OBA Robert M. Spire Public Service Award: J. Scott Paul & Stephen Sieberson
J. Scott Paul grew up in Davenport, Iowa. After graduating high school, Scott attended The University of Iowa where he got a bachelor’s in business administration. Scott was accepted to three law schools after graduating from The University of Iowa. Out of the three schools that accepted him, Scott thought Creighton to be the best of the three.
“My aunt had attended Creighton, and my parents met in Omaha, so I thought I had enough connection to Omaha that I should come out here,” Scott says.
During law school he worked as a law clerk. In 1980, during his sophomore year, he left the firm he was working at and joined Boland, Mullin & Walsh, where he got more substantive work. Boland, Mullin & Walsh hired Scott after graduation. His hard work placed him a spot as a trial attorney.
Scott got his start in insurance defense, mal-practice defense, and trail practice. Due to his position at Boland, Mullin & Walsh, which merged with Mcgrath North in 1988, the work presented itself. Scott knew he was helping out other lawyers in his firm at first, then doctors and insurance brokers started reaching out to him rather than other lawyers.
Now Scott works as the general council for the Airport Authority. Though he oversees Millard, most of his attention is given to Eppley. Scott advises the Airport Authority on board of directors issues. When he was the litigator, he would defend the airport in lawsuits. Now he manages litigation and directs the Airport Authority to other lawyers in the firm when needed. The most recent point of interest being the change in mask mandates. A federal judge in Florida struck down the mask mandate for public transportation, so they had to decide if Eppley was going to abide by that ruling. In the end, they decided it wouldn’t make sense to force travelers to wear masks through the airport only to dispose of them once they got on the plane.
The biggest misconception Scott has seen in insurance defense is that insurance companies have personal vendettas towards those they insure. In his experience, insurance companies have been willing to pay for the claims they cover, though the insured often looks at the situation differently from the insurer. He has seen exceptions to that rule, but most run their companies as a business, not as a tool to gauge those in times of crisis.
Scott did not pursue the Robert M. Spire award.
“If you stay around long enough, somebody will give you an award for something,” Scott jests.
It is an award given to lawyers in the community who provide public service. In the past, he took an hour or two a week to sit at the self-help desk in Douglas County. He couldn’t give legal advice, but could help people file the necessary pleadings and forms for their case. For the past 16 years, Scott has put on a Seminar of Ethics and Professionalism. Scott’s role in the seminar is to provide information on recent events referring to ethics and professionalism in Iowa and Nebraska. He tries to keep his segment lighthearted to keep the attention of the crowd after they’ve sat through 45 minutes of discussion on ethics and professionalism. Chris Aupperle is this year’s guest speaker and will be talking at the seminar about lawyers maintaining their wellbeing. To prepare, Scott keeps a file that he starts the day after the seminar. Through the year he tosses in articles and looks through them during this time to decide what he’ll discuss.
The seminar is usually held on a Friday in April. This is the third, and Scott hopes the last, year they will be hosting on zoom. This year the live Seminar will be June 3rd and will remain on the Bar Association website for a year after posting. Lawyers are required ten hours of continued legal education to maintain their license; two of which are required in the area of ethics, and this seminar offers both hours of ethics credit. The video is free to members of the Bar Association. “We try to make it as painless and convenient as possible,” Scott says.
Stephen Sieberson grew up in Sioux Center, Iowa. After graduating high school, Sieberson got a Bachelors, then Masters, in English from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sieberson spent a year post graduation as part of VISTA, now Americore, and served in a small border town. It was there that he met his first lawyers and got intrigued by the practice. Lawyers had come to the town to help in getting clean water. These are the types of lawyers that inspire him. His heroes are the lawyers who act as social workers with law degrees trying to keep society together.
“Those are the stars in the crown of the legal profession,” Sieberson says. His conversations with the lawyers in Texas led him to apply for law school at the University of Iowa.
With a law degree in hand, Sieberson started looking for jobs in Seattle. A trip to Colorado at age 10 left him with a hunger for mountain exploration. He landed a job working for a federal judge straight out of law school. He planted himself in the doorway of a lawyer who worked in international business and didn’t leave until he was given work. Sieberson had always been interested in different cultures and thought this the best way for him to begin experiencing them. Sieberson started teaching as an adjunct professor at University of Washington.
Through his international connections, he was also able to teach in countries all over the world. After five years in Seattle, he was convinced he needed to go international to be good at international business. Sieberson found a bank in Amsterdam to hire him and moved to the Netherlands where he worked for two years. Missing the mountains, he moved back to Seattle to work and built his own international business practice. Though he left the Netherlands, Sieberson got his PHD in European law through Erasmus University in Rotterdam at 59. In 2005, he got the opportunity to teach at Creighton through a friend of a friend and jumped at it.
Sieberson became a part of the Ethics and Professionalism Seminar 16 years ago, when the Dean of Creighton at the time, Pat Borchers, came and recruited him for the project. It was around the time Nebraska began requiring 10 hours of continued legal education each year. The Dean of Creighton came up with the idea with the president of the Bar Association, at the time J. Scott Paul. When in person, it’s held in the Harper Center at Creighton. Lawyers can earn their two hours of ethics training for free by showing up to the seminar.
“I don’t think we can press enough that we have these ethics rules and lawyers must be reminded what they are,” Sieberson says.
Sieberson lives with these ethic rules, teaching them every year. During his presentation he gets the opportunity to not only explain what the rules are but the why and the how. This year, Sieberson will discuss what a healthy relationship between lawyer and client looks like. This includes establishing a rapport with their client to become a team. Get the client to know and appreciate what you do and the lawyer to know the goals and hopes of the clients expectations. There is a reception afterwards with food and drinks provided.
User login
Omaha Daily Record
The Daily Record
222 South 72nd Street, Suite 302
Omaha, Nebraska
68114
United States
Tele (402) 345-1303
Fax (402) 345-2351