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Thomas A. Edmonds

Next month, Tom Edmonds will retire as executive director of the Virginia State Bar, a post he has held for almost 19 years.

He came to the VSB after 12 years as a law dean – 10 at the University of Richmond, then two at the University of Mississippi.

A Duke University law graduate, he practiced in Florida before entering academia.

During his long tenure at the VSB, Edmonds has seen any number of challenges.

• A prominent Newport News attorney stole $42 million, then killed himself, in 1992. Some of those affected accused the bar of doing little to prevent the theft.

• The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission in 1995 put the VSB under the microscope, partly at the behest of some of the state’s voluntary bar groups who believed the VSB was straying from its mission and invading their turf. The JLARC report ultimately made few recommendations for change.

• The bar worked through and adopted the Rules of Professional Conduct in 2000, supplanting the prior Code of Professional Responsibility. Several of the new rules prompted contentious debate at sessions of the VSB Council.

• The VSB has struggled with how to deal with the General Assembly, as Virginia’s bar groups generally have become marginalized in the judicial selection process on Capitol Hill.

• The insurance company that once had been endorsed by the VSB, American National Lawyers Insurance Reciprocal, collapsed in 2003 and ended up in receivership. Edmonds, sensing trouble, had convinced bar leaders to move the VSB’s endorsement to ALPS, another insurer.

Although 2007 will mark Edmonds’ retirement from the VSB, the year also brings his service on a national level to a close.

When he first joined the bar, Edmonds became active in the National Association of Bar Executives, a 600-member group affiliated with the American Bar Association. NABE provides networking and educational opportunities for the professional employees of bar organizations across America.

Edmonds represented NABE in the ABA’s House of Delegates for six years, from 1997 to 2003.

That work paid off: In 2005 he became president of the organization. This year, he concluded his time as NABE past president.

He told Virginia Lawyers Weekly that his work with NABE was invaluable, and that he brought home new ideas and insights from every meeting he attended.

Other bar executives in the commonwealth have observed that Edmonds would be a tough act to follow as VSB executive director. He took an administrative position that had been a revolving door and brought it stature and consistency. His successor will be one of the VSB presidents he has served, Karen A. Gould of Richmond.

Biography

Education: B.A., College of Mississippi, 1962; J.D., Duke University law school, 1965

Practice Areas: Service as Executive Director of Virginia State Bar 

Achievement: Conclusion of service to National Association of Bar Executives

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