www.loubar.org 12 Louisville Bar Briefs The Law Library Looks Backward and Forward at 50 Kurt X. Metzmeier At the front of the law library door there is a large brass plaque, headlined “Law Library Found- ers 1972-1974.” It is inscribed with all the people who helped to erect the University of Louisville Law Library building. I have walked past it every day on the way into work for years, and several more times a day going back and forth from meet- ings, barely noticing it. However, as this year marks the 50th school year that the law library building has been opened to a new class of law stu- dents, I have been looking at it more carefully. As an alumnus of the law school, the one thing I noticed first were the deans and faculty listed. My distant predecessor Pearl Von Allman, the law school’s first permanent full-time law librar- ian, is listed, as are two professors, Norvie Lay and Nate Lord, who taught me respectively tax and decedents estates when I was a student. Carl Warns was before my time, although I knew Warns from the labor institute still held in his name. Deans Marlin M. Volz and James R. “Jim” Merritt round out the Brandeis notables. Next, I spotted a few legends of the Louisville bench and bar. Jurists like U.S. District Court Judge Charles M. Allen, and Jefferson Circuit and Kentucky Supreme Court judges Marvin J. Sternberg and Charles M. Leibson, are represented, as is for- mer Louisville Mayor Neville Miller. The names of legendary lawyers like Frank A. Haddad, Jr., and pioneer women attorneys Maria C. Meuter and Helen Viney Porter, are also inscribed. Also interesting is the support for the building of the library from the leading Louisville-based corporations of the day: Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation (now part of Reynolds American), Citizens Fidelity Bank and Trust Company (PNC Bank Kentucky Inc.), the Courier Journal and Louisville Times (bought by Gannett Co.), General Electric and the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company (merged into CSX Transportation). However, the thing that was most intriguing to me was some of the law firms listed: BROWN TODD HEYBURN GRAFTON FERGUSON FLEISHER & HARPER GREENEBAUM DOLL MATTHEWS & BOONE MIDDLETON SEELBACH WOLFORD WILLIS & COCHRAN STITES MCELWAIN & FOWLER WYATT GRAFTON SLOSS At first glance, these names might be vaguely familiar to the law students who walk through the door adjacent to the plaque, with some hint of current law firms in names like Greenebaum, Stites, Todd and Wyatt, the ancestors of the modern law firms they are meeting with in on- campus interviews. Still, none are completely “right.” What has happened to the legal profession in the last 50 years? The Origins of the Louisville Law Firm The early history of the law firm was simply a partnership of two or more lawyers, dividing work and fees. After WWII, the firms would get somewhat bigger, but nothing like we have now. Several the firms on the law library plaque came from the “Big Law Firm Shake-Up” of 1948, when Louisville’s then “super firm” of Bullitt & Middleton split up. That firm itself was only a few years old, resulting from the 1942 merger of the more ancient firms of Bruce & Bullitt (founded 1812) and Crawford, Middleton, Milner & Seelbach (1854). At that time, Courier Journal humor columnist Allen M. Trout joked about the conservative demeanor and fashion sense of the new firm: “There is more to Bullitt & Middleton than meets the eye. William Marshall [Bullitt] wears nose glasses. Charles G. Middleton wears batwing collars on weekdays. Leo T. Wolford, a partner, wears a profound look. Charles W. Milner, another partner, wears pants with a sharp crease.” Nonetheless, he concluded, “I do not believe there is a goatherd in Kentucky who would dare the legal wrath of Bullitt & Middleton.” Bullitt & Middleton was perhaps too large for the divergent personalities of the prickly Bullitt, the former U.S. Solicitor General, and the avuncular Middleton. The 1948 “Shake-Up” split it into five law firms, four of which are echoed in the names on the plaque: Middleton, Seelbach, Wolford, Willis & Cochran; Bullitt, Dawson & Tarrant; Woodward, Hobson & Fulton; and Ogden, Galphin, Street & Abell. Despite the superficial resemblance to a modern law firm, every name in these partnerships represented a living lawyer. The first firm was led by batwing-collared Middleton, assisted by Louis Seelbach (the son of the founder of the Seelbach Hotel). With significant government experience, William Marshall Bullitt, ex-federal judge Charles I. Dawson and John E. Tar- rant were a legal supergroup, but the firm headed by Ernest Woodward, Robert P. Hobson and William H. Fulton wasn’t far behind in legal firepower. And Squire R. Ogden’s legal group would also hold its own in the Louisville legal market and give his name to a modern law firm. The Later History of the Brass Plaque Law Firms In 1971, Eli H. Brown III of Brown, Ardery, Todd & Dudley and Henry R. Heyburn of Marshal, Cochran, Heyburn & Wells brought together their current firms into Brown Todd Heyburn just in time to become supporters of the University of Louisville Law Library. This firm included lawyers like Philip P. Ardery, Marshall P. Eldred, Jr., Mark B. Davis Jr., John T. Bondurant and Charles Cassis who would be prominent in the Louisville legal community well into the 21st century. In 2001, the firm would merge with Cincinnati’s Frost & Jacobs becoming Frost Brown Todd. The front pages of the Courier Journal in 1980 heralded the merger of Louisville firm Wyatt, Grafton & Sloss with Tarrant Combs & Bullitt (successor to Bullitt, Dawson & Tarrant) with much fanfare. Gordon Davison, the managing partner of Wyatt Grafton, joined with former governor Bert Combs to create a firm with statewide political clout, Wyatt Tarrant & Combs. Grafton Ferguson Fleisher & Harper took a rather circuitous route into the 21st century. In 1978 the firm reformed as Harper Ferguson & Davis. In 2002 they merged with Ogden Newell & Welch; three years later in 2005 the Ogden firm merged with Lexington-based Stoll Keenon Park forming the new firm of Stoll Keenon Ogden or SKO. By 1974, Middleton Seelbach Wolford Willis & Cochran was one of the last of the “Shake Up of 1948” firms to be intact, albeit with few of the named partners. After Eugene Cochran died in 1975, the firm styled itself first as Middleton Rutland & Baird and by 1980, when Ed Middleton died, simply Middleton Reutlinger. Then in 2022 the firm did something unheard of for an ancient law firm: they disbanded the partnership. Stites McElwain & Fowler was a relatively new name in 1974, the result of a merger of Louis- ville’s Stites & McElwain with the Frankfort law firm of Dailey & Fowler two years before. The name Stites came from Kentucky Court of Appeals chief justice James W. Stites who inherited a firm that had been founded in 1832 by Henry Pirtle, the first dean of the UofL Law School. In 1983 Stites McElwain & Fowler merged with the Lexington firm of Harbison, Kessinger, Lisle & Bush (the roots of which date back to 1905) to form the name we now know, Stites & Harbison. Greenebaum Doll Matthews & Boone had by the 1980s become Greenebaum Doll McDonald and led lists published by Business First as one of the top law firms in Louisville. In 2012 its partners sought more regional prominence by merging with Indianapolis firm Bingham McHale to become Bingham Greenebaum Doll. The trend toward bigness continued in 2019 when the firm merged with Dentons, a super-regional law firm boasting offices across the U.S. and around the world. The Law Library at 50 Years With Louisville’s super law firms focused on a global legal community, the law library is moving into the future using its own resources. As a place, the law library is as central to the life of law students as it was 50 years ago. While today’s students research the law on legal databases, they rely on the law library to pay for those databases and law librarians to help them search efficiently. And between classes and while studying for finals, the law library is just as packed as it ever was. This summer, carpet almost as old as the building was replaced on the second floor and in the basement as we endeavor to make the place where students spend much of their time between classes as comfortable and inviting as possible. And bigger projects are on the drawing board—although to realize them we will need help from the same sort of friends of the law school whose names are on the plaque described above. Kurt X. Metzmeier is the interim director of the law library and professor of legal bibliography at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. He is the author of Writing the Legal Record: Law Reporters in Nineteenth-Century Ken- tucky, a group biography of Kentucky’s earliest law reporters, who were leading members of antebellum Kentucky’s legal and political worlds. n PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE
