leave us.

Terry Murphy:

Well, I had a few other duties as well. The CBA building is a condominium building, and several years before I actually retired, I was asked by the University of Illinois representatives to serve as president of the condo board, which I agreed to do. And just last year disengaged from the condo board, which I had been on since this building was built by the association. And we moved in 1990. So I served many years on the condominium board, also served as vice president of our CBA insurance agency that I was able to get our board of managers to approve to establish in 1992. And then I’m working very closely with Sandra Mate and the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal profession, which I helped Sandra get started. And she promptly named me as treasurer of the Institute. That’s the thanks. You get ary more work. Wow. But Sandra had been at the American Bar Association and literally and is literally the premier, I would say, leader. And she has more knowledge than anybody that I know of about diversity and inclusion. And when Sandra was ready to leave the A VA, she called me up and said, can we meet for coffee?

I should have been aware, but indeed I said for Sandra, anything. So I met Sandra, we had coffee. I said, what’s going on? She said, I’m thinking about leaving the American Bar Association. I said, what? Nope. She said, I’m thinking maybe you’ve taken a job in California. And we knew a little bit. And I said, no, no, no. Before you do that, what if we incubate sort of the nation and maybe the world’s leading expert on diversity and inclusion and the legal profession needs you, but the CBA will incubate you and will help you get started. And everything else there is history. She’s been off to the races and still is, and what an incredible woman and incredible talent she is.

Trisha Rich:

Yeah. She’s working with me on some CLE programming right now, and she is really one of a kind huge resource, just really

Terry Murphy:

And quietly people don’t really realize how deep she really is and the knowledge she has about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Trisha Rich:

Terry, that’s one of the things I noticed when you were executive director is that you were very thoughtful and it was one of the things I wanted to talk about today. So we’ll just go a little ahead of schedule, get right there. You were very thoughtful about making sure the committee chairs, the leadership, the board, the people that were working here at the CBA on a volunteer level were reflective of the communities we serve and the legal profession.

Terry Murphy:

And I’m proud of that.

Trisha Rich:

I think you were really ahead of your time on that issue

Terry Murphy:

Maybe, but I certainly helped advance the diversity and inclusion in the leadership on the board and advocated for that. And during my term, we had our first African-American president, and since that time, quite a number of outstanding African-American presidents and Hispanic and Aurora, our first Asian. Yeah, I’m very proud of that. And it speaks to the association’s importance in the community, in the state and in the nation.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

You certainly have left your footprint here. This is an organization where both myself and other diverse lawyers feel included. I’d love to start at the beginning, Terry, what brought you in the seventies to the CBA?

Terry Murphy:

Well, now you’re going off script, but Yeah, I can tell you it was serendipitous, as Joy Cunningham would say. And I had graduated from Loyola University. I loved history, loved classical history, and I really was wanting to go to law school. And as you know, I never went to law school because I found something else that I loved smart. But in any event, and I had many opportunities, but after graduating from Loyola, I figured the best thing I could do was look for a job at a firm, try to get work. I’d been working two jobs and going, and I was a commuter to Loyola. So I’d commute down to Lewis Towers, handle the courses, go home and work generally a couple days a week at a grocery store and a couple and weekends, usually at a shoe store in Oakbrook.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

Okay. So you were a hustler. You hard, I appreciate it. I had to work. Same one of you was one of

Terry Murphy:

Those things. You do what you have to do. But I called up right out of the blue, a lawyer in Oak Park who said to me, I really can’t help you. I’m small firm. But he said, you should go down and see this lawyer named Jim Dooley. Jim Dooley. I had never heard him. He was a personal injury lawyer, later came to know him. Very famous, very successful. But I called Dooley’s office and they said, yeah, come on down, come on down. So I went down to his office and one of his partners came out who I later found out was called Riverboat Murphy. Now he’s no relation to me.

Trisha Rich:

I would kill to have a cool nickname like that,

Terry Murphy:

Riverboat, because he loved to gamble and he loved to smoke.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

Hopefully he was lucky,

Terry Murphy:

Which back then was a big deal. And he literally talked to me for a minute or two in the lobby, didn’t even invite me into the office, and he said, I’m looking at you and you don’t want to work here. I said, what? He said, yeah, you don’t want to work for Dooley. He’ll call people at midnight. It’s really, he said, I’m telling you, this would not be the place for you. So I said, okay, do you have any ideas? And he said, yeah, go over to theBar Association. They have a placement service. And I thought, yeah, sure. A placement service. Yeah. I got in the car and I got the car out of the garage, started to drive home and then thought, well, maybe I should have. So I came back, parked the car, went over to theBar Association. Now, theBar Association had a placement book for lawyers, but not for non lawyers.

It wasn’t, which I was, right. So I parked the car, went back in, went to the building, go up to the 10th floor, and the receptionist was, when I walked in the two front doors, the receptionist was behind a glass thin case with a little opening in the bottom. And she said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, I’m looking for a job. And she said, are you a lawyer? A logical question for her, because I didn’t know anything about the placement book at that time, but I said, no. And she said, now we don’t have anything for you at all. So I really thought, Hey, I’ve really been given the shuffle both from duly and from the CBA. Now. I didn’t know anything about the CBA. I started to walk out the door and through the office, another side door in the reception area, the controller was running out to go to the washroom.

I later, and he bumped into me, almost knocked me over, and he was an older guy, and he said, what do you want? And I thought, holy smokes. You know what I said, I was looking for a job. And true story. He said, sit down, I’ll be right back. Now, he was older. He might’ve been 60, 65. At the time, I didn’t realize that the reason the CBA was actually looking for someone was because the young lawyer section was just being formed. This was 1971. Yeah. So I sat there and he came back a few minutes later, brought me into a little office. He said, can you fill out this application? The application was simple. It was like front and back of a page. Took me about five minutes. And all the time that I was filling out the application, his name was McCarville, and he was rocking back and forth in his shear, which led me to believe he might’ve had a two martini lunch, perhaps more bags.

I can’t, can’t be sure about that, but it’s quite possible. In any event, he said, okay. He said, I want to take you in to meet the executive director, who at that time was Jacques g Fuller, IIT Kent grad, former Marine. Great big guy. And he took me in to meet the executive director who grabbed the application and barely said two words to me and said, we’ll keep you posted. That was it. That was all that. He said, we’ll keep you posted. Now, I didn’t know what I had even interviewed for, and the interview was not an interview because McCarville was rocking. I had filled out this front and back sheet of paper that really didn’t look like much of an application. I had no idea what they were even talking about because they didn’t bring up the young lawyers. They said nothing about a job. For all I knew it could have been working in the mail room. I had no idea. But in any of that, I go out, jump in the car, get it out of the garage, drive home. When I got home, my mother said, A Mr. Fuller called,

Trisha Rich:

That was Christ. Swear to

Terry Murphy:

God, they want you to start Monday. I said, what? And I said, did he say what they want me to

Trisha Rich:

Do?

Terry Murphy:

And she said, no, but they want you to come in on Monday. Now, if that is not serendipity, I don’t know what is. So when I went into the office on Monday, Jim Romanak, who was a lawyer graduate from the University of Illinois, and a really talented lawyer, he talked with me, young lawyer. He said, you’re going to be working in our lawyer referral department. I’m going to train you how to interview people. And then you’re going to be working with about 10 to 12 committees, which you’ll be secretary of. So what does that entail? Taking minutes, opening files, for example, in professional fees, we’d get three to 500 complaints a year about lawyer fees from the public. And so in addition to interviewing people in lawyer, lawyer referral, I’d be secretary to about 10 committees.

Trisha Rich:

And I think we should say at this stage, the CBA was the grievance for Yes. Right. So people may not know that.

Terry Murphy:

Right. The CBA, actually it was Justin Stanley who filed a petition with the Illinois Supreme Court in 1971. The CBA and the ISBA were empowered by the Illinois Supreme Court to discipline lawyers. So we had a chief investigator who would investigate all of the inquiry and serious complaints involving lawyer theft or different client problems that would come up. And he was an outstanding investigator. As a matter of fact, I got to know him very well. And we had an inquiry in a grievance committee so that the initial inquiries about lawyer misconduct would be reviewed in the inquiry committee. And if they were serious enough, there were hearings held with the lawyers and then the lawyers. And we had subpoena power so we could subpoena the lawyers to come in to the hearings.

Trisha Rich:

So this was the predecessor for our listeners agent today. DC. Right. So you were working, you got assigned to that immediately? No, no. Okay. You were

Terry Murphy:

I was The professional fees committee was a separate committee.

Trisha Rich:

Okay. They were just taking the fee complaints.

Terry Murphy:

Right. Judiciary, professional responsibility, ethics. And we had some brilliant, brilliant, brilliant lawyers on those committees. Legislative, I did all of the legislative work. And at that time, CBA did not have a legislative council, and we had a joint program with the Illinois State Bar. So our committees would, it was so archaic. I mean, I hate taken up the time, but we would get in sort of bulk four to 5,000 bills all at once because none of it, remember, this is pre-internet pre online. There was no online. We were using carbon paper. Oh my gosh. Which the city may still be used.

Come on now. Just kidding. Anyway, and my job was to sort of go through those bills and then get ’em to the right committees. So that was another, usually when those bills came in, I’d be working until 10 o’clock at night sorting the bills into different substantive law committee piles so that they could all be delivered to the committees for review and comment. Howard Braverman, who was the assistant director for the Illinois State Bar Association, was our contact at that time. And then he would take our bills and try to get sponsors down in Springfield to introduce CBA bills. He did the same with the ISBA bills. And when we were opposing legislation, Howard would be the one to call and say, well, we need somebody to come down next Tuesday at 10 o’clock for a hearing on the Matrimonial Dissolution of Marriage Act, blah, blah, blah.

And you’d go to Springfield, pardon me? You’d have to go to Springfield, not me. But I would take the experts from our committees, and we had some of the best, and still have the best legal minds, I would say, in the whole country on substantive law committees. It was amazing. And when you think about learning and what you learn from listening to people discuss issues at a committee meeting, and if your role is secretary, and you have to cover some of the things that they’re talking about, phenomenal discussions about a whole, not just legislation, but professional ethics. Professional responsibility. Back then, Illinois Supreme Court had not adopted a code of professional responsibility. Shader who was on that committee had a photographic memory, by the way. And he could crank out an opinion usually overnight. He’d say a hundred percent of the time it’d be absolutely spotted. But we had great minds working in a lot of different committees. I had the good fortune of being secretary of those committees. And you can’t help but admire and learn when you are among people who are really phenomenally talented in those areas.

Trisha Rich:

So you kick around the committees for 14 years or so, and then at some point you become executive director and 1985, or as I like to call it, kindergarten. Yeah, kindergarten.

Terry Murphy:

Well, they did a national search. I had done just about everything I could do at the CBAI love the work I had offers to go to law schools. Loyola Bud Murdoch was the dean when I started at the CBA. And he said, I’ve got a seat for you anytime you want. Luke Collins was Dean of I, chief Kent, then moved to IIT. But he was a good friend and he had a seat for me. And I actually monitored classes for a while at DePaul and at Kent, I was very interested in criminal law because we had the defensive prisoners committee, we had the in court lawyer referral program. We had the criminal law committee, and those were committees that I was secretary of. And I worked a lot with those committees. And DePaul, it seemed like a waste of my time, honestly. And I loved what I was doing, but I tried it, tried monitoring some classes, and no criticism of either school. It just didn’t seem to resonate with me.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And in the role as an executive director, you can really shape inform the legal community.

Terry Murphy:

Well, you have an opportunity to, and as I said, they did a national search. It was not a given that I was going to be chosen. They actually put together a committee of business lawyers. The president of Sahara Cole was the chairman of the committee. He was also a lawyer. Herb Freed was on the committee. Shelly Rosenberg, who was with Sam Zell, little known multimillionaire

Trisha Rich:

Fellow, Michigan grad,

Terry Murphy:

Yeah. Made a small fortune, made a big fortune. But yeah, the committee was a great committee. I figured if I don’t get the job, I’d move on. I could pretty much go, I think, to New York and Florida. I had been asked by the A BA at one time to submit a resume for executive director. After Burt early left, I had been president of the National Association of Bar Executives, which was an elected position. But I loved the CBA. So long story short, the committee had maybe Hillier told me maybe a couple hundred applicants from around the country. I remember sitting next to a fellow bar executive from out east who was going to be interviewed. I was the last person they interviewed

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And saved the best.

Terry Murphy:

Right. Well, and knock on wood, knock on wood, I was selected, thankfully. And it’s been a wonderful, wonderful ride. I’ve loved every minute of working with the Chicago, Bar Association. We have done so much. And lemme tell you, when you look through the ages and you look at, for example, the creation of the young lawyer section. Now, originally in 1940, well before I was born, the CBA had a young lawyer’s committee. And on that committee were some very famous people. Al Jenner from Jenner and Block, Alex Elson. They were young lawyers back in 1940. So the CBA thought it was doing kind of the right thing in 1940, in 1970, in the late sixties, the Council of Lawyers became very active. And I think the leadership at the CBA, again before I was there, Justin Stanley and others realized it’s important that we really give the young lawyer section because they’re the future. They will determine the success or the failure of programming for years to come. And the creation in the Young Lawyer section was brilliant.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And Trisha and I are both products of the Young Lawyer section, and it definitely gave me a chance to serve as a leader and in a leadership role before I was given that opportunity at my job. So I know both of us, me and Trish are huge fans. You took the role of executive director in the mid eighties and then in the nineties, that’s when you say that the CBA building was purchased?

Terry Murphy:

Well, it wasn’t purchased. There was an old six story building that John Marshall owned. We had actually looked at that building in 82 and rejected it. It was the old Princeton Harvard Jail Club. And during the war, it was the main induction center for the army. It was really designed when it was first built in the 1890s as the Chicago Automobile Dealers Association. And Hilliard pulled some history of that building, which he sent to me. And it was the first club in Chicago to admit women. And they had beneath the street and the building, which we’re sitting in here, but they had actually a drive in below the building ramp for old cars members to drive under the building park and then come to the club. And the article that David had sent talked about green leather chairs and smoking rooms. And now why a woman would find that fascinating, I don’t know.

But the building, when we first looked at it in 82 was a total wreck. The thought was to renovate, you need a little backdrop here, because in 1940, the CBA leadership negotiated a 50 year lease at 29 South, and that 50 year lease was going to expire in 1990. Our rent for about 50 years was a little over $3 and 70 cents a square foot. Now you can’t beat that deal anywhere. And Stan Truman, who helped negotiate that back in the forties, God bless him forever. But the rent was, so we had 52,000 square feet, by the way. We had a library with about 130,000 volumes. Wow. A brief collection. We were one of a cafeteria, right? Well, a main dining room and a cafeteria. Back then, there weren’t really a lot of fast food operations. So we would serve 1100 lunches a day. Oh, okay.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

So this is a restaurant. This is a restaurant, A

Terry Murphy:

Restaurant with a library. When you think of Well, and committee meeting rooms, because that’s where our committees met at noon. And we had a lot of people who were retired from the restaurant at Marshall Fields who would come over to the CBA and they would bring food into the committee room. So in all of the committees, we had little slips that members would fill out for salad, ham sandwich. Don’t forget the sweet roll, which you probably have heard of, but any of that. We had a kitchen staff, chefs, dieticians, the whole operation. I remember shortly after becoming executive director, our food service director came up and said, Terry, we need a new mixer. I said, no big deal. Mixer. Well, the mixers back then were seven, $8,000. Yeah, those big industrial mixer. So our rent was so favorable at 29. That 50 year lease was phenomenal. It helped the CBA really prepare for the future. And again, when you think of pre zoomo, pre-internet, the worldwide web, and every day you came to the CBA, you could come for lunch, you could come for a meeting. We had association lunches up on the 12th floor. We had great speakers coming in. Evening programs, CLE when you signed up for an evening CLE program that also included a buffet dinner. And it was something like 15 or $20. Yeah, I mean, today those numbers are much higher.

Trisha Rich:

I wouldn’t say much higher. Well,

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

You try and keep things reusable too in your absence now.

Terry Murphy:

So the building building was sort of put on rest for a while. We hired US equities, we looked at different buildings in the loop that would work for us. We had to deal with the library, which is no small issue when you have that many books. Fortunately, everything worked out for the best. Notre Dame Law School was interested in buying a good portion of the CBAs collection, which really was a big help. Jack Ner from the Merck helped arrange that because our library consultant that I had to work with and thankfully knew a lot about what to do with old books, said, Terry, I kept thinking, you’re going to have to find an empty building in the loop to dump those books. Nobody wants to buy old law books.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And I know the historian, and you couldn’t just throw away those books.

Terry Murphy:

They have to be refined. Yes. No, really any rare books were kept some of those rare books in the president’s office. But on the whole partnership with John Marshall Law School at that time meant that we could use their library and set up a small CBA member practice library on the sixth floor of the John Marshall Library for the exclusive use of the CBA members. And ultimately with the internet, you do most of your legal research as to most of our lawyers now online.

Trisha Rich:

Most, yeah. I don’t know the last time I’ve booked up. Well, I do have one volume of books in my office, but that’s about it.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And mine are more for show.

Trisha Rich:

Yeah. Let’s stop there and take our first break. And when we come back, we will talk more with our former executive director, Terry Murphy.

Okay. Once again, we are back with Terry Murphy, the former executive director of the Chicago Bar Association on the eve of the hundred and 50th year. And for those of you listening, we have a whole website dedicated to this. You can get to it through the CBAs website. And we talk about on the website, about our upcoming events for the hundred 50th year and swag and all sorts of special things we have going on. But Terry, for somebody who was here for about 50 of those 150 years and has watched this organization become of the most successful, if not the most successful bar association in the country, Terry, as you look forward to the next 150 years, what is the CBA going to look like? Where should it invest?

Terry Murphy:

Whoa, I wish I had a crystal ball. I really do. But there’s no question in my mind that artificial intelligence will play a very major role in the legal profession as it will in virtually all of the professions. It’s already playing a very important role in the medical profession. I think the legal profession needs to get its arms around AI to sort of come up with standards for its use both within the practice of law and certainly within the judiciary. Because AI is here to stay and it has such a powerful, powerful reach that it’s inevitable. It will impact the profession, it will impact corporate business work because corporations are going to be using it and are using it now. The medical profession is using it. They’ve used it actually successfully since about 2015 at Mayo Clinic. And I know that it’s really sort of a neophyte, but it’s here and it’s here to stay.

And I think that one of the great challenges for the profession is addressing ai. And also in terms of the public, people need legal advice. They need legal help. It’s difficult. It’s always historically been difficult for people, especially people who don’t have the means to employ a lawyer. And I believe that AI could play a significant role in helping people who have small claims, who have virtually no resources or inadequate resources to retain counsel to also help the judiciary. And if used properly, I see it as a help and not a hindrance. I think there are people who would say it’s definitely not a panacea. That probably is true now. But I think AI will play a major role in all the professions in the very near future. And no question in my mind, the profession needs to begin setting some standards which not only it will follow, but hopefully will have some significant impact on how it’s used to help people.

Trisha Rich:

Well, my plan is to just have the young lawyers figure it out and explain it to us. I think they’re really the future here.

Terry Murphy:

I believe that if we can get more young lawyers involved, we can solve just about any problem. The real key is getting people to care. And if we get enough people to care those problems, they get worked out.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

How do you think that we get people to care now with Zoom and LinkedIn and social media? People are feelings. I don’t need to go to theBar Association. I could hop online and make my connections there. Why is the CBA important in 2024?

Terry Murphy:

I think several reasons. First of all, we learn from each other and what goes on in terms of interactions at committee meetings, discussions. I know some of that can be done on Zoom, but you develop friendships, you develop a rapport with lawyers and judges who participate in different activities, and those become lifetime relations, and they help you in different ways as you grow in your practice. So getting involved really does make a difference and getting people to realize that if they get involved, they too can benefit not just in their practice, but in their personal lives. You meet friends, that’ll be friends forever, and that’s invaluable.

Trisha Rich:

I do want to say, when we met in that corner bakery so many years ago, and he told me that, right? I was like, okay, here’s David Mann, who’s wonderful, but it was a very old guy and love the Chicago, Bar, Association and Terry. Wonderful, but older guy. And you guys were both telling me, go to the young lawyer section. And I was like, I don’t know if you guys have young people over there, but let’s see. And I went and really, really early on, I met one Mr. Jonathan Amarillio. And at the time he was had no, we joke about this now, we’ve been friends now for years and years and years and years. And for those, John and I make fun of each other a lot on this podcast, but I think people know we’re incredibly very close friends. He had a cane at the time, and he was sporting this cane like Mr.

Peanut or something. He was walking around with it, and I think he would say he had a busted toe or something. But I just remember thinking, who is this clown with his leg anyway, supporting this cane? Right? And John likes to say, the first thing I ever said to him was a joke about it was an insult. Something about him being short or having a physically large head or something. I don’t know. He’ll tell you. And in that moment, in that moment, I never thought we are going to grow up to be the very best of friends, close friends. True. And here we are. We’ve been working together on bar projects for 15 better than 15 years. And we talk to each other almost every day, and we call each other and we bounce problems off each other. And we’ve grown up as lawyers together. That’s just one. It’s not just John, it’s Katie Lis, it’s Matt Passin, it’s Paul Monic, it’s Jonathan Moronic. And the people I grew up with in the YLS Octo and Jeff Moskowitz and all those guys, Emily Ek, who ended up being one of my very best friends, I officiated her wedding. They were all people I met in those first few days at the YLS. And that just has really, really impacted my career in an incredible way.

Terry Murphy:

It’s a life changer, and it really underpins your practice area to have so many friends that you can pick up the phone and call and ask a question. We need that more than ever. I think that that’s the one sort, if there is a downside to zoom, it’s that you don’t have that opportunity to be on the meeting unless you pick up the phone or unless you meet someone for coffee. But you need those connections. Those connections strengthen your involvement in the profession.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And for me, in my involvement with the YLS and now the big bar, as we call it, affectionately litigator defense for the city of Chicago and the Chicago, Bar Association has a large amount of plaintiff’s attorneys and personal injury attorneys. And for me, it’s helpful to have those personal relationships knowing that we’re going to go into court, we’re going to go into court and fight hard. But I know you personally, I’ll see you at the CBA and we are friends. So for me, beyond that and just the leadership and finishing that, the CBA has given to me, it really is helpful to be a part of the larger community and know people as individuals rather than just ICU at court. We’re on the opposite sides of the bench and we’re going at it. True. That’s what I love about the Chicago Bar Association.

Terry Murphy:

Yeah. I think Dave Hilliard had it right. And that is that there’s a cheerfulness among young lawyers that you want to maintain and in the service that the section and the association in different ways perform for the public, for the members and theBar, we serve the bench theBar and the public. That’s what we do. And we do it so much better when we do it together. And when we get more people involved and get enough people to care, we then can start solving real problems, whatever they may be.

Trisha Rich:

And I don’t want this point to get lost. I think for a lot of people, especially people at large law firms, they’re coming up and they’re like, well, I have all these people in my law firm. Why do I also need to have a bar community? And I always thought that those two communities have served, at least in my career, completely different end goals.

Terry Murphy:

Well, I can tell you this, no large law firm, no matter how big it is, can do what the Bar Association does or what the young lawyer section does. There’s not a single firm, the number of programs that are offered to young lawyers and to lawyers generally through the association, just the continuing legal education programs alone. Last year, I think we had somewhere around 250. Huge. The CBA is the fourth oldest bar association in the country, Philadelphia 1802, no surprise there, followed by Boston, about 1861 New York, the Association of theBar of the City of New York, about 1870 and the CBA, but I think for the Great Fire would’ve been about the same time as the association of theBar of the city of New York. But if you remember well from history, again, the Great Fire sort of put everything back a couple years.

Trisha Rich:

I mean, I don’t remember, but no, I don’t remember either. Okay. I just checking

Terry Murphy:

And I’m glad I’m not related to Mrs. O’Leary. Yeah,

Trisha Rich:

Fair enough.

Terry Murphy:

But maybe you’re a cow knows.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

And then to Tricia’s point about the distinction between knowing people at your firm and knowing people outside of your firm, I’ve been a public servant my entire career. I understand you need to start pulling some business in when you work at a law firm. So you need to know some more people besides those people that are just in your firm. But Terry, I would love to hear there’ve been some great people who have been and great is not even the word for it. Some thank you, Trish. I love to assist some monumentous people that have been involved with the CBA that have walked through these doors. Who are your top two or three speakers that you have helped to bring into the CBA be associated with our organization when

Trisha Rich:

You were here for so long? When you look back, what are your starstruck moments? I’m very interested in this.

Terry Murphy:

There are many, but Oprah Winfrey, for example, the Queen, well, maybe even better.

Maggie Mendenhall-Casey:

No, no, she right.

Terry Murphy:

But we were fortunate enough to have Oprah Winfrey speak during Laurel Bellow’s term as president, and we had been trying to reach Oprah as a speaker through Philip Corboy because Corboy, who’s a past president, lived in the same building as Oprah did. We invited Oprah. I got a call from Jeff Jacobs saying, Terry, I think you’re going to get your wish that Oprah will speak to the CBA. And she did, and she gave a speech that was so phenomenal. I have never heard in all the speakers that we’ve had anyone who could capture every single human emotion. In her words, she was talking about national child abuse legislation that she had hired Jim Thompson from Winston and STR to draft and to help implement that on a national level. That legislation, that Oprah speech certainly was one of the most powerful speeches I’ve ever heard anyone give. Desmond Tutu. We were very concerned about the violence in the city. Young kids. Sheila Murphy called me up. Sheila was a presiding judge of the sixth Municipal District and said, Terry, Desmond Tutu is going to be in town, and here’s his number. If you want him, call him up and see if he’ll meet with you. I got ahold of Judge Wright who was going to be president, and we went and visited Desmond Tutu at the Intercontinental Hotel.

Trisha Rich:

That is just crazy to me.

Terry Murphy:

The two of us, we

Trisha Rich:

Just got an appointment. We went and saw Desmond Tutu. We did.

Terry Murphy:

We did. And let me tell you, he originally said, we told him about the problem of the violence against children in the city, and he looked at Judge Wright and he said, I, it’s not what I generally do. We spent a half an hour, the two of us talking with him, and then he looked at Judge Wright pointed his finger at him and said, okay, I’ll come back during your year as president to deliver remarks. Oh, wow. Which he did, which he did. And it was absolutely phenomenal. His remarks to a packed audience. I was there. Yeah, it was incredible. He was a lot of fun too. We took him out to dinner and he was very interested in cricket and was following the South African cricket team. And Judge Wright has a way of teasing people, which those of us who know him. Anyway, Desmond Tutu looked at me and he said, Teddy, how is it you can work for this man? But those memories will never go away. What a phenomenal intellect he had through the years. We’ve had many, many outstanding speakers. Johnny Cochran, after the OJ trial came in,

Trisha Rich:

I mean, so I’ve been practicing for 18 years, and I’ve seen John Paul Stevens, obviously a number of times, Sandra Day O’Connor. I’ve seen Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg here. I’ve seen Sonia Sotomayor was here right after she joined the court. I mean, this has really been a gathering place for some of the nations.

Terry Murphy:

It has. And you realize that when you get a chance to meet them, they’re just like you and me. They’re people. They really are. Now, even though you would say, no, no, there’s no way. I agree that

Trisha Rich:

They’re people,

Terry Murphy:

But they’re down to earth. People really want and need other people, and it’s fascinating when you get one-on-one with somebody like Desmond Tutu, and you realize he’s interested in cricket, following the cricket score in South Africa, phenomenal just about finding that point of connection. Then it is. We work closely with W-I-C-C-T-V, did a TV program also with Archbishop Tutu at YCC. It was phenomenal. But again, theBar Association can do things because of its members. Its members really are the engine that drive the association. We need to get people realizing that we can make a significant difference and improve a lot of people in the city and the state by getting more people involved.

Trisha Rich:

Terry, first of all, you’re absolutely right. Second, I think we are going to end there for today because we can’t top that note. It has been absolutely our pleasure. Just incredible to have you and to be a member of this bar association under your leadership for so many years. It’s just the absolute professional pleasure of a lifetime. But I do have to say that is our show for today. So thank you, Terry, for your time for this wonderful conversation. I think we are going to have to have you back at some point because yes, please. I feel like we just haven’t even scratched the surface. But Maggie, thank you obviously for being here today. Thanks to our executive producer, Jennifer Byrne, for the work she does behind the scenes that makes our whole machine work. As always, huge thanks to Ricardo on Sound Engineering. And remember, you can follow us and send comments, questions, episode ideas, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever that’s called now, CBA @theBar, all one word. Please rate us, leave us your feedback on Apple Podcast, Google Play, overcast, Spotify, wherever you download your podcast. It always helps us get the word out about this little one. Until next time, from everyone here at the Chicago, Bar Association, thank you for joining us and we will see you soon @theBar.

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