November 2, 2005 – Shirley Luna

Legal issues to be topic of panel discussion at SFA

NACOGDOCHES, TEXAS – Legal issues from tort reform to technology in the courtroom will be discussed in a forum hosted by the Stephen F. Austin State University Pre-Law program, SFA President Tito Guerrero and the SFA Foundation from 10:30 a.m. until noon Friday in Regents Suite B of the SFA University Center.

Guests of the panel discussion include moderator, Guy Matthews, founder of Matthews Law Firm in Houston; Thomas Walter Umphrey, managing partner of Provost and Umphrey Law Firm in Beaumont; and SFA alum Michael Schneider, U. S. district judge for the Eastern District of Texas.

Umphrey was born in Port Arthur and received a football scholarship to Southern Methodist University. He received a Juris Doctorate degree from Baylor Law School and then joined the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office as a prosecuting attorney and later served as chief felony prosecutor. He is listed in "The Best Lawyers in America" and has been selected by Texas attorneys as a Texas Super Lawyer, an honor held by only the top 5 percent of the Texas Bar. In June 2000, he was recognized as one of the top Texas lawyers of the 20th century in the Texas Lawyer publication "Legal Legends: A Century of Texas Law and Lawyering.".

Umphrey serves as director of the National Wildlife Association and as director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. He was instrumental in the formation of the Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center at Baylor University, and the newest cancer institute in Southeast Texas was recently named the Walter Umphrey Cancer Center.

Schneider graduated from Garrison High School and from SFA with a bachelor’s degree in history. He taught for several years at Ball High School in Galveston, where he was the first recipient of the school’s Sandy Kempner Memorial Award for outstanding teaching.

Schneider received a law degree from the University of Houston in 1971 and a Master’s of Law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law. He began his legal career as an assistant district attorney for Harris County and later worked as an international transactions lawyer, representing clients in most of North America, and in South and Central America, Canada, East and West Africa, Western Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia and other Pacific Rim countries. He was one of the first attorneys to negotiate a service contract in the Republic of China before diplomatic relations were established with the United States.

Schneider first became a judge in 1978, when he was asked to be a part-time municipal judge in West University Place. He handled traffic court at night for 12 years while working full-time as a corporate attorney. In 1990, Schneider ran for and was elected judge of the 157th Civil District Court in Harris County. He was appointed to the First Court of Appeals by Gov. George W. Bush in 1996, elected later that year and elected again in 1998. Schneider served five years as a district judge before becoming chief justice.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed Schneider to the Supreme Court of Texas in September 2002, and he was named a federal judge by President George W. Bush in 2004.

Schneider was named Texas Trial Judge of the Year in 1994 and Texas Appellate Judge of the Year in 2000, both by the Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists; and Appellate Judge of the Year in 2001 by the Houston Police Officers Union.

Before the discussion, SFA’s Moot Court team will have a chance to visit with the professionals to discuss advocacy strategies and oral argument. The Moot Court team competes against other universities arguing a fictitious case using rules of the U.S. Supreme Court, said Hans Hacker, SFA Pre-Law adviser and Moot Court coach. In a recent Texas Tech Law School competition, the team won three out of 10 top speaker awards and advanced a team into the quarter-finals.