For the first time in State Bar of Texas history, the two candidates for president-elect are both African-American. On Jan. 20, the Bar board of directors approved the nominations of Steve Bolden , a shareholder in Mahomes Bolden in Dallas, and Lisa Tatum , owner and manager of L.M. Tatum PLLC in San Antonio. Bolden says he’s “excited and honored” to be a president-elect candidate. If elected, he says he wants to work on a program to increase pro bono representation and legal aid for indigent Texans, provide “incredible services” to lawyers to dispel “a perception of a disconnect between the State Bar leadership and its members,” and promote a Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA) program that informs parents about resources for children with disabilities. “I want to make our profession better. At the same time, I’m fully aware our profession has a duty and obligation to Texas. We’re the State Bar of Texas. We need to be enriching the lives of Texans,” says Bolden. Tatum says she’s honored to be a candidate and “thrilled about being part of a historic Bar year.” If elected, she wants to ensure the Bar continues being a relevant and effective resource for lawyers, maintain a commitment to excellent standards for the practice of law, encourage every lawyer to become involved in the Bar, and look at new ways to provide indigent legal-aid services. “We may have to do things differently and a little more creatively to deal with an ever-growing need,” Tatum says. Kim Davey, a State Bar spokeswoman, says the Bar never has had an African-American president. Ballots for the president-elect election will be distributed April 2, and voting will end May 1. Jennifer Evans Morris , chairwoman of TYLA’s Nominations Committee, says the 2012 TYLA president-elect candidates are Kristy Sims Piazza and Shivali Sharma . “I’m very honored to have been nominated and excited to get to meet young lawyers across the state,” says Piazza, TYLA’s current vice president and an associate with Koons Fuller Vanden Eykel & Robertson in Plano. She adds that she wants to discuss her project ideas and learn about issues young lawyers face with their practices. Sharma, staff attorney at the 6th Court of Appeals in Texarkana and a TYLA board member, says, “I’m extremely excited; I have an agenda of projects I can’t wait to get started on.”
Gone Fishin’
When Andrews Kurth intellectual property partner Wei Wei Jeang and her husband started looking for a vacation house to buy, they were thinking maybe something in Texas or Colorado. Instead, Jeang and her husband, Keith Mantey, bought Gwin’s Lodge, a historic fishing lodge in the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. “It’s just a beautiful place. How could you say no? It’s amazing to see the salmon on the river. You can reach down and pick them up,” Jeang says. She says she will continue to practice law full time, and her husband will spend the May-to-September tourist season in Alaska, running the business. “I will travel out there as much as I can, especially when we are over 100 degrees,” Jeang says, adding that the couple’s two teenage children will spend much of the summer in Alaska and probably work at the lodge. Jeang says she and Mantey closed on the purchase Jan. 24. She says she and her husband discovered they really like Alaska, because it seems like Texas. “We don’t have mountains down here, but the kind of feeling, the frontier, the kind of people, is very Texas to me,” she says. Jeang says neither she nor her engineer husband has experience in the hospitality industry. However, she notes, her husband is an avid fisherman. “He grew up fishing, and this is just a perfect thing for him. He would love to be in that kind of surrounding, talking fishing with everyone,” she says. Gwin’s Lodge, which was built in 1952, according to its website, has a store, a restaurant, 12 cabins and two houses. Jeang declines to reveal the purchase price, but says, “[W]e think it is a good value.” Jeang says the lodge apparently is well-known among the fishing set, and she and Mantey ran into people in Texas recently who had stayed there before. “It’s like one of the very few lodges available in that location, that central Kenai Peninsula location,” she says.
