Vol. 34, No. 5, 58. Law School News.

• Author: by Steve Easton, Dean University of Wyoming College of Law

Wyoming Bar Journal

2011.

Vol. 34, No. 5, 58.

Law School News

Wyoming LawyerIssue: October, 2011Law School Newsby Steve Easton, Dean University of Wyoming College of LawOn September 24, the College of Law celebrated an event that wonderfully captured the past, the present, and the future of the law school and demonstrated how much one person and one family can do for it. The event was the formal kickoff of the William T. Schwartz Professorship at the College of Law. The term "kickoff' is appropriate because the celebration occurred before the Poke football game against Nebraska.

The new Schwartz Professorship honors a wonderful man who exemplified the very best of that term we hold dear, "Wyoming lawyer." During World War II, Mr. Schwartz flew 50 missions with the Army Air Force in Italy as a navigator. After the war, he returned to his home town of Casper where he practiced law for the next 60 years.

As many lawyers and judges have told me since I had the good fortune to move to Wyoming, Mr. Schwartz was a "lawyer's lawyer." Articulate. Prepared. Professional. Always a gentleman. Mr. Schwartz was very generous in the giving of his time to the community and to those in need. In short, Mr. Schwartz was the kind of lawyer we hold out as an example to our students of the high standards they should strive to achieve.

Although Mr. Schwartz was widely recognized in the fields of oil, gas and mining law, his expertise was remarkably broad. At the time of his death, the publication "Best Lawyers in America" recognized his preeminence in seven different areas of practice. In this day of increasing specialization, that is a Wyoming record that will likely never be matched.

A founding partner of the Casper law firm Schwartz, Bon, Walker and Studer, Mr. Schwartz served as the president of the Wyoming State Bar and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He was a co-founder and original officer of the Wyoming State Bar Foundation, the non-profit organization the Bar established in 1981 to provide civil legal assistance to the poor and to promote legal education and the administration of justice in Wyoming.

The William T. Schwartz Professor of Law endowed fund was initiated by a gift of $250,000 from Mr. Schwartz's family members: Mary Anne and Ron Barnes of St. Louis, Missouri, and their children; Susan and the late Jim Higgins of...