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PrintLunch with Allen Smallwood
President, Oklahoma Bar Association
Tulsa’s community network is pretty much one to three degrees of separation, compounded by a factor of two. So, when Publisher Jim Langdon suggested the new Oklahoma Bar Association president as a profile, I wasn’t surprised to learn my subject was a) the husband of a fellow Tulsa Historical Society board member, and b) our managing editor’s godfather.
I was lucky to get Allen Smallwood to take time for lunch. He’s the kind of guy who starts at 6:30 a.m. and might not finish until the same time or later that evening; the noon hour is his opportunity to take a quick power nap before he hits it again.
Although he’s this year’s Oklahoma Bar Association (OBA) leader, his day job must be one of the toughest, most thankless ones in the legal profession — criminal defense attorney. You’ll frequently find his name in stories of murder, manslaughter and other forms of mayhem, such as last year’s Tulsa Public Works scandal or the $44 million stock fraud conspiracy, for which sentencing came just two days before we met.
“You have to have some pretty hard bark on you” to do criminal defense, he says. “My wife claims I’m a misanthrope, and I may well be, but as I tell people, after 62 years of life, 15 murder cases and a war, I’m not terribly impressed with the human species.
“That’s an exaggeration. There are some wonderful people among us, but given what our capabilities are, some of our behavior is pretty sad. And I see a lot of that, and that is probably one of the reasons I have the attitude that I have — but my grandkids bring me out of it.”
A 1974 graduate of The University of Tulsa Law School, Smallwood chose the specialty following an internship with the Tulsa County public defender’s office. There, under supervision, he tried seven jury cases and obtained two acquittals before ever being admitted to the bar. He was deep into it by then and notes wryly, “I turned down an opportunity to practice with a civil plaintiff’s lawyer who’s now a multimillionaire.” He also spent 10 to 15 years handling divorce cases but comments, “I’ll never do that again,” saying it is “high tension, brutal stuff.”
He is, it appears, a man of definite opinions. A native Tulsan, he is concerned for the city’s present and future; doesn’t watch legal-eagle TV shows with their phony trial situations; and doesn’t dampen what he has to say, even when Mayor Dewey Bartlett’s wife and stepdaughter are seated next to us. Although he’s a likable guy, this makes me like him even more.
As official spokesman for the OBA, he is keeping his eyes open for potential threats to judicial independence — in particular, “Monday-morning quarterbacking” by legislators.
“The judicial branch is a separate, independent branch that should be free to operate without the fear of knee-jerk political reactions to a decision,” he explains.
Last year was a contentious one between the bar and some legislators who, he says, accused the bar of “lobbying for abortion or against capital punishment, which simply was blatantly untrue.”
The OBA isn’t a lobbying group, he points out, “and rarely takes a position on political issues, but something may get shot our way.”
I can see that Allen Smallwood won’t be afraid to take it on, whatever it is.
