Section Spotlight

HBA Litigation Section: A Great Responsibility

By STEPHAniE L. HOLCOMBE

Stan Lee, in what is now known as the Peter Parker principle, said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The Houston Bar Association Litigation Section may not have great power, but as one of the largest HBA sections with more than 1,500 members, we do feel a great responsibility to serve our members meaningfully.

As a section, we have sought to live up to that responsibility in a number of ways. For example, DJ Seidel, the section’s chair in 2017-2018, made sure our members were always the primary focus of everything we did. Following Hurricane Harvey, DJ reduced the costs of our section lunches to make it easier for everyone to attend.

We also sought to increase our accessibility to our members by creating a Facebook page, which we hope you will join at www.facebook. com/HBALitigationSection/. When you do, you will receive notices of our upcoming lunches and other section activities, as well as see photos from prior events. We also hope to increase our digital presence by expanding to LinkedIn and Twitter—but we intend to remain off TikTok for the foreseeable future. And speaking of digital presence, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, we have adjusted like so many others by moving our functions to Zoom until we can meet again in person.

Finally, the size and breadth of our section has meant that we have historically scheduled two lunches every month—one downtown and one on the west side—in an effort to be as accessible to as many of our members as possible. One of the advantages of such a large number of lunch events is our ability to bring in a wide range of speakers on some truly terrific topics.

To that end, we are proud of the speakers and topics we have been able to present to our members. For example, in 2018, Judge Vanessa Gilmore spoke at our downtown lunch about implicit bias, well before it became a major news topic in 2020. In just that same year, we heard from numerous other judges, including Justice Bill Boyce and Judge Michael Engelhart on pro bono opportunities and experiences, Chief Judge Lee Rosenthal and Judge Gray Miller on best practices in federal court, Judge Andrew Edison on a fascinating discussion about the JFK assassination video and eminent domain, and Judge Beau Miller and Judge Lauren Reeder about lessons learned from the bench. We were also fortunate to hear from several great Houston lawyers on a wide range of topics, often involving cases making headlines across our city and state.

Through it all, our members remain our focus. So, if you are not a member, I would ask that you check us out and maybe even join us. If you are a member, I hope you accept the great responsibility to get more involved, whether as a section officer, a potential speaker, or just by attending one of our functions.

I hope to see you soon!