A well-earned tribute was paid to a great man at the Grand America Hotel when Harold G. Christensen was honored by his peers for 50 years in the legal profession.
Lawyers in and around Salt Lake City know Hal Christensen as the Clarence Darrow of Utah, a multiple-time Lawyer of the Year, past Utah State Bar president and general all-around legal savant who has powered the firm of Snow, Christensen and Martineau through the past half-century.
The state of Utah knows him as the man who served as the top aide to not one but two U.S. attorneys general when he was deputy attorney general in Washington, D.C., to first Edwin Meese III and then Dick Thornburgh.
But to me, he'll always be the man who told my brother to get off the golf course and into the office.
It was the late 1970s when my brother, Dee, surprised our entire family and graduated from law school, after which he accepted an offer from the Salt Lake firm of Snow, Christensen and Martineau, primarily because they had free drinks in the break room, and because they said they'd actually pay him.
But Dee had his own ideas about practicing law, one of them having to do with office hours. His philosophy basically was: Why waste perfectly good sunlight by sitting in the office?
It was Hal Christensen, the firm's senior partner, who pulled him aside and told him that's not the way they did things in the big leagues. A lawyer is only as successful as his clients, and clients need to be able to count on being able to find their lawyer during the work day.
A truly traumatic day in my brother's life.
But Hal was right, of course, and not just about that, but about most everything as it pertained to the law and the effective practice thereof. He wasn't just my brother's mentor — to this day Dee would run through a brick jury box if Hal asked him to — but he's been a mentor to numerous other attorneys here in Utah and throughout the nation over the past 50 years.
So many protegés that they needed an entire ballroom to fit them all in at the celebration.
Judges, senators, civic leaders, business leaders, heads of law firms, rank-and-file attorneys and just-starting-out law clerks showed up to recognize Christensen's career that began in 1951 when he graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and came back home to Utah without a job offer.
Ironically, he had an excellent offer to join one of Denver's best firms, but he didn't want to work or live in Colorado. He wanted to live and work in the state where he was born and reared. He had no desire to roam far from his Springville home town.
So, he returned from Michigan to Utah, marched in the front door of the law firm of Skeen, Thurman, Worsley and Snow in the Walker Bank Building in downtown Salt Lake City and made them a deal. He would work for nothing.
If they liked what they saw, fine; if not, well, what could it hurt if they gave it a try?
The firm took him up on his offer, let him work without pay for a trial period and then hired him with all benefits.
Fifty years later, Skeene, Thurman, Worsley and Snow has evolved into the firm of Snow, Christensen and Martineau.
And that's not the only legal thing around here that has Hal Christensen's name on it.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.