Dudley I. Hutchinson
| Publication year | 1993 |
| Pages | 1413 |
1993, July, Pg. 1413. DUDLEY I. HUTCHINSON
It was 1958 and I was looking for part-time legal work while attending summer classes at CU Law School between semesters at UCLA Law School. I had family around Boulder and was trying to decide between returning to Boulder or staying in California after graduation.
Don Sears at CU suggested the names of several law firms in Greeley, Fort Collins and Loveland to contact, but said there wasn't much point in contacting Boulder firms because there were too many lawyers there already. Later, after persistent questioning, however, he finally suggested I contact "the Hutchinson firm," saying it was the best firm in town and might consider adding a new associate.
I was hired as a part-time clerk that summer and returned on a full-time basis five months later, following graduation from UCLA. That was thirty-five years ago; I'm still there, and the firm is still known as "the Hutchinson firm," having just celebrated 100 years in existence. The credit for such remarkable longevity and stability belongs overwhelmingly to Dudley I. Hutchinson, Senior, an outstanding attorney, prominent citizen and true character.
I practiced with Dudley more than eight years, until his death in 1967. Although then aged 79, he had continued to practice law right up until the time of his death. He had been with the firm for just under forty-nine years. During that time, he rightfully attained a stature and reputation of high prominence in the history of legal practice in Boulder County.
Dudley was born in the small town of Oxford, Mississippi, in 1887. His father, a merchant, died when Dudley was only two years old, leaving a widow with eight other children to raise. Money, of course, was scarce, but with assistance from an older brother, Dudley was able to be the first in his family to attend college. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in 1910, and moved west to work in the gold mines with another brother in Goldfield, Nevada. When his brother moved to Colorado the next year to pursue metallurgy, Dudley followed, and entered the University of Colorado Law School in 1911.
T. Henry ("Hank") Hutchinson, Dudley's son, recently showed me Dudley's extraordinary law school transcript. His average grade for his first year was 96, and it was still over 92 after his second year, with only one grade under 91. Based on these achievements, he was named assistant law librarian, and he was elected class president his second year. The CU Yearbook said of him that year, "At last we've found him---the ideal...
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