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Joseph D.
Jamail, Jr.
Outstanding Fifty Year Lawyer Award
2003
Texas Bar Foundation
Click link below for full
(PDF) version of:
Oral
History Interview
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Joseph D. Jamail,
Jr., is one of the recipients of the Outstanding Fifty Year
Lawyer Award for the year 2003. The Fifty Year Lawyer Award was
the first award established by the Texas Bar Foundation. The
award recognizes attorneys whose practice spanned fifty years or
more, and who adhere to the highest principles and traditions of
the legal profession and provide service to the public A Houston
native, Joseph D. Jamail was admitted to the Bar in 1952 and
received his law degree from The University of Texas School of
Law in 1953. Mr. Jamail is a Sustaining Life Fellow of the Texas
Bar Foundation, a trustee of the UT Law School Foundation,
Fellow of the International Academy of Law and Science, and
Fellow of the American College and International Academy of
Trial Lawyers. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from
The University of Texas. He is internationally recognized as one
of the most successful personal injury trial attorneys in the
world. |
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| Portrait artist: J.
Longacre |
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Highlights from Oral History Interview
"Well, I was so
goddamned naive. I didn't even know you had to take an exam to get
into Law School, so I just started going to classes. They assumed, I
guess, that I had passed the exam. And I took the bar exam seven or
eight months before I graduated on a dare. ...I remember Denzil
Bevers looking over and saying, "Listen, loud-mouth, if you're so
goddamned smart, why don't you take this f___ing exam?" ... All
these guys were standing by the door and I opened it (the exam
results) up. It took a grade of seventy-five to pass, and I had made
seventy-six. I looked at them and said, 'Shit, I've over-trained!' "
"As for doctors, I was in this debate
once with the head of the Harris County Medical Society, and
it was being televised. He went off on lawyers; it was terrible. And
the last couple or three minutes the moderator looked at me and
said, 'Mr. Jamail, I'm sorry he's taken most of the time but you
have thirty seconds if you'd like to respond.' I said, 'That's more
than enough time. I would like for you to remind the doctor, and I
hope he doesn't mind if I call him a doctor. I would like for you to
remind him that when his professional ancestors were putting leeches
on George Washington to bleed him, mine were writing the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution.' That ended that shit."
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