Vol. 29, No. 5 #6 (October 2006). FROM THE PRESIDENT.

• Author: By Joseph B. Bluemel

Wyoming Bar Journal

2006.

Vol. 29, No. 5 #6 (October 2006).

FROM THE PRESIDENT

WYOMING LAWYEROctober 2006/Vol. 29, No. 5FROM THE PRESIDENT . . .By Joseph B. Bluemel

It is with great honor and more than a little trepidation that I write this column as the person deemed to lead the Wyoming State Bar for the upcoming year. As a solo practitioner who has spent my entire legal career in a small town in southwestern Wyoming, I have always been or at least believed that I have been far from the hotbed of happenings in this great and vast state. I have participated in few events with as much visibility as simply writing this column. Sure, I have been honored to represent a number of people in trials, including the people of the state when I was a prosecutor, but I received training for that. I attended school and had good hearted and well meaning professors, lawyers and judges who taught and helped me become a lawyer and be prepared to try cases. There have been times when I spoke to the press concerning cases or legal matters that I was involved with but I confess to begrudgingly participating in most of those interviews. I was one of those who believed that no press was good press. Now, one of my duties is to write a column for each issue of the Wyoming Lawyer that surveys indicate is often read by you, whom I consider to be among Wyoming's best and brightest. As I contemplate what to write, I ask myself what someone who grew up in Carter, Wyoming, a town that is by nearly all accounts a ghost town these days, can say to you that is worth your valuable time to read. What a humbling experience. My thoughts begin by looking back on the Wyoming State Bar convention held in Laramie this past August. It was so exciting to see, meet and visit with the law students and recent law graduates who were not yet members of the Bar but attended the events hosted by the Bar. Among those new law students was a young man I watched grow up here in Kemmerer. The excitement these law students anticipate in being a lawyer was evident by the sparkle in their eyes and the edge to their voices when they were around practicing lawyers. It reminded me of and refreshed the emotions I had that gave me the drive to enter law school, survive the law school process and take and pass the bar exam. It made those emotions so alive that I find it difficult to believe...