Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Jon D. Huddleston, the new president of the Virginia State Bar, chafes at lawyer jokes.

“My experience has been that it’s the lawyers who are involved in the community,” the ones who deliver fruit baskets at Christmas, wield hammers and serve on boards of local Habitat for Humanity chapters, and coach the soccer, baseball and basketball teams, he said.

“I want to tell their story, to publicize the many good works that our citizen lawyers are doing,” he added.

Most of those lawyers do it with little fanfare because “it’s the right thing to do … and it recharges their batteries,” he said.

Huddleston has two ideas for increasing the visibility of those efforts. One is a series of video profiles of volunteer lawyers that will be posted on YouTube. He has bought a camcorder and hopes to create some of those spots as he travels about the state speaking to attorneys in his role as VSB president.

The second is a series similar to the “This I Believe” segment on National Public Radio in which lawyers will write essays about motivates them in – and apart from – the practice of law. “I hope there will be people who are really interested in doing it,” he said.

Huddleston, 49, is a partner in the nine-lawyer Leesburg firm of Sevila, Saunders, Huddleston & White. A native of Norfolk, he attended Virginia Beach public schools and graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1982 and from the W&M law school four years later. He clerked for the firm after his second year in law school and joined it after passing the bar exam.

He has a general practice with a focus on family law and traffic and criminal defense.

The work is often contentious, he acknowledged. “Our days are spent in conflict – debate, argument, rancor. Most of us are exhausted by the end of the day. … It has become increasingly difficult to be collegial when you’ve been knocking heads day in and day out.”

Work with the VSB has been an antidote to those kinds of pressures, he said. “Bar service gives us a mechanism to work with other lawyers and see each other at our best.”

Huddleston was on the board of governors of the Young Lawyers Conference from 1993 to 1996 and served for seven years on the Conference of Local Bar Associations, where he was chairman in 1998.

He was a member of Bar Council from 2001 to 2007 and became a member of its executive committee during his last year on council. He became the president-elect designate in October 2007 and president-elect last June.

Huddleston was a faculty member for the mandatory professionalism course from 1997 to 2000 and continues as a faculty member for the professionalism course taught at state law schools.

He also is a member of the board of the Virginia Law Foundation and was instrumental in the partnership between the foundation and the Virginia Holocaust Museum.

Although VSB presidents serve only one year, the commitment extends over almost four years with selection as president-elect designate preceding the term as president-elect and service on the executive committee for a year as immediate past president.
“It’s a big time commitment,” he acknowledged. Just how big a commitment became apparent during the past year as he has been added to the daily e-mail trail that touches all aspects of the organization.

“It takes a considerable amount of time each day just sifting through the regular communication,” he noted.

The time is well spent, he added. “I don’t know of any bar president who has said, ‘I’m sorry I did this and regret the experience.’ ”

When he announced that he was a candidate for president-elect designate position, he pointed to the replacement of longtime VSB Executive Director Thomas A. Edmonds and the likelihood of an increase in bar dues as the major issues facing the organization.

Former VSB President Karen A. Gould succeeded Edmonds and “we could not have been more fortunate in that regard,” he said.

The immediate need for an increase in bar dues has been pushed back as well as Gould and the current VSB president, Manuel A. Capsalis, have come very close to balancing the VSB budget this year through cost reductions.

Unfortunately, he said, the economies have been “on the back of the staff,” which will go for more than two years with no salary increases. Although the VSB gets no tax money, its employees are state workers and subject to the freeze imposed as a result of the budget shortfall.

Those issues have been superseded to a large extent by public protection concerns that stemmed from the disclosure within a year of seven-figure thefts by four now disbarred attorneys.

One proposal stemming from those thefts is to have insurance companies notify plaintiffs in personal injury cases that they have sent settlement checks to the p.i. attorneys. Stephen T. Conrad, an ex-attorney from Prince William County, put more than $4 million in settlements in his own pocket and is now serving an 11-year federal prison term.

The VSB Council had been scheduled to vote on the proposal at this month’s meeting, but it has been pushed back to the October meeting.

Just when those cases appeared to be nearing resolution in both the criminal courts and with claims against the Clients’ Protection Fund, another huge theft was disclosed earlier this year.

J. Edward Moyler Jr., an ex-attorney from Franklin, acknowledged in open court in March that he took more than $4 million from an estate for which he had been named executor and lesser amounts from at least three other states. He was indicted last month in Southampton Court Circuit Court on nine embezzlement charges.

“Public protection issues quiet down a little, and then we’re reminded that we can’t take our eye off the ball,” Huddleston said.

In addition to his VSB work, Huddleston coaches sons, Bobby, 14, and Jack, 9, in soccer and basketball. A big fan of all sports, Huddleston said he was “too slow and too short” to compete at anything higher than the college intramural level.

His eyes sparkle when he talks about coaching. “It’s absolutely the best thing I do, the most fun,” he said.

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