I attended the South Texas College of Law Houston Seminar on July 31, 2008 to listen to various speakers on the program entitled “White Collar Practice for the Business Lawyer and In-House Counsel”. It was a well attended seminar with various district attorneys, U.S. attorneys, criminal defense lawyers and lawyers who participated as speakers in this program. This program had an excellent turnout at South Texas College of Law Houston for a two day period and the information was extremely important to those in attendance, especially in light of the recent Enron litigation and other corporate white collar crimes and lawsuits.
Some of the more experienced criminal lawyers listed on the program were Dan Cogdell, Jan Fox, Catherine Baen (DeGuerin & Dickson) and George Murphy. The United States Department of Justice was represented on the program, the U.S. Attorney’s office from the Eastern District of Texas, and numerous representatives of the District Attorney’s office throughout the State of Texas, including Harris County, Cameron County, the University of Houston College of Business, and the South Texas College of Law Houston.
I attended this seminar primarily to hear my friend, former partner with Bracewell & Patterson and graduate of Rice University, Harvin Moore, speak on the legal aspects of business practice, white collar practice, and his personal experiences as a lawyer, his business dealings, his lawsuit, his prison time, his return to society and law practice, and his overall summary of the last fifteen years of his life. The title of Mr. Moore’s presentation was “Ethics” and proved to be a very serious and inspiring talk about the numerous pitfalls and problems confronting in-house counsel with in-house dealings and business activities which can be classified as a crime. Mr. Moore’s presentation was based on his personal experiences, a theme of “choices” which he elaborated upon by providing numerous examples of his personal experiences. It was pointed out in the beginning of his presentation from his own personal experiences that each individual has the option and opportunity to always make choices but on the other hand, as he pointed out to his experiences, we could never predict the results of these choices. His theme was repeated and carried through his entire presentation as it applied to ethics and to the practice of law and the handling of cases where choices have been made which resulted in serious consequences.
Harvin Moore gave an excellent presentation of his life and career bringing us up to date of his present status as a practicing lawyer. The business dealings and the handling of money resulted in serious crimes which resulted in prison time. It was a very moving experience to hear Mr. Moore speak not only of his time in prison but his successful climb to reinstatement as a lawyer, as a citizen and as a speaker. He is a highly sought after motivational speaker, relating his experience and his comments regarding ethics and the choices that people have to make in their life and in their business. He gave a very impressive and important speech to those present and passed on some valuable information to the practicing lawyers that were in attendance.
From my standpoint, as I mentioned, I was extremely impressed with Mr. Moore’s courage, ambition, strength and overall speaking presentation. His message was a very strong one and he had a direct purpose in reaching those in the audience and others to hear about his experiences. I would highly recommend Harvin Moore to speak to any professional group, business group and others regarding his very interesting topic and speech.