STEPHEN H. LESHER
Several years ago some friends and I founded the Bryce Wilson 100. This was a group of Tucson lawyers and judges invited to socialize with each other for the purpose of improving the working relationships among lawyers and between lawyers and the courts. In plainer terms, the purpose was to party. Every few months we invited the membership to an after-work or evening party at some selected Tucson watering hole.
Bryce Wilson was a County Attorney here in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. He had the reputation of being a fine trial lawyer until noon, after which he was drunk. He was eventually disbarred for his involvement in the operation of a house of prostitution. Wilson did have a serious drinking problem (my father had a memory of looking down from his office window one evening to see Wilson passed out, literally, in the gutter) but he evidently overcame the problem. At last report, several years old now, he was driving a cab in Las Vegas, having also been a gardener’s assistant and an employee of a tire store. Although we aspire to be more successful as lawyers than he, his name seemed somehow appropriate for an organization emphasizing the more playful side of the profession. As I once put it, “We protest the sullen seriousness that insecure, L.A. Law [a popular television show at the time]-wannabes have foisted on the rofession.”
Between parties I sent out a newsletter called The Bryce Wilson News. Its function was principally to keep up interest by commenting satirically on the events of the last party, announcing the next, and reporting local legal gossip as suggestively and salaciously as possible. But that was not enough to fill up The News’ eight pages and so I also wrote articles on many different topics that I thought would interest and enlighten the membership. Some did prove to be of interest; as far as enlightenment is concerned, our membership was notoriously short on that. For some strange reason, a lot of them thought these articles were intended as jokes. For some even stranger reason, others thought they weren't.
Bryce Wilson Guide to Advertising series:
Writing series:
Tools of the Trade series:
Christmas:
- * An article written for The News but not published for various reasons having to do with timing,
- need, the law of libel, etc.
The Bryce Wilson 100