While large firms located in tall office buildings on Galveston Island, Texas, mostly escaped serious damage done by Hurricane Ike's 6 to 10 feet of water that washed through the downtown area, solos and small firms with offices in one- or two-story structures were decimated. More than 100 solos and small-firm lawyers have been displaced because of the storm.

Many attorneys have relocated to the northern part of Galveston County in towns such as Clear Lake, Texas City, Kemah and Dickinson, either renting offices or relying on donated space from other lawyers or firms. But now that state court business has resumed in the Galveston County Justice Center, some lawyers are returning to their battered island, vowing to rebuild what Mother Nature took.

Galveston is in the midst of cleaning up, but the city is a good year away from looking anything like it once did. A month and a half after the storm, damaged boats still litter the median of the Galveston Causeway leading into the city. Streets are lined with piles of water-soaked drywall, furniture and other refuse pulled from homes and offices. About 70 percent of the structures in Galveston were damaged; only 20 percent of the businesses on the island are open for business, according to city officials.

But there's more than just civic pride swelling in the hearts of lawyers who want to restore the island's legal community; there's also a sense of history. Galveston is home to one of Texas' oldest local bar associations -- it predates the State Bar of Texas by decades and was formed in 1836 before Texas became a state in 1845. It's a legal tradition many Galveston lawyers hold dear.

Texas Lawyer visited four solo and small-firm lawyers who are rebuilding their law offices on the island as well as their practices. While they're dealing with different kinds of problems, they all have the same resolve -- there's no way they're leaving Galveston. Here are their stories.

THE MOBILE LAWYER

The snack bar area at the Galveston County Justice Center now serves as solo Jeff Kilgore's law office. So does Casey's Seafood Café on the seawall. Even a client's home will do if need be. Because of the hurricane, clients don't come to Kilgore any longer -- he goes to them.

The state courthouse's snack bar area now often serves as Jeff Kilgore's law office.

Kilgore, president of the Galveston County Bar Association, used to office on the second floor of the Texas First Bank Building on Stewart Road. But that's not possible any longer. Hurricane Ike caused heavy damage to the roof of that building, and the ceiling of his office collapsed, letting a huge amount of water into Kilgore's top-floor law office.

"I had to take a Skil saw to open up my desk," says Kilgore, who does mediation and probate work. "One of my desk drawers was still full of water two weeks later. A lot of the files were mildewed and trashed."

After assessing the damage, Kilgore forwarded his office telephone to his cellular phone, forwarded his fax machine to an e-fax address and kept going, meeting clients at their convenience, bricks and mortar be damned.

He could have used the state of his office as an excuse to permanently relocate to the mainland -- after all, Galveston County's population is growing in its northern stretch off the island. But Kilgore says he won't budge.

"People in Galveston need to know that businesses are willing to stay," Kilgore says. "I guess you could call it a loyalty thing."

He's doing his best to keep his mediation appointments on the island -- that is, when lawyers can keep them.

"Sometimes they can't find clients," he says. "And when they do, they're digging out and can't afford to continue" pursuing litigation.

As a result, Kilgore says his mediation practice has taken a nosedive; he predicts a 25 percent drop for the year.

Kilgore had property damage insurance, but, like the other three lawyers interviewed for this article, he didn't have business-interruption insurance. Still, he is not deterred. The feeling he has now is much like the one he had in 1973 when he graduated from the University of Houston Law Center and headed north to start his practice.

"I went to Dallas to an office-sharing arrangement with no clients, no files and no cases," Kilgore says. "That's kind of how it feels."

Love led him to Galveston in 1983, when he married his then-fiancee, who's an occupational therapist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He arrived on the island in the wake of Hurricane Alicia, which hit Galveston earlier that same year.

"The storm wasn't as bad, but the general attitude was like a gray funk for a long time," Kilgore says. "But I don't feel that now. There's a lot of energy and a lot of willingness to get back going."

Kilgore believes other lawyers will follow him. After all, he says, "giving up is not something most lawyers will do."

LITTLE DAMAGE, NO ACCESS

Banging away on his computer trying to print some legal documents, Tim Beeton admits he enjoys the fantastic view he has of the Gulf of Mexico in the temporary office space he has on the eighth floor of the Bank of America Building.

Tim Beeton's law office was spared from heavy damage, but his historic house was flooded.

Beeton, a commercial litigator and plaintiffs attorney who is a partner in Galveston's Simpson & Beeton, is camping out in the small office suite of his friend, solo John Campbell.

"We were going to do the partners desks," Campbell jokes. "But that was a little too cozy."

"We didn't want to end a good friendship prematurely," Beeton adds.

All kidding aside, Beeton is not happy about the situation at his own office building.

"The biggest obstacle is not having access to our office," says Beeton. His office is located blocks away from the bank building on the second floor of the historic 1875 Heidenheimer Building. Although his upper-floor office was relatively unharmed by the storm and suffered only minor water damage that soaked some Sheetrock, at least 7 feet of water flooded the bottom floor of the building.

Power is expected to be off in the building for the next four to six months, Beeton says, and the landlord won't allow the tenants back into their offices permanently until the building is fully repaired. "I'm effectively evicted," he says.

While Beeton's clients have plenty of cases in the pipeline, the hurricane has stalled their progress, he says. Not having access to his office -- his base of operations -- is just part of that problem.

"For me it's a huge inconvenience," Beeton says. "A hurricane comes along, and it's unbelievable all of the things there are to do. Half of the lawyers are spending half their day speaking with contractors and insurance adjusters ... things that have nothing to do with the practice of law."

Beeton is dealing with those headaches at his own home, which was damaged by 2 feet of water.

Senior reporter John Council talks to four lawyers who practice on Galveston Island about their experiences with Hurricane Ike and the prospects for continuing to make a living on the island.

And putting off the resolution of cases, in turn, costs Beeton money. He estimates he's losing between $20,000 and $30,000 a month.

"I live from big case to big case," says Beeton, who adds that 80 percent of his clients' suits are based on contingent fees. "My cash flow is dependant on my ability to borrow from my nest egg."

Beeton practices all over the state so he doesn't depend on Galveston residents for business, but he still has a huge investment in the city. His wife, Elizabeth, serves on the City Council. And they live with their daughter, son and two standard poodles in a 100-year-old historic home a few blocks away from his law office -- a majestic house they fully restored. It's a lifestyle he doesn't want to give up.

"We get up and walk our dogs on the beach where there's no pollution and no ozone alerts," he says. "It's wonderful."

There's only one thing that would force him to move, Beeton says. As recently as 2007, state legislators pushed for legalized gambling in Texas, and Galveston stands to profit if a proposed bill passes next year. The city is a tourist destination that needs the money to rebuild its infrastructure, Beeton says. But he fears the social ills and tackiness gambling could bring to the historic city.

"If they bring gambling in, that would drive me away," Beeton says. The city has good bones, he says, but "it would be a shame to throw it away on a crap table."

THE ANXIOUS SOLO

While giving a tour of his damaged first-floor law office that has been stripped of all its Sheetrock, Chris Bertini can hardly stand in one place for longer than a second.

Chris Bertini outside his destroyed law office.

He owns the two-story historic 1894 Lalor Building on Market Street as well as the building next door. Both were flooded by more than 6 feet of water, Bertini says, as he points to a watermark on the cracked front window of his office, which spells out Bertini & Associates in gold letters. Bertini says he's anxious for his law office to return to the way it was.

"I want to be back in my office," says Bertini, who now is working in donated space in Clear Lake. "I want to get back behind my desk and have a phone that's not a cell phone," which he checks constantly to keep tabs on his personal injury practice. His paralegal is working out of her home in Clear Lake.

While other lawyers are hurting financially, Bertini isn't. He has seen no interruption in his practice.

"We've been signing up new cases," Bertini says. "We're doing insurance claim cases. Those cases are booming now."

Bertini had windstorm and flood insurance that covers the building, but like many lawyers, his coverage can't replace some of the items he lost inside his office on the lower floor. He motions to his grandmother's rocking chair, which he sat in to rock all of his children, and his father's antique desk.

"It's just furniture, but they've got stories behind them," Bertini says. "It's hard."

As he walks up to the undamaged second-floor loft space above his law office, he makes a discovery: He flips on the wall switch, and the lights come on. "Hell, yeah!" he yells, remarking at the small but important bit of progress. He suspects that one of the tenants who is an electrician has something to with this victory.

Bertini has no plans to leave Galveston. His family roots in the city are strong, dating back to 1909 when his great-grandfather Ettore Bertini emigrated from Italy to the United States and came straight to Galveston after passing through Ellis Island. Ettore Bertini's signature on Ellis Island documents are framed and prominently displayed on a wall in Chris Bertini's loft.

Bertini believes that many temporarily displaced lawyers will be attracted back to the once-prosperous island, much like his great-grandfather, a grocer. In fact, Bertini is so sure of it, he's building small office suites in his office to rent.

"Lawyers have asked, 'When is your space going to be open?' " Bertini says. "And I've said, 'As soon as we can.' I think a lot of lawyers will come back down here."

THE FLOATING COMPUTER

Next door to Bertini's law office, solo Roland Bassett looks on as an electrician strings wire along the ceiling of his gutted first-floor law office on Market Street.

Roland Bassett outside his gutted law office.

While other lawyers with damaged offices are having headaches with their landlords, Bassett's is understanding -- his son Keith Bassett owns the building as well as a gift shop on The Strand a few streets over that was destroyed in the storm.

Bassett retired from Mills Shirley, one of Galveston's oldest firms, in 2004 and moved into his son's building, where he does estate planning. After the storm, Bassett returned to his office to discover something amazing, his son says.

"The best part of the story was the Apple Mac floated about 10 feet up along with the desk it was sitting on," Keith Bassett says. "And it was untouched. Steve Jobs ought to know that."

"I took it home and plugged it in, and it worked," Roland Bassett says. But his paper files weren't as fortunate. Bassett normally doesn't keep copies of the original wills he writes unless a client requests him to, he says.

"If anyone sent me a will, it went in a file, and it was lost," Bassett says. But he isn't worried about that. He figures, if need be, he can go into court and swear to what was written in a document.

Bassett isn't worried about much, really. He wears the serenity of a lawyer who freed himself from the shackles of billable hours long ago. Everything will work out, he says. He has a personal relationship with his clients, they know where to find him and they often do at his home on the south part of Galveston, which was not heavily damaged.

"If I had not retired, I'd really be scrambling," Bassett says. "I'd have to be hustling for business. But I'm semi-retired. I don't."

Bassett will come back to his law office when it's restored, and he'll continue drawing up wills, just like before. He believes that other displaced Galveston lawyers will come back, too. The bar, the business and the beach are just too compelling on the island, he says.

"We're spoiled by it," he says of lawyers on the island. Even though some lawyers may plan to leave permanently because of the hurricane, he believes, they'll eventually come back.

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