|
|
| David Houston |
I
started as a paralegal in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1972
and retired in December of
2003. Carbondale, Illinois is my domicile. Prior to my retirement, I
was a Litigation
Paralegal, Legal Expert,
and President & CEO of Paralegal Specialists Incorporated, a company
that provided legal services
nationwide to lawyers, law
firms and judges. We sold the company in 2003 to a group of lawyers,
paralegals and investors in
Seattle, Washington. After
assisting with the dissolution of the company and transition to
Seattle, I retired from
law at the end of December,
2003.
At
the time of my retirement I had nearly 30 years experience, 6 years
of legal training, and had
assisted in winning over 2 billion (yes it is a "B") dollars worth of
court judgments.
I worked 26 states and I
specialized in the handling and management of what are known to the
public as "class actions"
or "complex litigations."
Class actions can be and often are used to bring about major reforms,
often
nationwide, but they are a
headache to manage and can sometimes get you killed (school
desegregation class actions in
the 1970's are an example
of the kind that could get you killed). A typical and garden variety
class action I helped
manage was the one reported
at Kendrick v. Bland, 541 F.Supp. 21 (W.D.Ky. 1981). I served as
Chairman of its Plaintiffs'
Committee from 1981 to
1984, and as a consultant and paralegal in the case both before and
after those years.
I
was also a torts (civil wrongs), appellate procedure,
constitutional and criminal law specialist. I loved
torts and constitutional
law, tolerated appellate procedure and hated criminal law. I hated
criminal law because it
is always very simple and
boring (same 4 questions in every case) and is the only area of law in
which almost nobody
makes a decent wage.
Neither the police, the criminals, the prosecutors nor the defense
lawyers make a decent wage.
Criminal law, although a
necessary evil, is poverty law. And I know that to be true, because I
worked every angle of
it over the years. And I
do mean every angle. The money is in torts and class actions.
Despite
my dislike of criminal law,
I have assisted in several high profile criminal cases over the years,
some examples being the
cases of Larry Hicks, Tony Kiritsis and Walter D. Smith. Walter remains a friend to this day. Prior
to retirement I was often called in as a consultant on cases in the
Supreme Court of the United
States in Washington DC. I participated in the briefing of 61 cases in
that court and had
13 partial or total
losses. The rest were wins. For example, I knew a lawyer named Richard Shapero in
Louisville in the mid-1980's and
assisted with some of the
briefing in his support in Shapero v. Kentucky Bar Association, 486 U.S.
466 (1988), a commercial
freedom of speech case for
lawyers. He won.
I
retired from law at the
end of 2003 for the simple
reason that I had became "burned out" with it. I was tired of lawyers,
tired of
trials, tired of endless
court deadlines, and tired of the legal system as a whole. I was tired
of police, tired of
criminals, tired of
prosecutors, tired of defense lawyers, tired of plaintiffs and tired of
defendants. Almost
all of my old friends
and mentors had died.
My
retirement from law has
allowed me to become more
active with raising monies for my favorite charities.
|
