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"We
collect sunsets in our car," Association President
Tom Daily remarked as he smiled at his wife, Debbie.
"We are always driving back and forth between
Fort Smith and Little Rock on Association business.
Arkansas sunsets are beautiful and one of them is
almost always on display sometime during the ride
home"
Debbie answered quickly
with another story about their current remodeling
project. Tom's mother, Isabelle, passed away last
year; Tom and Debbie have decided to move into her
former house. Isabelle had installed an amber mercury
vapor security light in the backyard. "We would
sit on Isabelle's patio to plan the remodeling and
watch the sunset as we often did at our other house.
Instead, we were treated to the pure yellow glare
from that security light. That was our sunset,"
she laughed, "waiting for the mercury vapor to
rise."
"It looked like
a shopping center parking lot or something,"
he said. "It was ugly, ugly, ugly. It is gone
now, although getting rid of it is another story."
What isn't ugly is the
story behind this prominent natural resource lawyer's
ascension to this Association's presidency. A member
of Daily & Woods, P.L.L.C., in downtown Fort Smith,
Daily grew up in a family of attorneys. His grandfather,
Harry P. Daily, was President of the Arkansas Bar
Association in 1931-1932. His father, J.S. (Jack)
Daily, was also a respected attorney and active Association
member.
"I grew up in our
office running errands and helping the secretaries.
I never went through the jet pilot or fireman phase,"
Tom said. "It never occurred to me that people
did anything else [except become lawyers]. That is
what everyone did. I have an uncle who ran a baby
furniture factory, but that was kind of an aberration."
After graduating from
Shattuck School outside Minneapolis, Tom attended
Sewanee (The University of the South), where he majored
in Political Science, and the University of Arkansas
School of Law, where he obtained his J.D. degree.
He was admitted to practice in 1970 and then returned
to Daily & Woods.
"We have a general
civil practice," he said, "But I spent my
formative years in the law firm learning how to be
an oil and gas (natural resource) lawyer. Jim West
[Association President in 1973-1974] encouraged me
to enter this field and mentored me along."
In 1973, Tom met Debbie,
then a legal secretary for Shaw & Ledbetter (predecessor
to Association Past President Ron Harrison's firm),
which had its office in the same building. "I
had cases with one of the members of that firm,"
he confided, "so I needed to meet with him on
business. But there was this girl down there. Not
only was she pretty, she was smart. No matter how
funny I thought I was, her wit always trumped mine."
Their "love at first sight" relationship
developed quickly over the summer months; they married
that same year. On December 8, they will celebrate
their Thirtieth Anniversary.
Tom and Debbie have
two sons, Mike and Chris. Mike is a graduate of Hendrix
College with a B.A. degree in Business Economics.
He completed his M.B.A. degree last summer and is
currently a second year law student at UALR Law School.
Chris graduated from
Hendrix this May with a degree in Religion. He has
been accepted to the Asia Pacific Leadership Program
at the University of Hawaii's East-West Center, where
he will pursue his study of Asian languages and cultures.
In addition, he was awarded an East-West Center Fellowship,
which will allow for further research and a field
study in the Asia-Pacific region. Ultimately, he intends
to pursue a doctorate degree in Chinese philosophy
and religion.
Tom also has a son from
a previous marriage, Jack, who recently completed
his M.B.A. and works for the University of Phoenix.
One of Tom's most significant
cases involved Debbie's childhood home. He pointed
out that while most cases are important to the litigants,
a few, the "landmark cases," have a broader
importance to Arkansas substantive law. While Tom
has handled both, he prefers the latter. This was
one of them. Abbott v. Pearson 257 Ark. 694,
520 S.W.2d 204, resolved an obscure, but important,
rule of property law. The clients were Debbie's parents.
"I really wanted
to win that case--even if it meant going clear to
the Supreme Court to do it. Besides that, I was confident.
I thought the case law from other states was pretty
clearly in our favor," Daily said.
"We barely won.
It was a 4 to 3 Arkansas Supreme Court decision. The
majority opinion was written by Justice George Rose
Smith (one of the, if not the most, revered jurists
who ever served on the Court.) Justice Fogleman wrote
a very lucid dissenting opinion. In retrospect, I
realize that the court could have easily gone the
other way.
Tom has been an active
Association member throughout his career. Most of
his early work was within the Natural Resources Law
Section, as opposed to the parent association. That
changed about ten years ago. "David Vandergriff
called to tell me there was a vacancy, from our district,
on the Association's House of Delegates. I have always
felt that the Arkansas Bar Association was a very
special organization, so I agreed to run. After a
couple of years doing that, I was hooked on bar leadership.
"Not long after
that my old friend, [past president] Jack McNulty,
appointed me to a whole bunch of Association committees.
I loved that service. Then, one day when I was down
here [Little Rock], Judith Gray pulled me aside and
said, 'Tom, I want to show you something.' She took
me into Ann Pyle's office where all of the Past Presidents'
pictures are hanging, and she showed me my grandfather's
photograph. I think she was working on my mind right
then, although she would never admit it.
"In 2001, the presidential
election rotated to my [Northwest] district. I filed
for the position and my friends were nice enough not
to run against me," he laughed.
"I want to do as
good a job as can be done," he said. "This
job is a major commitment, but a labor of love. When
Don [Hollingsworth] called and told me that no one
was going to run against me and that I would be President-Elect
Designee, I told a number of colleagues that I knew
that past Presidents Ron Harrison, Jack McNulty and
H.T. Moore had absolutely worked themselves to a frazzle
running back and forth to Little Rock on Bar Association
business. But I said that I was smart enough not to
do that. I would figure out a way to do the job well
in my spare time."
"Well, right there,"
he said, "you can see that I proved how smart
I am not, because there is no way to do this job properly
without devoting a lot of time to it."
Tom has been involved
in much of the progress the Association has made within
the past decade. He is proudest of the Association's
renewed emphasis upon member benefits.
"I remember that
at one of our Board of Governor's meetings in Heber
Springs, two remarkable things happened on the same
afternoon. Don Hollingsworth was giving a report on
things that were happening around the country, and
told us that there were actually bar associations
in New England contracting to provide a limited amount
of state-specific legal research material to their
members.
"That afternoon
our speaker was Legal Futurist and past Executive
Director of the Arizona State Bar Stuart Forsyth.
One of the things Stuart told us was that the whole
area of legal research databases was headed toward
a direction where the raw information would become
very much like a commodity, available at a very reasonable
cost. Value, if there were any, would be in the packaging
of that information for ease of access and use.
"Well, we're a
voluntary bar association, and we have to be realistic,"
Daily said. "We have to give our members something
more than just the satisfaction of working for the
good of the order. We have a certain amount of mass
purchasing power. We should use that to secure member
benefits. So we thought perhaps we could wholesale-buy
legal research resources and give them to our members
as a benefit," he said.
So the Taskforce on
Future Internet Presence was born. It's principle
product: Arkansas VersusLaw. For those not acquainted
with Arkansas VersusLaw, it is a joint legal research
product of VersusLaw and the Arkansas Bar Association.
It is free to all members of the Association and delivers
a virtual law library which even contains materials
not available as a whole from any other Internet location.
Ever the technology
junkie, Daily said he is "fascinated by the empowerment
of hardware and software. I'm getting over it a little
bit. Any sensible geek probably goes through these
phases. I've learned that computers have the potential
to be the greatest timesavers of our lifetimes, but
they can also be serious time-wasters if you are not
careful.
"Still, I'm not
that old, and I haven't been doing this that long.
My contemporaries and I have witnessed the entire
office technical revolution. We've gone from being
just smart people to smart people using smart machines.
Arkansas VersusLaw is an example of that.
"A one-room country
law office in, say, Ozark, can, with only an inexpensive
personal computer, have a library like you once found
only in the law schools. And there's more to come.
You have to be excited about that. It doesn't mean
that one lawyer is going to be able to turn out a
lot more work, although that lawyer will probably
be able to turn out somewhat more work. What
it means is that the lawyer's work should reach a
much higher quality."
Tom is quick to say
that the Association's greatest challenge over the
next few years will be financial. "The Bar Association
needs to return to a point of budget surpluses,"
Daily said. "One of my goals is to get the Association
on solid financial footing for the future. We need
to have a clear understanding of our expenses and
where we can find additional income. For example,
we have had a wonderful arrangement with UALR within
the Bar Center for many years, but its term has expired.
No matter what we do next, the rent is going up."
Although the Daily's
are busy, they do have several hobby interests. They
both love to cook. Indeed part of their remodeling
project involves an improved kitchen.
"Debbie wanted
to replace mother's cook top," said Tom. "I
kind of resisted. After all, it is only about five
years old and is one of those pretty ceramic things.
Then I learned that I could get a gas line installed.
All of a sudden, I could not stand that old cook top.
You must see the new one once we get it in."
Both Tom and Debbie
also enjoy fishing. "My dad had an aluminum john
boat outfitted specially for fishing. It sat ignored
for many years after his death. One day Debbie suggested
that we needed to get the boat working again. It turned
out to be in fairly good shape, so we fixed it up.
It has now become a constant project. I may have the
most gadget-equipped johnboat in Arkansas. Guides
at the trout docks are openly envious."
"My grandfather
and father were both fly-fishermen. Of course, my
grandfather lived in a time before all the dams and
lakes were built, so he was a stream fisherman. Daddy
was a bit of a paradox. On the one hand he resented
the lakes because they inundated the creeks. Still,
he loved to fly-fish for trout on the White River.
There were years when he and I spent most of our weekends
in Cotter. I was pretty clumsy with my fly rod then,
but I have taken it up again and really enjoy it.
Meanwhile, Debbie catches all the fish we need to
eat." •
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