About Joan Oliver Goldsmith

Joan Oliver Goldsmith Articles written 8

Articles written by Joan Oliver Goldsmith

O Solo Mio

What enables young attorneys to take the risk of hanging out their own shingle––and succeed?

"It’s exhilarating to be captain of your own ship,” says Lymari J. Santana, 38, of the law firm she co-founded in 2004. As a former captain in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps, she’s particularly qualified to speak to the joys of command. But all of the young lawyers profiled here would agree with her assessment.  What enables young attorneys to take the risk of hanging out their own shingle––and succeed? An ability to wear many hats for starters. “You’re going to be not …

ZZYZZYVA and Me

Robert Bunzel fights for his clients … and for poetry

“The law is my principal passion,” says Rob Bunzel, managing principal of Bartko Zankel Tarrant Miller. “Poetry is an avocation that I love. I expect to be doing both for a long time.” Poetry has long been Bunzel’s creative outlet. As an undergraduate, he studied English and American literature and language at Harvard, graduating cum laude. But, he says, “no one has ever sustained a livelihood from writing poetry.” So Bunzel went on to Hastings College of the Law for his J.D. …

The Collector

How do you break writer's block? Fly to Tierra del Fuego, of course

From a kid collecting postage stamps in his old Cleveland neighborhood to a world traveler speaking on his rare books at the Library of Congress is not such a leap, in attorney Robert H. Jackson’s world view. For Jackson, all his collections — from yesterday’s stamps through today’s rare books, manuscripts, prints and ceremonial swords — form one long continuum in his journey to make sense of the world.   Besides his many collections, Bob Jackson plays many roles: He is a senior …

The Child was Father of the Lawyer

The birth of his first son moved Mark Teuton to become an attorney

It took him longer than most lawyers, but when Mark Teuton became “curious to see what I’m capable of,” his career, indeed his life, shot off like a rocket. Now a rising star in employment law in the firm he founded, Teuton, Loewy & Parker, Teuton took until his mid-20s to get to that moment of curiosity. Not surprising, really. No one in his family had graduated from high school, much less gone to college. In high school he thought about becoming a lawyer, but “it …

Practicing Law From a Hospital Bed

Beth Sufian doesn’t let her battle with cystic fibrosis stop her from crusading for the rights of the disabled

The sign on the door to Beth Sufian’s hospital room read “The lawyer is IN.”It was back in the mid-’90s, Sufian, a cystic fibrosis (CF) patient, was being hospitalized for two weeks to receive antibiotic intravenous drips to combat a respiratory infection. But word had spread that this CF patient was different. This CF patient was an attorney who advocated for the disabled. She had the knowledge and experience to advise physicians, hospital finance managers and, most of all, …

Motley's Crew

When push (a family member in need) meets shove (the demands of the job), sleep and social life disappear

Kristi Motley insists she does no more than any other attorney balancing professional and personal life — “Don’t make my mother sound like a victim so you can make me a hero. That’s not how it is.” But at times in the last few years the balancing act has been difficult. Born in Fort Worth and raised in Arlington, Kristi, at 31, is a rising young star at the Dallas law firm of Bickel & Brewer. A senior associate, she’s a generalist in corporate litigation and loves …

The Collector

Whether leather-bound sets of books or vintage port, Bob Tanner knows what he likes

Litigator Bob Tanner is a man of enduring passions. For the last 20 years he’s been collecting the works of the Western world’s major authors — in leather-bound sets. The 2,000 volumes now fill two of three bedrooms in his house and spill out into the halls.There’s no room for books in the basement, because that’s where he keeps his “consumable collection” of vintage port wine. He’s also published two highly regarded books on Civil War military strategy — a …

The Warrior Poet

Because he had to get some demons out of his psyche, Chuck Patterson discovered he was a poet

So, is a litigator really a hired gun? Who better to ask than Chuck Patterson, the lead outside counsel for Madison Guaranty in the Whitewater Investigation, a Vietnam veteran and the author of an acclaimed book of war poetry, The Petrified Heart. For a poet who’s fired a gun in combat, does the metaphor ring true? “In the sense that a barrister gets called in at the last minute, yes,” says Patterson. “But in the sense of having animosity against the other side, no. A trial is a …

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