About Ross Pfund
Ross Pfund is the managing editor of Super Lawyers. He is the editor of the Minnesota, Colorado, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Southwest magazines. An award-winning editor and writer with more than 20 years of experience, he has a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota. His work has also appeared in the Star Tribune and the Norman County Index. As a child, he knew he was cut out for a career in journalism because he never once stuck his hand into his father’s printing press.
Articles written by Ross Pfund
The Life Aquatic
When Bob Fanning’s wife Carolyn had a heart attack in 1998, he knew it was time for them to move into the next phase of their lives. Fanning retired from his near-half-century law career at the firm he founded, Dallas’ Fanning Harper & Martinson, and asked Carolyn what she wanted to do. “I’d like to get a boat,” she said. So in 2001, the Fannings moved themselves permanently onto a 54-foot yacht, the Bar-Mar VI (named after sons Barry and Marc, who now run the firm) and …
Breaking the Code of Bureaucracy
George Parker Jr. was just on vacation. The ofcounsel attorney with San Antonio’s Bracewell & Giuliani was listening to a lecture given by Teddy Draper Sr., a Navajo code talker during World War II, at the Anasazi Heritage Center in 2002 in Delores, Colo., near Parker’s vacation home. Draper told the story of how he and about 400 other Navajo who enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps were called upon to create an unbreakable code based on the Navajo language. They were successful, and with …
Steve Stodghill, Master Thespian
Most lawyers, if they were called up out of the blue by Luke Wilson and asked to act onscreen with him as his character’s lawyer, might be worried about flubbing their lines or looking at the camera. Steve Stodghill, however, was worried about being typecast. “I wanted to think about the big picture,” says Stodghill, a commercial litigation partner with Fish and Richardson in Dallas. “I didn’t want to get stereotyped as a lawyer.” Despite the fact that his character, Otto …
Out to the Ballgame
Talmage Boston’s new book explores baseball’s most important yearOn the night of Wednesday, October 27, 2004, Talmage Boston knew his life would never be the same. The Boston Red Sox had just defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series in 86 years. “I told my kids that life has changed,” Boston, a Sox fan since he was 6, says. “You spend your whole life thinking that this could never happen, that some things aren’t meant to be, believing in the Curse of the Bambino. And then it happens.” That’s how much of a baseball fan …
Curb Your Prosecution
On the night of May 12, 2003, Juan Catalan took his 6-year-old daughter to Dodger Stadium to see the home team play the Braves. The Dodgers blew a lead and lost 11-4, but a few months later, something much worse happened. Police arrested the 24-year-old Catalan and charged him, based solely on the word of an eyewitness, with the murder of a 16-year-old girl in Sun Valley — on the night of May 12. Catalan remembered that his cousin had worked in the mailroom of the Norton & Melnik law …
Does That Star Spangled Banner Yet Wave?
R. Rex Parris, personal injury attorney, namesake of the R. Rex Parris Law Firm and allaround good guy, was just there to receive an award. He and his wife were at a Lancaster awards dinner in April in honor of local boy scouts and veterans of the war in Iraq. Parris himself was to be recognized as the Distinguished Citizen of the Year. But then there was a benefit auction for an American flag that had seen action in Iraq. And Parris wife had an idea. “My wife whispered to me that I …
Mr. Lewis Goes to Washington
John Lewis’ pro bono case lands him in rare companyJohn Lewis was nervous. The 33-year-old Jones Day associate was used to the stresses of the courtroom in his job as a commercial litigator. But nothing could have prepared him for the pressure of standing before the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Arguing in front of the country’s highest court is a pretty good feat for a guy who was just getting his legal feet wet on his high school’s mock trial team (not so far) back in 1989. “Our school went around competing,” …
Super Idealist
Jeff Selbin with partner Laurel Fletcher and their daughter AidenSuper Lawyer Jeff Selbin has handled hundreds upon hundreds of cases in his 15 years at Berkeley’s East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), but one stands out in his mind. “We had a client in the early ’90s who had a severe crisis,” Selbin says. “In part through the help we provided, he was able to get stabilized, and four or five years ago he joined our staff. It’s proof of the power of work we do with individuals.” Selbin, who became the executive director of the …
Surprise, You’re Aleutian!
An unexpected phone call puts Tom Weathers on a new path in lifeIn 1998, Tom Weathers was a mild-mannered civil litigation associate at Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May in Oakland. Then a man claiming to be a private investigator from Alaska telephoned him out of the blue and said that Weathers owned stock in a company called Sealaska Corp., that the man had been searching for Weathers for eight years, and furthermore, that Weathers himself had Aleutian heritage. “I thought it was a scam,” Weathers says. But he decided to call the …
The King of Pro Bono
Pro bono work gives Blum the chance to get out of the office and into the courtroomJonathan Blum can still remember his first pro bono case. “When I started work in 2000, there really wasn’t a program at my firm,” Dallas’ Weil, Gotshal & Manges, he says. “We just had a pro bono partner that coordinated [activities] at a clinic in West Alice. I volunteered there, then started going on my own to the clinic. The West Alice community is predominantly Hispanic, and I speak Spanish, so it was a good fit. It’s an advice-only clinic, but you can take cases later if …
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